The Fox News moderators made little effort to enforce the rules. Since all of the candidates were ignoring them, and the heated exchanges were revealing in their way, I thought that was OK.
Whether DeSantis was successful or not depends on your perspective. If his objective was to look like a logical successor to Trump, he failed miserably; he was a weird combination of overly aggressive and evasive. He didn’t in any way command the stage in the way Trump does, and he can’t really appeal to the reactionary base with Ramaswamy in the room. On the other hand, he didn’t take many shots, either, so if simply avoiding trouble was the goal, he was a winner.
Ramaswamy was definitely the group lightning rod. While he was consistently Trumpier-than-thou, my guess is that the elderly white base will hate him; he sounds like an extremely reactionary version of the Secretary of Transportation on way too much Red Bull. I think he will go down in the polls after the debate.
Tim Scott was a total zero. He doesn’t have the force necessary to win the nomination–not that I ever thought he did.
Mike Pence was surprisingly effective. He may turn out to be the most interesting Trump foil at future debates, if Trump shows up for any of them, which is hardly a given.
Chris Christie did his thing, but he didn’t really stand out. His attacks on Ramaswamy were more memorable than his attacks on Trump.
Nikki Haley, to me, was the most rational and persuasive of the candidates. But I’m not a Republican, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?