The Republicans railed against government excesses - promising, for example, to slash funding for federal programmes - while debating the merits of a federal abortion ban and calling for an increasingly militarised southern border.
The debate was relatively calm without Trump belligerence, though the outsider tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy clashed repeatedly with the former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Other than his increasingly aggressive approach to immigration, Ron DeSantis supposedly Trump's most likely challenger - remained relatively passive.
The debate opened with a focus on the economy, as the Fox News moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum played a clip of the viral conservative folk hit Rich Men North of Richmond, in which the country artist Oliver Anthony describes his economic struggles while lamenting poor people "milkin' welfare". The candidates launched into a brief discussion of the economy - the first and last point on which they appeared to entirely agree.
On the war in Ukraine, the Republicans diverged sharply in their view of the ideal role of US funding for the Ukrainian military. Ramaswamy, who accused supporters of Ukraine of neglecting "people in Maui or the south side of Chicago", drew a sharp rebuke from Christie, who said that "if we don't stand up to this kind of autocratic killing, we will be next", describing in vivid detail Russia's bloody occupation of Ukraine. Pence echoed Christie's position, calling Vladimir Putin a dictator.
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