The third Republican debate was held on November 8th on NBC – and was uploaded to YouTube officially this time. Each debate seems to be getting easier to find on streaming, so that’s something. With only about two months left until primary voting starts, time is running out for candidates to figure out how to campaign in a way that appeals to voters more than the guy who says things that get him compared to Hitler.
Former Rep. Will Hurd, talk show host Larry Elder, and manufacturing quality control trainer Perry Johnson dropped out after failing to make the first two debates, and former VP Mike Pence did so too after his standing in the polls dropped by more than half over the course of his campaign. Another round of potential campaign finance violations wasn’t enough to get Doug Burgum eligible for the debate this time around, and Asa Hutchinson not only didn’t qualify but I forgot he was even running when I first went to look up the other candidates. Meanwhile, frontrunner Donald Trump continues to refuse to participate and to tell the Republican Party to cancel future debates, instead spending his time going on civil trial for falsifying business records and trying desperately to not go on criminal trial for election fraud. This left Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott as the candidates who participated in this debate.
Best Overall Performance:
Ron DeSantis was much more on-topic and much less petulant-sounding than in the previous debates, and occasionally he was sometimes even kind of correct. I think he did particularly strongly in the foreign policy questions with coherent and relevant answers. Well, at least until he brought out the stupid “energy independence” meme that I complained about last time as a total non-sequitur answer to a question about Venezuela’s political crisis.
Worst Overall Performance:
Vivek Ramaswamy is an unending source of captivatingly-terrible answers, as if he drank too much of the Mead of Poetry and instead of granting him great eloquence or wisdom, it turned his stomach and he vomited random policy statements all over the stage. The very first question of the debate was to finally ask the candidates directly why Trump voters should flip to them. He not only failed to answer it in any way, but he attacked NBC and the Republican Party for agreeing to let them host this debate at all, saying in part: “Think about who’s moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have ten times the viewership, asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about, bringing people into our party. […] This is actually about you and the media and the corrupt media establishment. Ask you: the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real? Or was that Hillary Clinton made-up disinformation?”
Worst Overall Performance by Someone Not Named Vivek Ramaswamy:
Tim Scott did noticeably worse this time around, turning repeatedly to warmongering and repeated slogans that were only sometimes relevant. He acted like a candidate desperate for attention in the first debate, not a candidate who has survived some winnowing and is now here to talk in detail. He also spent the most time lying about “energy independence”.
Weirdest Overall Performance:
Nikki Haley responded to several questions by going on a series of confusing tangents. Not in the usual way candidates do, where they either try to shoehorn in their preferred talking points or where they wander off onto another topic that is still related to what they started on. But in a very different way, where she started out with a real answer, then used the rest of her time to give several consecutive answers to past questions she didn’t get asked or didn’t get to respond to someone else on.
Least Overall Performance:
Chris Christie. Why not create a superlative for this guy too? He must feel left out. He keeps trying to propose much more detailed policies than everyone else but gets no applause for it.
Line that Got the Most Predictably Disappointing Applause:
“If you were born a man, you play sports against men.” – Tim Scott
Heartbreaking: the Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point:
In response to the opening question about appealing to Trump voters, Ron DeSantis specifically listed several campaign promises Trump failed to deliver on, including “draining the swamp”. Honorable mention to Ramaswamy for showing he is truly part of my generation when he said that part of the reason Millennials have so much less national pride is that we got expensive degrees we were told would get us money and they didn’t.
Worst Returning Policy Idea from Previous Debates:
Haley once again proposed a total embargo on Chinese imports until the country prevents fentanyl from being exported to the US. She expanded on it this time, also threatening to stop allowing Chinese citizens to attend American colleges or receive research funding.
Worst Returning Policy Idea from Previous Campaigns:
Tim Scott, perhaps channeling the spirit of John McCain, called for escalating the various Middle Eastern proxy conflicts into a direct war with Iran aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government. Haley and DeSantis also endorsed direct attacks on Iranian military forces in response to a later question, but not to the same extreme Scott did.
Policy Idea that Feels the Most Like a Parody:
Vivek Ramaswamy thinks the solution to drug smuggling is to build border walls with both Mexico and Canada and station the military along both walls.
Argument Most Likely to Work on Me Personally:
Christie and Haley both responded to a combative and xenophobic question about fentanyl and the US-Mexico border by describing addiction as a treatable disease. I am frankly shocked to hear any Republican politician frame this issue this way and hope it reflects the larger change in societal attitudes about addiction. Christie even used a later question on abortion to pivot back to the topic, saying “we’re not pro-life for the whole life. To be pro-life for the whole life means that the life of a 16-year-old drug addict on the floor of the county lockup is precious and we should get treatment for her to restore her life. The 52-year-old who’s drug addicted should make sure that any of his children who he’s passed that addiction on to are treated well too.”
Best Accidental Pitch by a Candidate to Be in Congress Instead of the Presidency:
In response to a question about potentially banning TikTok from operating in the US, Scott correctly pointed out that the Trump Administration tried this already and was blocked the court (although the legality of Trump’s executive order wasn’t actually ruled on – it was delayed by a temporary restraining order until the Biden Administration revoked order in favor of attempting FCC regulation). He then suggested new laws to restrict data collection and sharing by social media companies, especially internationally, and good news, Tim! You’re in the Senate! You can sponsor a bill to do that now!
Best Accidental Pitch by a Candidate to Be in Local Government Instead of the Presidency:
Asked about lowering the cost of living, Ramaswamy brought up land use ordinances and how they limit housing supply, which are decisions that are typically made locally, not even at the state level. But, like, I actually agree and wish more places would loosen those restrictions.
Funniest Attempted Attack on a Candidate:
I think drastic cuts to fossil fuel consumption should be one of our highest priorities to mitigate climate change. I think that even if we didn’t have to do that, there are incredible pollution risks inherent in fossil fuel extraction, refining, and use that we need to take more seriously. So when Nikki Haley attacked Ron DeSantis for opposing fracking and offshore drilling in Florida and called him “a liberal on the environment”, I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea that that was supposed to be a bad thing.
Question I Most Reject the Premise Of:
Pray tell, NBC moderators and candidates alike, why do you imagine that the President of the United States personally has the power to ban TikTok?
Answer I Most Reject the Premise Of:
Ramaswamy said in his closing statement that there is a war going on “between those of us who believe in our founding ideals and love this country and a fringe minority who hates the United States of America”. I agree with the literal content of this sentence. But considering that this guy believes that the attempted coup by people carrying the flag of a previous attempt to destroy the US was caused by vaccine mandates and insufficient news coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and challenged his primary competitors in the first debate to pledge to pardon Trump for instigating the whole mess, I think it’s quite clear who is part of the fringe minority who hates the United States of America.
???-est ???:
Also in his closing, Ramaswamy claimed that Biden is neither the president nor the Democratic candidate for president, and apparently thinks that Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama might be revealed as the real candidate instead. This got wild cheers. We live in the stupidest timeline.
Overall Takeaway:
Despite some of my comments above, I think the amount of dumb sloganeering and off-topic answers went down a bit, maybe because they’re allotting the same total time to fewer candidates. Although I’d certainly still have plenty of complaints on both tone and policy, it would hardly be a hatewatch at all to see Christie, DeSantis, and Haley argue over the details of their differences on important issues. All three might even run a close race in a “normal” election cycle… but instead, the absent Donald Trump continues to loom over everything, the polls have stayed about the same since the previous debate, and this is still a fight to be in second place unless something truly unexpected happens. My guess is that the candidates’ future trajectories will have less to do with anything they say now and more to do with whether the coverage of Trump’s various criminal trials during primary season finally pushes Trump supporters who say they are considering other candidates to see him as a bad strategic choice.
Most Reasonable Reaction to This Debate:
