The debate definitely created some action in the GOP field for the 2024 presidential election.
There was not enough movement to scare Trump, but it does mean that we may have a few extra bodies in the next debate.
One of them will be Nikki Haley, who saw a nice surge after what I called the winning performance of the night, reported Axios.
The Takedown
Haley is taking heat from MAGA world, as most believed that she was a Trump ally in this race, and she still may be.
However, Trump likes Ramaswamy, and that seemed to be who Haley had set her mind on taking down.
She had about three or four minutes of pure venom being spit at Ramaswamy in a portion of the debate that I believe handed her the overall win for the night.
The criticism that I saw online pegged her as someone who would put Israel before America, but that is ludicrous.
While she is a major supporter of Israel (and she should be), her loyalties clearly lie with the United States. Everything else is just noise.
People point to the fact that was her most passionate argument of the night, but that was where she found her opportunity during the debate, so of course she was all fired up.
DeSantis did well, but not great, so the bounce he had hoped to get was only minimal, which was disappointing for his camp. I think this was, in part, because nobody really attacked DeSantis, and he stayed out of the way of all the side arguments.
In the next debate, I think he will have a bigger presence (he has to or his campaign will be dead).
One of the biggest jumps after the fact, however, was Haley, who is clearly getting some attention from voters, which I love.
I tagged Haley as one of two conservative women I could see as being the first female president after the 2016 election, along with Governor Kirsti Noem of South Dakota.
In most polls, Haley is now solidly in third place and she will easily qualify for the next debate.
On the bubble right now are Pence, at 4.4 percent, Christie, at 3.6 percent, and Scott, at 3.0 percent. The rest of the field is out of the race.
Qualifiers get bumped to 50,000 donors and three percent in poling, so we could have anywhere from three to as many as six people at the next debate, but I am honestly hoping for the smaller field to get this narrowed down before the third debate, where Trump may decide to show up.
