Republican debate highlights and analysis: Candidates squabble in Simi Valley
2024 hopefuls argued over education, spending and border security.
The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, has just come to an end.
The affair was more raucous than the first debate, which took place over a month ago. Candidates interrupted one another much more regularly and several — most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have directly criticized front-runner Donald Trump, who elected not to show up tonight. The two candidates from South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, went after one another for their records on spending, and seemingly everyone who had the chance to take a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did so.
Read below for highlights, excerpts and key moments.
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DeSantis finally shows up
It took 15 minutes for the putative polling front-runner to get a word in, and DeSantis uses it to go after Trump on the debt and not showing up for the debate tonight. He even brought a prop -- a veto pen that he says he'll use to block "bloated spending" bills as president. But if he only gets off a few words every 15 minutes, this will be a long night for him.
—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
Christie is the first to mention Trump
Christie goes after Republicans and Democrats for adding billions to the D.C., but he also takes a shot at Trump for not showing up to the debate. This is the first mention of the former president who is very likely to defeat all of these Republicans in the GOP primary.
—Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of 538
Is this a primary or general election debate?
While Ramaswamy clearly tried to differentiate himself from Scott on the question of unions, Pence glossed over his primary challengers and shifted directly to the general election, calling for repealing the Green New Deal and criticizing Biden.
— Analysis by Leah Askarinam of 538
According to a September poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, 74 percent of Republicans said they would blame Biden and the Democrats in Congress if the government were to shut down. Just 5 percent said they would blame Republicans in Congress, and 16 percent said they would blame both equally. Five percent didn’t have an opinion or wouldn’t blame either.
—Analysis by 538
Fact-checking Haley’s claim that ‘Congress has only delivered a budget on time four times’
This is accurate. From our colleagues at the Pew Research Center:
“In the nearly five decades that the current system for budgeting and spending tax dollars has been in place, Congress has passed all its required appropriations measures on time only four times: fiscal 1977 (the first full fiscal year under the current system), 1989, 1995 and 1997. And even those last three times, Congress was late in passing the budget blueprint that, in theory at least, precedes the actual spending bills.”
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact