Lots of mulligans in this one.

Tim Scott realized he had to show up. He was feistier, spoke more, and had some good moments, but I wonder how the nice guy constantly interrupting other candidates will play.

Vivek’s internal polling must have showed that he came off as an obnoxious boor the first time around. This version was easier to take. But it’s always a bad sign when a candidate has to adopt basically a new persona from one debate to a next (Al Gore did it in the presidential debates in 2000).

Pretty much everyone realized in retrospect they should have taken more umbrage at Vivek’s insults during the first debate, and came armed with oppo. They obviously hate him, and Nikki Haley more than anyone.

And, finally, Trump took some incoming for not showing up. Both Christie and DeSantis hit him.

Two candidates who didn’t take mulligans and doubled down on their prior strategies were Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The Haley approach is to stand out by attacking almost everyone else, but it might have felt like too much and too forced tonight.

On the other hand, DeSantis is using the debates to avoid mixing it up with anyone as much as possible — trying to ignore direct attacks and to transcend arguments between the other candidates — while delivering his message with every answer. This produces some good riffs — he was great on education and life — but makes it impossible to win the debate in the usual sense of having an electrifying moment or besting another candidate in a long, heated exchange.

My guess is he’s seeking to maintain his high favorable ratings by not attacking anyone (except Trump in a couple of specific places where he considers it advantageous), work Iowa hard, and hope it breaks his way late.

Otherwise Doug Burgum made a good impression, and there was way too much cross talk and frenzied over-promising from the candidates.