The Republican debate was a spectacle of sadism and self-regarding piousness | Moira Donegan

The debate was the party in miniature: vexed, divided, driven by their base to unpopular extremes, glorying in fantasies of revenge and social purification

Barring some dramatic reversal, none of the people on the Republican primary debate stage on Wednesday night are going to be president in 2025. The eight candidates who made their confused cases to the Republican primary electorate are all flailing in the race, trailing the absent frontrunner, Donald Trump, and infighting among themselves for who gets to lose to him. When Bret Baier, one of the two moderators, told the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, that Trump is beating you by 30, 40 points" in recent polls, the live studio audience behind him erupted into cheers. Onstage, DeSantis kept a rigid smile.

Trump skipped the debate, declining to subject himself to an exercise that would suggest he was not already the party's anointed leader. He is scheduled to surrender to authorities in Fulton county, Georgia, on Thursday, an event that will generate a mugshot: almost certainly, that image will proliferate across Fox News broadcasts and Facebook newsfeeds as soon as it is released, eclipsing the debate in the minds of Republican voters.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist