“That’s the white elephant in the room,” said Bret Breier this Wednesday, one of the two moderators first discussion among Republican candidatessa primaries for the 2024 United States presidential election, referring to absence of Donald Trump.

And the former president, who dominated the race for the nomination according to opinion polls, decided not to participate in the event, which took place at the Fiserv Forum pavilion in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

We tell you who shone, who went unnoticed, and for whom it wasn’t the best night of their career.

First time Vivek Ramaswamy, who have never run for public office before and he didn’t even vote in the presidential election between 2004 and 2020, he only dominated the first debate of the Republican primary.

With a big smile and nimble tongue, he sometimes seems like the only candidate on the stage having fun.

No one expected that he would be one of the front-runners to be named the Republican presidential nominee. What’s more, they will place him right next to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who takes center stage, behind the absent Donald Trump, who is the person most likely to vote in the election.

But he persisted, fending off former Vice President Mike Pence’s attacks on his youth and inexperience and clashing with Trump’s former United Nations ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley over his calls to cut US military aid to Ukraine.

also out to defend Trump when, as expected, another candidate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, harshly criticized the former president and called for “stop normalizing the unorthodox attitude of the US presidency.”

Ramaswamy said that, with his intervention, Christie auditioned for the left-wing news channel MSNBC, while Haley, with her stance on continuing to support Ukraine militarily, was seeking a position on the defense contractor’s board.

“I’m the only person on stage who hasn’t been paid or sold out”he snapped as the debate turned to climate change, angering his rivals.

Ramaswamy repeatedly presented himself as an outsider to a group of career politicians. “I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman”, he said at the beginning and throughout the debate he emphasized that he belongs to another generation.

For this reason, they have nicknamed it “Trump a thousand years”.

Much of his stance – calling for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia, using military force to secure its southern border, and banning American companies from doing business with China – fell outside the public eye, even of Republicans alike.

But as Trump pointed out in 2016, even the most outlandish and impractical proposals often turn heads.

He may not have enough political clout to challenge Trump for the Trump nomination, and he may not want to do it either, but his participation in Wednesday’s debate made it clear that he will be the presidential candidate. a factor to consider in the career months that lie ahead.

Mike Pence, a veteran politician who has been a member of the DPR, Governor, and Vice Presidentthere are still strings left.

Hated by Trump supporters and under the stares of disbelief from the former president’s critics, his presidential campaign has faltered greatly.

But his experience on stage worked in his favor on Wednesday night.

He switched to attacking mode from the start, at his first opportunity to comment, pointing out Ramaswamy’s inexperience and said: “This is not the time to be a trainee.”.

He made a passionate and religiously based call to limit abortion nationwide.

That argument may not work ahead of next year’s election.

But now it may be helping him leverage the votes of evangelical Republicans who can tip the balance in states like Iowa and South Carolina, which have a large influence on who will become the party’s nominee.

In the second part of the debate, as the candidates discussed Trump and the allegations against him, it was Pence who made the decision.

“When the President asked me to put him above the Constitution, I put the Constitution first, and I always will“, said.

Several of his competitors praised him for the decision, admitting that he did the right thing by refusing to overturn the 2020 election results at Trump’s behest.

His campaign continues to face fundamental challenges, but at least Wednesday night showed why many conservative Republicans once considered him for president.

The former US ambassador to the UN tends to surprise those who underestimate him.

He has never lost a battle for office, even against the more established Republican candidate for governor of South Carolina.

This Wednesday night stands out the first to criticize not only Trump, but the Republican Party as a whole.

“Republicans are doing this to you too,” he said, speaking of the size of the US budget deficit. “They have to stop spending, stop borrowing.”

As the debate turned to Trump, Haley called the former president “the most underappreciated politician in the United States” and warned that Republicans would suffer for it at the next general election.

He also showed fighting spirit.

He argued bitterly with Ramaswamy when Ramaswamy declared that, if he became president, he would no longer support Ukraine militarily.

And he clashed with Pence when the issue at stake was abortion, and confirmed that the former vice president’s call to ban abortion nationwide was unrealistic and politically detrimental.

Even if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination this time around, his appearance in the debate could position the 51-year-old well for future presidential elections, especially in election years not dominated by former presidential hopefuls.

Tim Scott and Chris Christie

Former Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christiedid exactly what many people expected it to do.

He criticized Trump, shot several arrows at Ramaswamy and was generally aggressive.

For those two interventions he was booed, just as he was for the presentation.

His cleverest phrase is probably “we are fed up of new politicians that sound like ChatGPT”which he released in connection with Ramaswamy.

However, that did not help him to win over the audience who followed the debate live.

About Tim Scott, The only black senator in the Republican Party, his good manners kept him afloat in between the hottest moments of the debate.

This won’t help him win over voters, but it can increase his credibility if he wants to be whoever Trump chooses as vice president.

At the start of the year, it seemed that the Republican presidential nomination would be a contest between two men: Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

Since then, the governor of Florida he was losing in the polls and his rivals had closed the gap.

And if they haven’t already, they probably will after some debate.

It wasn’t a bad performance from DeSantis. He has his moments, especially when he discusses his military service record and calls for more aggressive government policies to deal with the opioid crisis.

However, he remained on the sidelines at all key moments of the debate.

Ramaswamy beats him several times.

Other candidates, such as Pence and Haley, have sidelined him on issues such as abortion or US military aid to Ukraine.

It even seemed unsteady when the discussion turned to the issue of the legal process against Trump.

It doesn’t have the performance it needs. The man seen as the future of the Republican Party is not a leading candidate in the debate.

Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is the latest candidate to qualify for the Milwaukee debate.

Meanwhile, North Dakota Governor Doug Bergum fueled the debate with a trick: offering enough people a $20 gift card if they donated $1 to his campaign.

both candidates they desperately need to prove they deserve to be there, onstage.

But Hutchinson’s criticism of Trump pales in comparison to Christie’s more aggressive criticism.

And small-state conservatism in Burgum has never stood out.

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