From the Opinion Pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to the Free Expression podcast from the Opinion Pages of the Wall Street Journal.

I'm Jerry Baker, editor-at-large of the journal.

If you're not already a subscriber to this podcast, please do sign up at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever indeed you listen.

This week, who won? Who lost? Who's still standing? Yes, of course, the presidential election

of 2024 got underway in earnest this week with the first primary debate. Eight Republicans

lined up for the Fox News hosted debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One candidate, of course, didn't line up.

Donald Trump skipped the debate in favor of an amiable chat with Tucker Carlson on another platform.

But Trump currently, of course, has a roughly 40 percentage point opinion poll lead, according to national polls, over all the other candidates.

Now, in some ways, perhaps Wednesday's debate could be framed as a race for second

place, or at least a chance for someone to show that they have the character, the campaign,

and the candidacy to give Trump a real run for his money in the Republican nomination race.

So what's the right verdict having watched the debate? Well, I'm joined this week. I'm pleased to say

by a veteran of many, many presidential debate prep sessions and spin rooms and indeed, of course, presidential campaigns. That's former strategist for George W. Bush and my fellow columnist on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, Carl, thank you very much for joining Free Expression. You bet. Thanks for having me. Well, so it was a big night in the 2024 presidential election, the first debate of the primaries. It wasn't quite as big, I suppose, as it could have been, given the notable absentee, and we'll talk about him, of course. But you were there on Wednesday night. We watched you on Fox News, giving your instant analysis, and we've watched you talking about it today, too. But as the dust has settled and you've had a chance to consider the debate, what's your primary takeaway from this first Republican debate? My view is that everybody had a chance to introduce themselves, and most of them did a pretty good job of it. Those of us who pay attention to politics think everybody's paying as much attention as we are. But the vast majority of people who tuned in last night, it was their first chance to sort of

see these people and see them perform. It's not really a debate because you've got eight people on the

stage and the one who spoke the most got 12 minutes out of the time and that was broken up into

five or six different little episodes. But Ronda Santis survived and that's what he needed to do.

He was expected to be on the receiving

end of a lot of arrows, and he had a few, but he survived. Yeah, I want to talk about DeSantis, and we'll cut him through several of the major candidates. But let's, if we may, let's start with the man who's kind of making the most noise. He kind of made the most noise on the night. he didn't have the longest speaking time, as you say, but Vivek Ramoswami, who was very vocal, very articulate, spelled out his case, was I suppose, you know, he has made a lot of impact, some of the early sort of immediate reactions suggested he perhaps made the most impact. And he's running very much as the kind of Trump acolyte, really. I mean, and there he was last night, most forcefully defending Trump, describing as the greatest president of the 21st century.

Admittedly, there's not a lot of competition for that job. And I know you surely, Carl, have a stronger candidate for that title. But that's what he said. What was your view of Ramoswamy? Again, you've seen him a lot more than most other people have. But there he was on the debate stage. He did make quite an impact. What did you think?

I thought glib, fast talking, and provided the worst moment of the evening, the line of,

I'm as the only one on this stage who's not bought and paid for. Really? You're standing next to a guy

...