One last attempt to move an immovable needle

The fourth debate was like the previous ones, only more so

Source: AP

Just four Republican candidates convened tonight for the fourth presidential candidates debate. It was a night that ramped up some patterns we’ve seen all along, but isn’t likely to have any greater effect on poll numbers than the previous ones did.

It’s interesting to think about just where we are in this contest. The four candidates on the stage — Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy — knew full well how little the polls have shifted following the previous debates. Yes, they’ve moved around a bit, but no one is any closer to overtaking the one qualifying candidate who has still not graced a single debate stage, Donald Trump.

Also of note is that this debate was aired on NewsNation, a station that, as Jonathan Last notes, has an average of 67,000 viewers per day. I actually missed the first few minutes because I was scrambling to find a way to watch this debate. (I actually had to add some random service to my cable lineup which I cancelled right after the debate.) It’s fair to say that the public’s ability to watch this debate was not a particularly high priority for the RNC.

The four candidates on the stage were quite aware that tonight’s debate wasn’t about to make them the front-runner. They want to be remembered for the things they said — potentially by a future President Trump looking to staff a cabinet, or by a 2028 Republican primary electorate looking for a presidential nominee. So it’s interesting to think how they wanted to be remembered. Just to briefly go through their performances tonight:

Nikki Haley was functioning as the front-runner — or, at least, the front-runner among the candidates who are not Donald Trump. While she still trails DeSantis in national polls, her numbers have been climbing while his have been dropping, and she’s ahead of him in New Hampshire and South Carolina. As the quasi-front-runner, a lot of digs came her way. Vivek Ramaswamy threw a lot at her, which wasn’t new. But Ron DeSantis directed a lot of fire at her, criticizing her past policy stances, accusing her of being inconsistent on foreign policy, on cultural issues, and more. Haley largely played the magnanimous front-runner in response, rarely mixing it up with her detractors except to challenge them on facts. At least for me, some of her stronger moments in past debates were when she really went after detractors (Ramaswamy, mostly), but she went tonight with the idea that it was better to seem above the fray. When Ramawamy called her “corrupt” and said that having two X chromosomes did not exempt her from criticism (yes he said that), she simply said, “It’s not worth my time to respond to him.”

Speaking of Vivek Ramaswamy, if he had it cranked to 11 in previous debates, he was at about a 22 tonight. He had all sorts of insults for Haley, repeatedly calling her stupid and uninformed (claiming she couldn’t identify the Ukrainian provinces Russia occupies, for example), a fascist, and corrupt. Ramaswamy also endorsed a variety of conspiracy theories — January 6th was an inside job, the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech” (his words!) — and patted himself on the back for having the courage to say these things out loud.

He actually did this.

Ron DeSantis has continued to improve on the debate stage. He went after Haley quite a bit, and also sought to portray himself as particularly tough on cultural issues in Florida. He very notably dodged a chance to say that Trump shouldn’t be running, instead just softly calling Trump out for being of advanced age. “Father Time is undefeated,” he repeated. But he was very much acting like a scrappy challenger in second or third place who sees a way in.

It’s a weird call but I think that Chris Christie had the best overall performance. Now, granted, his whole approach was very different from the others. He got several opportunities to direct his fire at Donald Trump, which is his main rationale for being in this race, and he largely did so effectively, referring to Trump as “an angry, bitter man” who “wants to exact retribution.” He also sharply criticized the other candidates for being unwilling to do that, and especially for them saying, back in the first debate, that they would back Donald Trump as the nominee even if he were a convicted felon. Christie also went hard after Ramaswamy for the latter’s increasingly personal attacks against Haley, calling Ramaswamy “the most obnoxious blowhard in America.”: “All he knows how to do is insult good people.”

There was an interesting moment when moderator Megyn Kelly asked, in particularly cruel fashion, about the need for government restrictions on gender affirming medical care for minors. Christie pushed back hard on the question, saying that as a parent he opposes such care, but it’s not government’s place to take that power away from parents. His response was an odd but compelling blend of compassion and libertarianism, and came off somewhat more humane than the rest of the candidates on that one.

This is expected to be the last debate prior to the Iowa caucuses next month. And while there were a few memorable moments, there was nothing that dramatically different from previous debates. That is to say, it seems unlikely that this actually shook anything up, and probably only a few nerds like me will remember much of it in a week.

But while Christie attacked Trump for not appearing on the stage, the decision to not participate continues to be one of the smarter decisions by the Trump campaign. There would be little benefit to him being on that stage and considerable potential downside. As it is, with just over a month until Iowa, he has massive advantages despite many legal perils, and the debates did little to affect that.