Our panel has an answer, and other thoughts, about the G.O.P. primary.
 | By John Guida Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
And then there were five. |
At the third presidential primary debate in Miami, gone were Mike Pence, who has dropped out, and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. |
Donald Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, skipped again, but Nikki Haley came into this one with some modest movement in early-state polls. As Times Opinion has done for several cycles now, we kept score of the debate, in a manner of speaking. |
And once again, our panel of writers picks Haley as the winner. |
"Her consolidation of voters seeking pre-Trump Republican normalcy and smiling electability should continue," writes Ross Douthat. |
"She certainly beat all the boys," says Gail Collins. "Such as they were." |
Many of the panelists agree that Ron DeSantis had a good debate, but they also share some form of the sentiment that, as Daniel McCarthy, the editor of "Modern Age: A Conservative Review," writes, his stature isn't growing "as these debates continue, with more ideologically clear-cut candidates like Ambassador Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy driving the discussion." |
Hanging over the debate in Miami was a more fundamental question: Is the G.O.P. primary effectively over? |
In a pre-debate discussion with Frank Bruni and Reason magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nate Silver, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, suggested that the roughly 75 percent chance that prediction markets are giving Trump to become the nominee "seems too low" — and added that "if you put all the numbers into a model, it would put the chances at closer to 90 percent than 75." |
Still, Silver said, "If Haley can convince that crowd that she's more viable than DeSantis and more electable than Trump, that could make some difference." We'll see if voters agree with our panelists regarding her performance. |
In an essay this week, my colleague Katherine Miller also reflected on Haley's chances: "There are a hundred little switches that would need to flip from now, in a big mousetrap-style path, toward victory," she wrote. "If Ms. Haley could somehow continue to elevate herself the rest of the way, the race for the G.O.P. nomination would turn brutal — and volatile confrontation with Mr. Trump would be inevitable." |
The debate offered other plotlines, including a series of testy exchanges between Ramaswamy and his fellow candidates. Jamelle Bouie, in the scorecard, asks: Is Ramaswamy "the most singularly insufferable person in national politics?" |
Overall, our panelists do not declare the primary over. But as with the previous debates, no one sees a sequence or moment that suggests the man who skipped the show will come to regret it. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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