Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley

It was a slow start for DeSantis, who was often absent in conversations over the first hour. But he hit his stride in the back half of the debate and had a few solid, clippable moments. He ultimately spoke the most of any candidate. And he got to throw his weight around a bit at the very end by bulldozing over moderator Dana Perino's "Survivor"-esque question about which candidate should be "voted off the island." But in the grand scheme of things, holding his own against a bunch of candidates polling in the single digits is not how DeSantis is going to win the GOP nomination. To do that, he needs to chip away at Trump's base of support. And while he took a few notable shots at the former president, chastising him for not showing up to the debate, without Trump on the debate stage it is tough for him to prosecute the case effectively even if he wants to.
-Analysis by Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

I was watching Scott and Burgum tonight. I thought Scott did pretty well — he had more fire in the belly this time around, going after Ramaswamy’s and Haley’s records. He also had the third-most speaking time, per The New York Times. Burgum, on the other hand, tried to butt in early but really disappeared in the second half of the debate. He finished with the least speaking time, and I can’t imagine he made much of an impression on viewers.

But! The responsible thing to do is not to speculate about winners and losers now. We’ll have a poll from 538, The Washington Post and Ipsos tomorrow morning that provides real, hard data on what Republican voters thought.

—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538

It was a lively second debate, with lots of cross talk and arguing and challenging between candidates. Like in the first debate, Trump didn’t come up much. Christie remained the only one to really criticize him, and said he should not be part of the primary process. It’s easy to forget he’s the front-runner when you’re watching these candidates go after each other. They seemed more eager to attack each other than any front-runner in the presidential race.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538

We got glimmers of candidates attempting to narrow down the GOP primary field. Haley and Scott sparred over South Carolina politics, Pence criticized DeSantis’ spending in Florida, DeSantis criticized Trump’s stance on abortion, and just about everyone tried to take Ramaswamy down a peg (though that might have been a result of their frustration with him rather than actual political strategy). But what Republicans need in order to wage a credible challenge to Trump’s frontrunner status is to shake up the field, and I don’t know if we saw that tonight. It looked like we might get a little closer to winnowing down the field when moderator Dana Perino asked everyone to write down who they should “vote off the island” — but DeSantis, making a show of being above that sort of petty question, prevented us from getting any answers.
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of 538