Winners and losers of the first GOP debate

The first GOP primary debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin just wrapped. Here is the definitive list of the evening’s winners and losers.

Winners

Vivek Ramaswamy

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is the only candidate on the stage who spoke to an issue larger than partisan politics: a lack of American identity and purpose. He accurately pinpointed the undercurrent of malaise in our country. Ramaswamy also was the first to raise his hand unapologetically when asked if he would stop sending money to Ukraine and if he would support former president Donald Trump as the nominee even if he were convicted in one of his pending legal cases. In his early moments he came off a bit arrogant, but that wore off as he settled in and set himself apart from the field.

Doug Burgum

The governor of North Dakota would be a winner just for showing up, considering he tore his achilles tendon playing basketball on Tuesday (as first reported by The Spectator). But he gets bonus points too for actually performing quite well. Burgum was humble and charming and surprised everyone when he took his first question about Bidenomics and used it to intelligently tie economic decline and energy offshoring to national security. His best and strongest moment was when he called for bringing small-town values — the idea of helping out your neighbors and relying on transparency and accountability — to the White House.

Governor Ron DeSantis

I don’t think DeSantis performed exceptionally well and he definitely got overshadowed by the “skinny guy with the funny last name” to his left. However, given the recent struggles of the DeSantis campaign and multiple revamps, a bad debate performance tonight likely would have killed him. The bar was set pretty low — and since he managed to stay disciplined and get his points across without becoming the field’s punching bag, DeSantis gets a win.

Donald Trump

The former president avoiding the debate stage made Chris Christie’s and Asa Hutchinson’s attacks come across as desperate — and there wasn’t a whole lot of time spent on his legal woes. Meanwhile, millions of people watched Trump’s long form interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Tim Scott

Scott was exceptionally dull but didn’t do anything to hurt his candidacy or his chances at being a VP pick and even gave a good answer about the weaponization of our justice system. That’s enough to count as a win in his book.

Losers

Mike Pence

Pence’s sense of moral superiority while constantly interrupting the moderators and his aggression toward some of the other candidates was something else. The best thing that Pence has to run on is the record of the Trump-Pence administration, and unfortunately for him, the first name on that ticket is also running for president and has the support of the GOP base.

Nikki Haley

Haley may have won over the crowd with a Thatcher quote about women and her ardent defense of bloated Ukraine spending, but her position on foreign policy is out-of-touch with the Republican Party and even the majority of Americans. Peace through strength is a legitimate strategy, but propping up unwinnable wars with American aid is not.

Asa Hutchinson

He looked bad, sounded bad, and no one knows why he was there. The only bright spot for the former Arkansas governor is that no one took him to task for his votes regarding “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Chris Christie

His one-man kamikaze mission to take down Trump is not going well, judging by the reception to his case against the former president his evening. Give it up, dude.

Young America’s Foundation

Sorry, but that question about climate change sucked.