TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (NewsNation) — In the wake of the fourth GOP presidential debate, there’s one question remaining: Who took the crown?
Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie took the debate stage Wednesday night in Tuscaloosa — just six weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
However, political experts across all parties had different conclusions about who actually came out on top from the debate.
Some believe that the Florida governor won by a landslide with his ability to reconnect with voters, while others said the former governor of South Carolina took the crown for holding her composure amid constant attacks from rivals.
Even though former President Donald Trump did not attend the showdown, some experts claimed he was the real winner to come out of Wednesday night’s debate.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., was among those who told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that Trump was the clear winner.
“I think probably the winner tonight, of course, is Donald Trump,” Burchett told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, later adding, “Let’s put the best player in, coach.”
As the four GOP contenders at the NewsNation debate mostly attacked each other, Trump attended a closed-door fundraiser in Florida.
The Tennessee congressman said Trump and President Joe Biden will likely end up facing off in the general election — and he didn’t see a performance by any other challengers at the debate that swayed his opinion.
Haley, DeSantis, Christie and Ramaswamy all trail Trump in national polling. The former president maintains a nearly 50-point lead over DeSantis, his closest rival.
When it comes to the four candidates who hashed it out on stage, author and journalist Bill O’Reilly said there’s one clear winner: DeSantis.
“The reason is that DeSantis tapped into the emotion that Republican voters are feeling when he went after the border and said, ‘I would use violence against these cartel members,’” O’Reilly said on the post-debate analysis show. “The border is the most emotional issue for Republicans. The economy is second.”
DeSantis has made messaging about the southern U.S. border a central component of the campaign and has raised eyebrows for endorsing “deadly force” against migrants suspected of drug trafficking.
He’s also advocated for military force to target Mexican cartel operations, a position that’s grown popular within the Republican Party.
Political strategist and commentator Rina Shah also believes DeSantis came out the winner. She said he nailed his answers and avoided the shakiness and awkwardness he had the past three debates.
Body language expert Susan Constantine concurred with this analysis, saying he was able to express emotion that connected with voters like he hadn’t been successful at previously.
Even voters told NewsNation that they noticed a huge difference in DeSantis’ disposition.
“I think after the Newsom debate, it really keyed him up to realize that maybe being a little more held back isn’t as good and being more powerful is really effective. People are getting more involved in what he is saying, listening to the crowd and listening to them clap for him has been great,” DeSantis supporter Danielle Priebe said.
Priebe said DeSantis came out with his fists swinging.
Coming in a close second, experts were torn over Haley’s performance. It was known going into the debate that she would be the target of rival attacks given her success in recent polls, but some experts feared she didn’t do enough to stand out.
Constantine claimed Haley as the winner of the debate due to her ability to stay cool, calm and collected as she took verbal assaults from her opponents.
“Nikki Haley stayed composed throughout. She wasn’t going to get involved in the drama,” Constantine said. “She looked straight ahead, and I think that she did that because she didn’t want to get emotionally involved.”
Constantine continued, “She stayed in her lane.”
O’Reilly said Haley came off as an “establishment figure.”
“She’s distant. She’s not a culture warrior,” O’Reilly said. “She acquits herself well, very intelligent, could run the country, certainly could beat Joe Biden. No doubt in my mind that if it were Nikki Haley against Joe Biden, Haley would win probably in a landslide.”
But before she gets to a general election, Haley would need to secure her party’s nomination.
“For Republican voters, she doesn’t have the verve, the emotion, to right the wrongs, which is Trump’s trait. He’s the warrior, he’s going to clean it up,” O’Reilly said.
Plus, some experts like Dr. Lillian Glass suggested Haley’s disposition and lack of response to attacks actually emitted fear instead of strength. Some experts were expecting more from the former South Carolina governor after she dominated in the three previous debates.
While Christie wasn’t chosen as a clear winner by experts, he was given respect by some for holding his own on stage. Body language experts even said he commanded it with his confidence and authority. The former governor also earned brownie points among voters after jumping in to defend Haley after Ramaswamy hit her with personal attacks about her basic intelligence.
However, there were still some critics of Christie, saying he doesn’t have any reason to continue in the race, given his low popularity and his anti-Trump campaign.
“Christie and Ramaswamy should not have been in the debate,” O’Reilly argued. “They have no chance, they’re not gonna surge, they took up airtime.”
One thing all experts agreed on, however, is that there was a clear loser: Ramaswamy.
Guy Smith, President Joe Biden surrogate and former special adviser to President Bill Clinton, is among a group of political experts who don’t even view Ramaswamy as a legitimate candidate.
While he’s uncertain who won the debate, NewsNation political contributor Mick Mulvaney also suggested that the biotech entrepreneur placed last.
“I don’t know if there was a winner, but if there was a loser, it was Vivek Ramaswamy,” he said.
Mulvaney added that Ramaswamy wasn’t a “serious candidate.”
“He was in this to try it. He was a child. He was attacking people like you would in a high school debate class,” he said. “He doesn’t understand how the government works, and I think he saw folks start to sort of ignore him towards the end.”
Journalist Geraldo Rivera noted that Ramaswamy was “absolutely obnoxious” in the first hour of the debate but redeemed himself in the second hour.
