The major parties in the United States often pride themselves on being “big tent,” or inclusive to many different types of views. However, in the modern, hyper-polarized political climate, there’s less and less room for anyone except the clowns. The first two “Grand Old Party” — or GOP — debates provide us a chance to separate the jesters from the more serious candidates without the imposing presence of the clown king, party frontrunner and former president Donald J. Trump. The Republican candidates who participated have the combined support of around 37% in their party. 
Everyone from Not a Cave, U.S. probably knows someone who supports one of these conservative candidates, and by extension, their ideas. These ideas give insight into what motivates people, how they view the world and whether or not that worldview is generally attractive. In order to provide a window into the issues people care about and how these candidates respond to said issues, I have interviewed several students and connected their largest concerns to the candidates’ debate performances.

Role of Faith
It’s impossible to judge the impact of anything without a framework to evaluate it by. For many candidates, that framework is faith. Senator Tim Scott made it clear that this is the lens through which he views the world. Scott quoted prominently from Paul of Tarsus’s letter to the Ephesians, a Christian scripture, in the first debate. His platform, a mix of hard-right new-age conservatism — displayed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — and overt Evangelicalism — displayed by former Vice President Mike Pence — attempts to bridge all segments of his party. He might have an easier time building a bridge across the Atlantic. Speaking of the overt Evangelical appeal of Pence, that’s quite literally the former VP’s whole brand. Like Scott, he cited the Bible during his first debate. Personally, I’d be much more open to supporting Pence if he’d stuck to the principles of his faith more often instead of bowing to the whims of the hedonistic former President Trump. 
Pence and Scott weren’t the only ones to reference faith as a motivating factor. Entrepreneur Vivek “Ohio Man” Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, also highlighted his commitment to governing on faith-based principles, which has become a theme for him on the campaign trail. Candidates’ policies generally kept the two entities of religion and state together. One policy advocated for by both Pence and Ramaswamy during the first debate was school choice, the act of using public money for families’ private school fees. If the people vote to have faith impact governance, then faith should impact governance; however, some disagree. 
“[A lack of] separation of church and state [bothers me],” junior Judy Huang said. “The most recent law of letting schools send kids to private [schools made me] really upset.” 
The government shouldn’t be paying private school tuition, which is often exorbitant. I’ve heard of bad uses of public money before, but sending kids to schools like St. Louis University High School? You’d be better off taking a lighter to Ben Franklin’s green, cottony face.

Climate change
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our country today, with the UN Secretary-General calling for American independence from fossil fuels by 2030. It makes sense, then, that this was the most common problem listed by the students I interviewed.
“I’m already starting to feel the effects of climate change,” Huang said. “It’s just been getting a little bit worse.” 
Considering that Earthlings just experienced the hottest summer on record, climate change really has been getting worse. The extreme weather has one student experiencing thoughts of death, much like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
“I don’t want to die,” junior Faryal Khurshid said.
The responses from GOP candidates, however, won’t reassure the 54% of Americans who feel threatened by global warming. Ramaswamy flat-out denied the threat posed by human-caused climate change, claiming that liberal climate change policy is a “hoax.” He’s wrong; climate change is real. Meanwhile, DeSantis shut down a hand-raising vote over whether the candidates believed that humans caused climate change, which is essentially the equivalent of telling voters “My views here are whatever yours are.” Somehow, no one insisted on raising a hand, a startling amount of cowardice considering that the people the candidates were hiding from were… literally people who didn’t believe in climate change. Nobody else is scared of white dudes who live in basements. 
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley at least confirmed that climate change exists, which is more than other candidates were willing to say. However, she wouldn’t lay blame on the U.S., pledging to negotiate with China and India to lower their emissions instead. Haley is a notorious flip-flopper, which perversely gives me hope that she would be more open to climate change legislation once past the primary.

Charisma
It’s frustrating. You see someone like Ramaswamy, who’s a bonafide conspiracy theorist, having hinted that the government may have been behind Sept. 11 and Jan. 6, poll ahead of real, legitimate candidates, and why? Because he shows up every single time with the same Crest-ad smile and youthful energy. 
“[A candidate’s charisma should] keep them in office long enough to get things done,” Cook said. 
Getting elected often is dependent on charisma, but when a candidate like Ramaswamy relies on charisma to mask a total unfitness for office, it becomes dangerous.
“If you are not able to articulate your points properly, in a very clear, concise manner, then no one’s [going to] vote for you, because no one understands what you’re trying to say,” Huang said.
I wish more people cared about clear articulation, but I fear that Americans don’t want their candidates to be cool and collected. That calm explanation looks wildly different from the “charisma” of candidates like former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Ramaswamy. Those two traded barbs, with Christie comparing Ramaswamy to Chat-GPT and Ramaswamy saying that the former governor’s campaign was “based on vengeance and grievance.” Each is right about the other: they really are an angry old white man and a polished young right-winger with more conspiracy theories than the famously fallible AI chatbot. The candidates in these debates seemed desperate to lift themselves up by pushing each other down. However, despite their aggressive energy, Ramaswamy and Christie lack any semblance of a “clear, concise manner.” They clearly overthought their strategies before their second debates, as their attempts to improve their delivery merely upped their awkwardness. Like a duck from the arm of Zach Wilson, Christie’s “Donald Duck” nickname for Trump wobbled and landed awkwardly. Ramaswamy tried to be nicer, but found out quickly that his brash behavior in the first debate had burned those bridges. “Vivek the Fake” once again came off as wholly inauthentic.
Articulation was a big loser of the debates. None of the candidates seemed to really know who they were except for Asa Hutchinson, and, well, “charismatic Hutchinson” is such an oxymoron that the Arkansas governor didn’t even qualify for the second debate.

LGBTQ+ and Women’s Rights
These issues take us right into the heart of the culture war, where abominations like this DeSantis ad are almost par for the course. In fact, they might be common enough that people get mad at me for calling that ad an abomination. People like DeSantis promote the idea that the nation is actually in the middle of a political war for the future of the country. This enables people to justify ruthlessness and disregard for rights as “war tactics.”
“[I care about] LGBT+ rights and women’s rights because I’ve grown up around those kinds of [people] since I was a little girl,” senior Viv D’Angelo said. “[I wouldn’t vote for anyone who contributes to] a lot of the bigotry that’s been going on,” D’Angelo said.
Unfortunately, the rights of citizens still have to be political issues because politicians don’t always care to protect said rights. DeSantis’s quote about wanting “education, not indoctrination,” almost certainly has no correlation with any ongoing bigotry. It’s not as if suggesting that a certain segment of the population is seeking to indoctrinate children could possibly be bigoted. Obviously. 
Haley stated a desire to prevent those she terms “biological males” from participating in women’s athletics. This is understood by some as a transgender rights issue, though that interpretation may raise legal issues for women’s sports in general. 
Abortion, also a hot topic, was discussed in the Aug. 21 debate. The universally pro-life Republican candidates in this debate argued more over whether they would institute federal abortion bans than whether they wanted to make abortion legal for everyone. Haley was the most willing to compromise; not in her desire to limit abortion, but instead by admitting the obvious that a federal abortion ban would be politically impossible. This is such an obvious fact, and the agreement between candidates on all other facets of abortion is so complete, that it’s a shame the topic got as much airtime as it did.

Support for Donald Trump
What makes a candidate completely untenable? This question has always been an important one at the ballot box, and with former POTUS and 2024 candidate President Trump receiving a mugshot, it’s more consequential than ever.
“If [a presidential candidate] got indicted, I probably wouldn’t like them or want to vote for them, ever,” Junior Will Mayer said.
The Aug. 21 debate featured a hand-raising poll asking candidates if they would support former President Donald Trump, were he indicted. The only candidates who pledged not to support an indicted criminal were Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson. The other candidates raised their hands. In the second debate, Ramaswamy called Trump “an excellent president,” meaning that Trump’s insurrection attempt didn’t disqualify the former POTUS from being regarded as a great leader in Ramaswamy’s eyes. Setting a precedent of criminal presidents could be disastrous for the future of America, so this is really, really concerning.

Conclusion
The first two GOP presidential debates of 2023 left me both disappointed and hopeful. The aggressive sameness of candidates like Scott and DeSantis was disheartening. It’s important to have diverse perspectives in politics, so watching those two parrot each other like an annoying kid who repeats whatever you say was painful. Ramaswamy’s attempts to outrace them to the right wing weren’t any more inspiring. 
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Christie reached way too hard for the one-liners, but he was willing to disagree with other candidates. Hutchinson stood up for what he believed in even when no one else would, and he was willing to deal with the consequences when he didn’t qualify for the second debate. Haley was (relatively) reasonable and engaging. These debates were a much-needed reminder that the true winners in any debate are always the ones who think for themselves.