Last night’s GOP debate was moderated by the professionals at FoxBusiness and The Wall Street Journal, which meant that it was more substantive, and less cringeworthy/entertaining, than last month’s CNBC train wreck. While Republicans gained some traction from media-bashing last time, they actually benefit more from a serious debate like this one, since it highlights the strength of their bench.

With a few exceptions, the candidates communicated effectively, and came across as serious potential national leaders. The Republicans articulated a starkly different philosophy of government from the Democrats, and mostly avoided cheap talking points and easy evasions of issues. The GOP as a whole should be delighted that there are so many candidates and so many debates, if only because these exchanges serve as economic and civics primers for voters. Here were a few of the key topics raised, what candidates said about them, and my take on who was most cogent.

Sound Money

Kudos to Ted Cruz for bringing this up, recounting how the Fed has hijacked and politicized control of the money supply, becoming a pump to inflate economic bubbles that fail and stick the taxpayer, and hurt our long-term growth. Sound money used to be a mainstream conservative issue, and it should be again. Cruz even mentioned the gold standard, and recounted how America grew more steadily and strongly before Nixon junked it — in a crassly political move that still distorts our economy. Rand Paul also spoke to this issue, but more wonkishly and less effectively. Jeb Bush, in his tentative way, made the valid point that fed-fueled inflation hurts the poor more than anyone.

Crony Capitalism

Carly Fiorina was clearest and most cogent on this topic, which she admirably raises whenever she can. In her measured, authoritative style, she explained the mortgage crisis and its roots in “compassionate” federal policies to promote home ownership among people who really ought to be renters — i.e., those with terrible credit ratings and no savings.

She showed “how socialism grows,” by the government creating a crisis through one intervention, then feeling compelled to intervene again to clean up its own mess, with big business colluding with regulators to concentrate economic power. That suits the interests of socialists, since it’s easier to control a few big companies than thousands of small ones. That is how we got the collapse of community banking, and the de facto legal status of some huge banks as “too big to fail,” a point that Marco Rubio took on effectively, noting that it’s a scandal for the government to give some business such a blank-check guarantee, which they “brag about” and use to further squeeze out smaller, non-guaranteed competitors. Cruz took a bold stand against bank bailouts, which Kasich tried and failed to turn to demagogic effect by pretending that depositors (rather than investors) would suffer from letting big banks fail.

Tax Reform

Several of the candidates (Cruz, Carson and Paul) are backing a flat, no-deduction income tax — which is impressive, considering how powerful the rhetoric of envy from the left has become. Trump’s left-leaning populism, favoring higher taxes on the job-creating rich, was the standout here. A flat tax would be a huge boost for liberty, removing the thousands of “nudges” which the Federal government has embedded throughout the tax code to control citizens’ behavior. Whether the spending cuts needed to make such a tax plan (and cut) workable are politically feasible… that’s a question for a future GOP Congress. Marco Rubio dissented, pushing hard for a “pro-family” increase in tax rebates for parents. That’s appealing in theory, and his emphasis on the importance of family as the seedbed for our future is welcome in our individualist age, but Rand Paul was right to note that such policies can amount to welfare handouts for couples, yet another “nudge” from the government to modify citizens’ behavior.

Immigration

The real clash on this issue, between Donald Trump and John Kasich, went surprisingly well for Trump. Kasich tried to paint Trump’s advocacy of deportation for illegal immigrants as cruel and anti-family, raising the specter of “terrified” children watching their parents get dragged away. Trump responded well by citing Eisenhower’s effective and popular deportation of more than 1 million illegals. Nobody considers the victor of Normandy a fascist, so that was smart politics.

Jeb Bush’s attempt to jump in on this issue was as ineffective as all his other interventions. (He is so tentative and middle-managerial when speaking that you wonder who ever thought he was a likely presidential candidate.)

Ted Cruz’s response was the strongest, citing his legal immigrant father, and taking personal offense at the charge that he is anti-immigrant because he favors enforcing our nation’s laws. He made a powerful point about the disproportionate harm to low-skill Americans of mass, low-skill immigration — while lawyers and other professionals mostly benefit from the influx of cheap labor that doesn’t compete with them.

Rubio managed to stay above the fray on this issue, which is a real vulnerability for him. Rubio’s current stated position on immigration is a sound one — no path to legal residency before solid border security is in place. That’s a sane and workable compromise. But activists worry that leading with a compromise, rather than a heartfelt, hardline position, makes for a lousy negotiating position with hard-core, open-borders Democrats and big business lobbyists.

Foreign Policy

Here, for a change, Donald Trump came across as the adult on the stage, with the help of Rand Paul. Just as Democrats salivate reflexively at every chance to spend taxpayers’ money, a certain type of Republican has the same Pavlovian response to every flashpoint of foreign conflict. America’s “greatness” and “safety” are at stake, it seems, in every corner of the world, and so we had better be ready to fight over… you name it: Ukraine, Syria, the South China Sea. Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Jeb Bush dutifully called for us to confront Vladimir Putin with a no-fly zone over Syria.

Rand Paul very sensibly pointed out that Russia is already flying over Syria, at the request of its (and Iraq’s) government. So are three Republican candidates willing to “shoot down Russian planes” in defense of the phantom “moderate rebels” who (as Trump pointed out) keep aligning with al Qaeda? None of the three had good answers.

Indeed, Rubio called Putin a “gangster,” which raises the question of how he could negotiate with that leader of a superpower, were he elected. When several candidates promised that they wouldn’t talk with Putin, Paul sensibly pointed out that we bargained with Russia’s Communist government, starting with Stalin. But we shouldn’t talk with Putin? There is far too much unreflective, financially unsustainable hawkishness abroad among Republicans, which won’t play well with voters who remember our last adventures in democracy building in Libya and Iraq.

John Kasich

No, he’s technically not an issue, but a candidate. However, his rampant, querulous interruptions of other candidates, and liberal-tinted rants on issues such as immigration, the need for a higher minimum wage, and the dangers of a fictitious “unprincipled” free market capitalism, deserve a heading all their own. Kasich’s strategists must have told him that he needed to grab more airtime, and he certainly did it — displacing Donald Trump as the candidate most like your crazy uncle who ruins Christmas dinner every year.

If you were to take all the high-minded sounding, foolish initiatives that emerged from the “compassionate conservatism” of the George W. Bush years, shift them left and roll them up into a single, sour person, that would be Kasich. I was relieved, at least, that when he agreed that we should be shooting down Russian planes, he didn’t add his wearisome tagline, “We did it in Ohio!”