The reason I put "debate" in quotation marks is because there is very little disagreement among the Republican contenders: Pataki accepts that abortion is legal, Rand Paul does not want to build up the military the way the other candidates do, and that is about it for dissent from the party line: tax less, spend less (except for the military, where more needs to be spent), bomb the hell out of those who we think are out to get us. The candidates also don't like Hillary Clinton, who Bobby Jindal says "would take us down the road to socialism" (he didn't need to say he thought that would be a bad thing; he has been complaining about the left and socialists continuously). Ted Cruz at one point said that listening to the Democratic debate was like listening to a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, though I wonder how much of the audience understood that remark.
Each candidate tried to emphasize either their experience in government ("I balanced the budget") or outside it ("I made difficult decisions"), while trying to portray themselves as tougher than any of the other candidates. Lindsey Graham did the most saber-rattling and each candidate had some voodoo economic scheme, most of which relied on dubious and disproven supply-side ideas. Everyone praised the working class, often giving their own personal histories of deprivation, but once again there was nobody to defend -- or even mention -- unions, collective bargaining being one of the most successful ways to raise wages.
Ted Cruz complained that the moderators would not let them discuss the issues. What issues? Everyone wants to be rid of Obamacare, for instance, but no one had any suggestions about how to make sure that the people who need healthcare get it. My favorite comment in the debate was from the self-styled populist Rick Santorum, who said that Obamacare was designed to drive small insurance companies out of business, demonizing large insurance companies and then insisting that that proved we need single-payer healthcare! Would that it were so. I think we started on the road to a single-payer system with Medicare and we will get there eventually, long after every other country has it.
With all the militarism in this debate I am only slightly surprised that none of the candidates suggested reinstituting the draft. That they are correctly afraid of the risk of doing this is, to me, an indication that most voters are not as fond of wars as the candidates, especially younger voters who would have to do the fighting.
The strangest question in the debate was asked of all the participants: do you think the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday? I did not understand that question at all, unless it was meant to suggest that everyone is hung over that day, which doesn't seem like a reason to have a holiday.
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