Yes, Trump wasn't there, but how did everyone else do?
 | By John Guida Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Donald Trump has dominated the G.O.P. presidential primary by most traditional standards — and, after four indictments and 91 felony counts, by many nontraditional standards, too. |
But on a stage in Milwaukee last night, eight Republican candidates not named Trump tried to change the primary's dynamic, or at least grab a glimmer of a chance to break the former president's dominance. |
How to cover a debate that lacked its leading man? As Times Opinion has done for several cycles now, we kept score, in a manner of speaking. And our panel of writers picked Nikki Haley as the winner. |
Bret Stephens called her "the star of the evening," while David French wrote: "If there's any life left in the old G.O.P., Haley gave it hope." |
Mike Pence ranked second, giving a performance that Michelle Goldberg called "unexpectedly fiery!" |
Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis were in the middle of the pack — of the latter, Ross Douthat wrote, "he isn't the front-runner, and he desperately needs more deftness and finesse." |
Bret Stephens was more blunt: "Bye, Ron," he said. |
Vivek Ramaswamy was the most divisive candidate, with scores all over the place. As Ross Douthat put it, his was "a love-it-or-hate-it performance." |
Many of the candidates weren't nearly as memorable — people like Tim Scott, whose performance Michelle Goldberg called simply, "meh." |
In his review of the debate, Frank Bruni did not see a lot of courage on the stage. "The party is not turning away from Trump," he wrote, "and that was the moral of an event at which Trump was physically absent but spiritually present." |
"Is DeSantis really trying all that hard? Apart from Christie, are any of them? Like their ethically rotten party, they're hostage to a serially indicted huckster and seem to be waiting for some twist of fate or act of magic to make it all better," he wrote. |
Today, all eyes will surely turn to Trump again, considering his plan to turn himself in at the Atlanta jail where defendants are being booked in the Fulton County case. |
No doubt at least some of the debaters in Milwaukee thought that their performance might break, or at least loosen, Trump's cycle of dominance. But the impressions of our panelists seem to offer them very little hope that they succeeded. |
Read our coverage of the debate: |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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