Opinion: The biggest losers of the GOP presidential debate

CNN
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CNN Opinion asked political contributors to weigh in on the second Republican presidential debate of the 2024 season. The views expressed in these commentaries are their own.

Human civilization has given us a few great unanswerable questions, such as “What is the meaning of life?” and “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” To these, we must now add “Why are Republicans so bad at telling jokes?”

From former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s terrible pun targeting the absent frontrunner (“You’re ducking these things … You keep doing that and no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck”) to former Vice President Mike Pence’s faux-folksy attempt at a wink-wink-nudge-nudge gag about his wife (“I have been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years”), the candidates showed a remarkable inability to deliver zingers at a debate held in the memorial library of a Republican president who was a master of them. Facing off against Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in 1984, Ronald Reagan famously said: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Perhaps it’s because so many of the lines on Wednesday night were so clearly pre-rehearsed, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s confusing avalanche of alliteration in support of his energy policy (“We are going to choose Midland over Moscow. We’re going to choose the Marcellus over the Mullahs, and we’re going to choose Bakken over Beijing”).

Perhaps it’s because the candidates had such awkward demeanors and deliveries — with Pence in particular seeming more blankly AI-generated than usual, to the point where I began referring to him in my notes as “ChatGOP.”

But ultimately, the funniest moments on stage were all unintentional, like the weirdly chaotic shouting match that ensued between Nikki Haley and Tim Scott over the cost of the curtains in her UN Ambassador’s residence. High-lowlight: Haley muscling up to the man she appointed to the Senate and saying, “Bring it, Tim!”

For what it’s worth, Haley also had the one laugh line that genuinely landed in tonight’s Republican debate, when she eyerolled at Vivek Ramaswamy and sighed, “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” Unfortunately for her, consensus among viewers on social media was that the crack applied to the entire gaggle of back-benchers and wannabes on stage — Haley included.

Jeff Yang is a research director for the Institute for the Future and the head of its Digital Intelligence Lab.

Ronald Reagan won the debate. Republicans didn’t deliver enough moral leadership to compete with him.

The evening began inspiringly enough, with the debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and opening with a reference to America as “a shining city on a hill” – a favorite phrase of Reagan’s and an allusion to scripture. But if America remains that city on a hill – in other words, a beacon of moral leadership – you’d be forgiven for missing the message.

To hear it from the debate stage, the country is divided, the economy is broken, education is failing, and America can’t figure out how to secure its southern border, stop school shootings, solve soaring healthcare costs or stave off a government shutdown.

But no one offered a vision for how to unite Americans and solve big problems. No one except for perhaps Reagan, who was referenced and quoted throughout Wednesday’s debate, and whose legacy seemed to tower over the Republicans on stage, making them seem small by comparison.

With that said, there were a few brief moments of hope for Republicans yearning for a leader of Reagan’s stature to emerge.

Perhaps the strongest came from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott in response to a…