Children need a Report Card to evaluate their performance. Since most of the participants in the second debate acted like children, I will oblige and give them their grades.
Ron DeSantis – A for an Adult. In a stage full of irrelevant candidates picking irrelevant fights, one man looked like he was running for President of the United States and the others looked like they were running for city council. He put forth his message, quickly swatted away attacks, took some well-placed shots at Trump’s record and generally showed why he was at the center of the stage. If a person didn’t know any polling or anything about the candidates going in, DeSantis would have appeared to be the leader of that pack. On several occasions, he took over the stage as the leader from the other candidates and from the moderators and steered the conversation to back to something important.
Nikki Haley – D for Domineering. Haley did okay at parts, but the attacks on DeSantis were clearly scripted and forced and out of place in the conversation. The back and forth with Scott made both look weak and petty. Haley reminds too many people of an ex-wife.
Vivek Ramaswamy – F for Flip-flop. Most of the night, he seemed to be debating himself. His most honest moment was when he referred to himself as a know it all and too ambitious, but I don’t think it left the impression he was hoping. Instead of being self-depreciating, it highlighted the biggest issues with Ramaswamy (at least before deep diving into his background). He took shots from the others and really had no response but to tell us how much he likes Donald Trump.
Tim Scott – C for Canned. Scott has a lot of nice, soaring rhetoric, but next to nothing on actual policies or ability to accomplish it. He seemed to be running to be the national motivational speaker instead of the President. The attacks with Haley were just petty and dumb. His response that he was on different Senate committees as an example of his experience was cringe worthy. While he wasn’t irrelevant, like the first debate, he seemed like he was trying to just make the team.
Chris Christie – B for Bully. I’m not a fan of Christie, but I thought he took good shots and made the most of his time. His persona is being a bully and he jumped right in to that. His constant attacks on Trump were forced and beg the question of why he supported him and was an adviser for over 4 years, to now all of a sudden act like he is the scourge of humanity. All in all, he highlighted who he is about as well as anyone.
Mike Pence – D for Desperate. While he inserted himself into the debate, the jokes were scripted and not funny, especially for a guy with permanent furrowed brow syndrome. He was trying too hard as the former Vice President who can’t even get traction and doesn’t look like he belongs on the stage. It just doesn’t work.
Doug Burgum – C for Cry baby. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like Burgum did more whining and crying than was necessary. From complaining about the questions he got, to trying to jump into conversations he wasn’t involved in, it wasn’t a great look. His answers were okay and it is hard for a guy on the end to do much. I don’t see him moving the needle.
Moderators – F for Failure. That was awful. Three moderators is at least two too many. The leftist questions of Calderón have no place at a GOP debate. Her accent and English proficiency is not suited to such an event. Varney kept tripping on his own tongue. Perino thought it was her job to add her own points to the debate and play stupid games.
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Debates like this have become a joke.
What if, and I’m just spit balling it here, but what if we have a series of 1/2 hour or hour town hall type meetings with each candidate around a standard set of questions and, after giving each candidate a forum of their own including them picking their key points of their platform to discuss and then moving to a regular debate format but restrict the questions to ones that seeks to clarify the hours of responses that those town halls brought forth?
But, the best I can tell, neither the press nor the GOP want to get information out in front of the voters in a dispassionate way, they just want ‘good TV’.
Either that, or round-robin a series of direct Lincoln-Douglas 1-on-1s. Each candidate faces all of the others, and then the winning half the group move on to the next round and losers are dropped. Definitely the field needs to be narrowed early and HARD, no more of this crap about having spoilers hang on solely to weaken the Establishment’s disfavored candidates. *stares pointedly at Micro Marco*
BTW, who were you on Discord? Since I can see your email as a Mod, I can send you another invite… I think you found yourself on the wrong side of an overenthusiastic Spring Cleaning when we had a molehunt and us mods started channeling Angleton.
That would be better. Frankly, there isn’t much that would be worse than the current format besides putting more people on the stage.
I think a fairly simple tweak would help a lot. Just pick a topic and go. Give them 2-3 minutes just to talk on a topic. They don’t answer the questions anyway, which mostly seem to be a gotcha questions. Then allow rebuttals if attacked and then make sure everyone has a shot at each topic. Then move on to another one.
They would have to highlight their unique positions to keep from sounding like everyone else. We should want to draw out their differences, as they will agree on 80%. It’s the 20% that is the difference and how they approach getting the job done.
The networks want a show, not a debate. Sadly, I think most viewers would rather have a show too.