Takeaways from the first 2024 Republican presidential debate

WASHINGTON — Eight candidates walked onto the first Republican presidential debate stage of the primary season on Wednesday night, but it was the candidate who wasn’t there — former President Donald Trump — who exposed rifts within the party over his current front-runner status.

As Trump prepared to turn himselfin to authorities in Georgia on Thursday on charges that he orchestrated a “criminal enterprise” aimed at overturning the state’s 2020 election results, six of eight candidates said they would support him if he became the party’s nominee, regardless of the charges he is facing in that and three other pending criminal cases.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina raised their hands to indicate they would support Trump if he is the nominee. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie raised his halfway.

“Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct,” Christie said of Trump, drawing some jeers from the crowd. “Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States.”

Trump, who skipped the two-hour debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has denied wrongdoing. 

His rivals spent most of the event fielding questions about the state of the economy, abortion, public safety and the war in Ukraine.

“Other than the 15 minutes when the moderators brought up Trump, if you were just kind of dropped into this debate and weren't told anything about who was missing, it was actually a reasonably conventional conservative debate about the need for smaller government and more freedom and greater border security,” said William Howell, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

Here are three takeaways from the debate:

Torn on Trump

Trump has long held a double-digit lead over the pack of candidates. Some tried to close the gap by taking direct aim at him, while others took a more measured tone as they court his base of supporters.

Christie, Haley and Hutchinson directly criticized Trump in their responses, while Ramaswamy urged the field of candidates to commit to pardoning Trump if he is convicted. 

DeSantis sidestepped questions about the former president’s actions, and Pence sought to praise his work with Trump while also distancing himself from Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Hutchinson called Trump “morally unqualified” to hold the office of president, and Haley argued that Trump could not win the general election.

Pence touted the work of the “Trump-Pence administration” when speaking on policy issues, but as the debate turned to questions about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, he noted his own efforts to oppose Trump’s demand that he stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

“If you look at the full range of views on the stage, there are real divisions,” Howell said.

Ramaswamy emerges as target

DeSantis has steadily ranked second to Trump in most polls this year, but he wasn’t the main focus of attacks from the other candidates.

Instead, Ramaswamy, 38, the youngest candidate on the stage and the only one who has never held office, was a primary target.

He traded barbs with his competitors, calling them "super PAC puppets" and announced he was "the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for."

He was the only candidate to decline providing future support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, saying the U.S. should secure its own borders first.

“You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows," Haley told him.

Christie said he “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” referring to the artificial intelligence program that generates speeches, articles and other pieces of writing.

Ramaswamy repeatedly tussled with Pence, 64, underscoring the generational difference between the baby boomer former vice president and the millennial novice candidate.

“It is not morning in America, we live in a dark moment… sort of cold cultural civil war,” Ramaswamy told Pence, after the former vice president said the country does not “have an identity problem.”

Later, Ramaswamy told Pence: “I do think we need someone of a different generation to move this country forward.”

"Now is not the time for on-the-job training," Pence said at another point.

Hofstra University political science professor Richard Himelfarb said Ramaswamy, who has expressed deep support for Trump, served as a surrogate of sorts for the former president.

“He's the 38-year-old version of Donald Trump. He basically holds all of Trump's views,” Himelfarb said. “The other candidates on the stage could not attack or felt uneasy attacking Trump, so they attacked Ramaswamy, who left himself very vulnerable to all kinds of attacks.”

Haley takes on Trump, Pence

Haley was the first of the candidates to criticize Trump by name, and throughout the debate she took jabs at the former president’s record.

“Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never gonna forgive us for this,” Haley said during an exchange on the state of the economy and the national debt. She also blamed some of her competitors for increasing the debt while they served in Congress.

On the issue of abortion, she accused Pence of misleading voters into thinking a federal ban would be politically possible. Haley noted there are currently not enough votes in the U.S. Senate for such a bill to pass with the necessary 60 votes.

“When you’re talking about a federal ban, be honest with the American people,” Haley said. 

Pence said her position of seeking "consensus" over abortion "is the opposite of leadership."

Haley, who was appointed United Nations ambassador by Trump and previously served as governor of South Carolina, also questioned Trump's electability in 2024.

“We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America,” Haley said. “We can't win a general election that way.”

Himelfarb said he was expecting DeSantis, the top-polling Republican on the stage, to say the same.

“I kept waiting for Gov. DeSantis to make this argument. and he just constantly continued to tiptoe around that,” Himelfarb said.

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.