Second presidential debate, again without Donald Trump, was an echo of the first as candidates jockeyed to be the chief alternative to the frontrunner.
The second Republican presidential debate was sometimes an echo of the first — chaotic and filled with crosstalk, with the moderators struggling to take control. But the targets of attacks were different. They went after one another, but chose more to criticize President Biden, politicians in Washington and, occasionally, former president Donald Trump.
Over the course of the two-hour session at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Republican candidates attacked Biden on the economy and inflation, on immigration and the flow of undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, and almost every other issue that the moderators from Fox Business and Univision threw at them.
“The people in Washington are shutting down the American Dream with their reckless behavior,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “And where’s Joe Biden? He’s completely missing in action from leadership. And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump should be on the stage to defend his record.”
With Trump dominating the Republican race, the goal for all the other candidates now is playing for second, to position themselves in the eyes of voters as the alternative to the front-runner and to convince Republican primary voters that they could best lead the party to victory in the 2024 general election.
Midcourse corrections from the first encounter last month were apparent as the debate unfolded Wednesday night.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who presented himself as a man with all the answers in the first debate, tried to humble himself in the second one, saying that he may come off as a young man in a hurry, but that he knows he doesn’t have all the answers.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was a bystander through much of the first debate, was more assertive from the opening bell and even leveled the first attack on Ramaswamy. He hit Ramaswamy for having said in the last debate that the other candidates were all bought and paid for by bringing up the entrepreneur’s business ties to China. And he took punchy shots at Biden, too.
“Joe Biden should not be on the picket line,” Scott said, referring to the president’s visit to Michigan on Tuesday to appear with striking autoworkers. “He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border.
