Fistakuffs abound as non-Trump Republicans fight each other in the first Republican debate,

and we grade all the participants.

And Trump tries to counter program that debate with Tucker Carlson.

I'm Ben Spiro. This is The Bench Bureau Show.

Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Do you like your web history being seen and sold to advertisers?

No, me neither. Get ExpressVPN right now at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. Whenever there's a big debate, the big question that people have is who won and who lost. But to understand who won and who lost, you first have to discuss what the metrics are for winning and losing, because you can win a debate and it can mean very little, or you can lose a debate and it can end your campaign. So the question for each of the candidates on the stage in last night's first Republican debate was what is the goal. In order to understand what the goal was for each candidate, and then we can grade them in terms of how they achieved their goals. We can also grade them in terms of what we personally thought of them in terms of truth, honesty, policy. In order to grade them on that basis, we first have to kind of assess the

state of the race going into the debate. And to understand where the race was going into the

debate, you first have to understand that the Republican Party is not actually a cohesive

thing. The conservative movement at this point is not a cohesive movement. There's an anti-left

umbrella. Under the anti-left umbrella, there are several groups inside the Republican Party.

I've seen people divide these groups six ways. If you're Nate Cohen of the New York Times. I've seen them divided a couple of ways.

they're not divided, however, into two groups.

One of the core assumptions going into the Republican primaries by a lot of politicos is that there are basically two groups, the pro-Trumps and the anti-Trumps.

Maybe three, the pro-Trumps, the anti-Trumps, and the lukewarm Trumps.

That's not really accurate. In reality, in this Republican primary, I believe that there are four lanes right now. There are four lanes. And the question is, can you occupy multiple of those lanes and be the top person at multiple of those lanes? You're going to have to do that in order to challenge President Trump, who's running away with the primaries right now by 40 points nationally, and he's winning, yes, still in Iowa. He's winning in New Hampshire and every other state. So in order to understand where the race stood and what people were trying to accomplish on the stage last night, we first have to look at where people stand in the race right now. So I put together this chart to sort of explain the various lanes and where the

candidates stood before last night's debate. So there are basically four lanes in this Republican

primary. Lane number one are the people who absolutely love President Trump, the Trumpers.

And it's like 35% of the Republican Party.

They love him.

It's right or die.

He's their guy.

You got 25% of the GOP.

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