This debate was tightly run with mostly substantive content, in marked contrast to the last one, but still felt mostly pointless. The combination of Trump’s big lead and his absence simply drains these affairs of true drama and consequence.
That said, DeSantis was good the way he’s always good — controlled and on-message, but not dominant. He mixed it up a little with Nikki Haley, but she was the aggressor both times. You can feel him just waiting for other candidates to disappear.
Haley was also strong. There was less room for her to have sharp exchanges given a format that allowed for less back-and-forth, but she still went at it with Vivek Ramaswamy, who attacked her all night.
Ramaswamy was a horse’s ass. He was obnoxious and smarmy in the first debate; then, seeing what it did to his polling, dialed it back in the second debate; and tonight, reversed course and doubled down on his approach from the first debate. In particular, he made the idiotic calculation to mention Nikki Haley’s daughter in his answer on TikTok. He’s always been inclined this way, but he seems to have made the judgment he needs to run entirely for the appropriation of a segment of social-media influencers.