GOP Presidential Debate: Winner and Losers of Republican ‘futile’ exercise

Republican Debate: The results of the third Republican debate were unclear as the battle of minds and wits in which five GOP Presidential hopefuls engaged saw many media publications giving their verdict on who was the winner, while a large majority of the Republican primary voters were not watching the debate.

The third Republican debate featured five candidates who qualified and participated in the event. The candidates were:

1. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
2. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
3. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy
4. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott
5. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

New York Post saw former Trump-era US envoy to UN Nikki Haley as the winner, calling firebrand Vivek Ramaswamy ‘stupid’.

New York Times in its Opinion commentary for the third Republican presidential debate, held in Miami, also gave Nikki Haley a win, with Ron DeSantis trailing behind her at the second position. Ramaswamy again finished last, according to NYT’s Opinion.

However, there was a different playground where the results of the GOP debate were upside down – Social Media, especially X, formerly known as Twitter, where many opinion polls revealed a totally different story than the mainstream media – whether right or left-leaning – narrative.

The third Republican debate featured discussions on various key issues, including foreign policy, the Israel-Hamas war, Ukraine, China, and abortion. Interestingly, former President Donald Trump, who is the dominant front-runner in the primary, was again absent from the debate.

Trump, instead, chose to hold a rally not so far from the debate venue and additionally he was not one of the main topic of the debate as the former President is facing multiple lawsuit in various states.

Here are some of the main points discussed during the third GOP debate:

• Foreign policy, particularly the war between Israel and Hamas, was a major theme in the debate.
• The candidates also addressed Ukraine, with some expressing support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia while cautioning about the United States’ “national interest” there. However, Ramaswamy was vocal about his opposition to the US funding Ukraine.
• China was another significant topic of discussion.
• The debate also touched on domestic issues, such as abortion rights.
• There were moments of contention among the candidates, with exchanges containing the most heat between certain candidates, including Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley over TikTok issue.

With mainstream media delivering its verdict in favor of Nikki Haley, it was time for the results on X, an influential social media platform to gaze what common masses, though both US and foreigners, thought about the debate.

An X poll run by conservative commentator, author and entepreneur Patrick Bet-David, a prominent X user with over 700,000 followers, saw Ramaswamy emerging as the winner of the third GOP debate with a huge margin.

83 per cent of over 151,000 users that voted in the PBD poll favored Ramaswamy, while only 10 per cent and 4 per cent chose Desantis and Haley, respectively.

However, it is pertinent to note that the data from the polls and verdicts discussed above is irrelevant as the only guy that is likely to face President Biden in the upcoming polls has already been decided by the voters.

According to polls, if supporters of the five candidates onstage were all combined, they’d make up 33 percent of the national Republican electorate.

Trump, in comparison, has the support of 56 percent of Republicans, meaning he has a massive lead over, well, everyone else put together.

So, in the end, it doesn’t matter who’s going to win the debates if Trump continues to maintain his lead, which he is going to if everything goes right for him, in the run-up to the next year’s election.