Who won the Republican debate? Our panel reacts

Donald Trump may not have been on the stage, but he was the winner of the debate

It's been ages since the Republican party has had a national debate this bland. But as easily forgotten as this debate will be in a matter of weeks, if not days, it's notable as perhaps the first glimpse we've had in years of what Republican politics might have looked like in an alternate reality where Trump never happened. Much of the top half of the debate seemed to proceed uninterrupted from the policy discourse of 2012, with most of the candidates trading lines about the profligate spending of the Democratic administration. Inflation was part of the complaint, but there's evidently a real itch, beyond that, to return to the rhetoric of plain old fiscal unsustainability and generational debt.

Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist

Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness

Ben Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign

Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992