Republican Debaters' First Dignified Moment In Months

W. James Antle III

Politics, Americas

The Fox Business debate made almost every candidate look professional, even the "kiddie table."

What if they held a circus and a Republican presidential debate broke out? As Fox Business Channel and the Wall Street Journal brought the major GOP contenders together for the fourth time, we got something more like the latter than the former.

Yes, you can argue that the criteria of who was on which stage was a bit arbitrary. But even the undercard debate, heretofore a humiliating event for almost everyone involved except for Carly Fiorina, looked professional.

Half the candidates at the “kiddie table” were sitting governors. All of them were winners of competitive of elections with serious governing experience. As much as we missed Lindsey Graham somehow managing to mix self-deprecating humor with warnings of impending American doom, combining Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee with Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum worked well.

Christie was the biggest name demoted to the undercard and he obviously hopes to be the first since Carly Fiorina to leave it for the main stage. He did well and his focus on Hillary Clinton, rather than squabbling with also-rans, was probably wise. The only question is whether what he was trying to accomplish was just a little too transparent to move his numbers. We’ll see.

Jindal made an impassioned argument for why Republicans should want a principled opponent of big government rather than simply a person with an “R” next to their name. As the author of a book about shrinking government, I appreciate the argument. I’m just not sure his executive experience in Louisiana is sufficient to overcome the fact that Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have consistently appeared in the primetime debate. Huckabee was witty and homespun while Santorum was eloquent and earnest; I doubt that either one hurt or helped himself last night.

On to the main event. Donald Trump is getting more polished. He still shies away from details at times and gets technical details wrong. He made a mistake by continuing to pull Fiorina’s pigtails, accusing her of constantly interrupting. But overall, he’s defending his viewpoints better, appearing more gracious and less gratuitous in his comments about other candidates—and he helped Paul keep an actual foreign policy debate going.