The Republican Party recently held its first debate for aspiring GOP presidential candidates. The debate featured a wide variety of accomplished Republicans, including a former vice president, a U.N. ambassador and several current or former governors.

Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich applauds the GOP for such an impressive field and remarks that the debate itself was very well-run. Moderators raised serious issues and asked relevant questions while largely avoiding the anticipated pitfall traps of Trump-talk.

I thought, first of all, that Fox did a pretty good job. I thought that the fact is that they avoided getting into just having the whole evening being about Donald Trump. They raised a whole bunch of serious issues. And I thought on balance it was a pretty darn good achievement.

Second, I thought the candidates generally were very articulate, very smart, clearly willing to take on each other. And I found it kind of interesting, when you watch some of the personality dynamics, here you have second only to the governor of Florida, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s standing at the center of the stage.

He has on one side, a former governor and United Nations ambassador, and a U.S. senator. He has on the other side, the former governor of New Jersey, the former governor of Arkansas, and a vice president of the United States. And I should have mentioned he also has the governor of North Dakota. And here’s this guy, 38 years old, right in the middle of the big time, and he did, I think, a pretty darn good job. I have friends who are skeptical. One of them wrote me a note and said, you know, he reminded him of a preacher who was very articulate, but didn’t know how to get anything done. We’ll see. But at least he’s now on the national stage, he is going to be a factor. And I think he has, at 38, a great future as one of the leaders who will help us get this country back on the right track.

I thought that, frankly, Ron DeSantis did a fine job. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was solid, stable. In some ways, he was the most adult-like person in the room. And I really liked the way he handled things. And I liked the way that he rejected the effort to get people to raise their hands at one point and just said to the moderators, you know, we’re not children. So I would give DeSantis pretty good marks last night. I think he achieved what he had to, to keep his donors happy, and to keep his campaign moving forward.