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 tries to cut through interruptions
DeSantis is trying a bit there to be the adult in the room, which was effective for him last debate when he derailed a question about climate change, but isn't as effective this time around.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 Contributor
Ramaswamy raises ending birthright citizenship
Ramaswamy brings up one of his key stump speech issues, ending "birthright" citizenship for people who are born on American soil. It's one of the ideas Trump championed in his campaign and earlier presidency — a bit of showing his hand here as he tacks to be the default Trump replacement in the case that he ends up dropping out of the race.
— Analysis by G. Elliott Morris of 538
Republican primary voters are further to the right on immigration
Republican primary voters are further to the right on many immigration issues than the general electorate. They support building a border wall, increasing border patrols, and defunding sanctuary cities. In 2020, the last presidential election year, 62 percent opposed a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrations. Ending birthright citizenship, as Ramaswamy says he wants to do, is even more extreme. Candidates tonight are trying to woo those voters tonight with their stances on immigration, but they risk boxing themselves into unpopular opinions should they make it to the general election.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538
DeSantis on China
DeSantis gets a question on China and says he wants a totally new approach to that country. He says that he wants to ban the Chinese Communist Party from buying land anywhere in America, and also says he doesn't want them in our universities. It wasn't clear if he was talking about all Chinese students, or just the Confucius Institutes he mentioned right after.
—Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor
Final thoughts: More of the same, with little extra grandstanding
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