By Rich
Lowry
Thursday,
September 28, 2023
Lots of
mulligans in this one.
Tim
Scott realized he had to show up. He was feistier, spoke more, and had some
good moments, but I wonder how the nice guy constantly interrupting other
candidates will play.
Vivek’s
internal polling must have showed that he came off as an obnoxious boor the
first time around. This version was easier to take. But it’s always a bad sign
when a candidate has to adopt basically a new persona from one debate to the
next (Al Gore did it in the presidential debates in 2000).
Pretty
much everyone realized in retrospect they should have taken more umbrage at
Vivek’s insults during the first debate, and came armed with oppo. They
obviously hate him, and Nikki Haley more than anyone.
And,
finally, Trump took some incoming for not showing up. Both Christie and
DeSantis hit him.
Two
candidates who didn’t take mulligans and doubled down on their prior strategies
were Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The Haley approach is to stand out by
attacking almost everyone else, but it might have felt like too much and too
forced.
On the
other hand, DeSantis is using the debates to avoid mixing it up with anyone as
much as possible — trying to ignore direct attacks and to transcend arguments
between the other candidates — while delivering his message with every answer.
This produces some good riffs — he was great on education and life — but makes
it impossible to win the debate in the usual sense of having an electrifying
moment or besting another candidate in a long, heated exchange.
My guess
is he’s seeking to maintain his high favorable ratings by not attacking anyone
(except Trump in a couple of specific places where he considers it
advantageous), work Iowa hard, and hope it breaks his way late.
Otherwise
Doug Burgum made a good impression, and there was way too much cross talk and
frenzied over-promising from the candidates.
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