Wednesday’s second Republican presidential primary debate bore a striking similarity to the first debate one month earlier. Post-debate polls and focus groups indicated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won (albeit in less than knockout fashion), former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and smarmy “entrepreneur” Vivek Ramaswamy delivered polarizing performances that one either loved or hated, substance and policy took a back seat to internecine squabbling, irrelevant candidates who shouldn’t be near the stage hogged up far too much microphone time, moderators did a poor job of crowd control and question selection, and viewers were left wondering whether any of this actually matters while front-runner Donald Trump refuses to show up.

The second GOP presidential debate, in other words, was a largely missed opportunity. Part of the problem was on the candidate side: DeSantis, who consistently polls in second place behind the former president, finally took some much-deserved shots at the absentee and mudslinging Trump, but something more has to happen to meaningfully alter the trajectory of the primary. One can only slay a dragon with sword in tow and spear firmly in hand, not by stealth or beating around the bush.

But a big part of the problem was on the moderator and host venue side. Given the location of the debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and host network Fox Business’ playing of famous clips from the Reagan presidency, the “missed opportunity … for the conservative movement,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts tweeted in the aftermath of the melee, was “the absence of the glaringly obvious question: What has changed about America since Reagan was president?” Indeed, if the moderators had taken advantage of the iconic Air Force One Pavilion setting to take the debate in this natural direction, Republican primary voters would have benefited greatly.

Toward the beginning of the debate, Fox Business played the well-known and oft-recited Reagan clip wherein the Gipper declaimed, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” But do the candidates now seeking the presidential nomination of Reagan’s party believe that is still correct today? Or do they instead believe that the greatest threat facing America is not necessarily redistributionist socialism, traditionally understood, but the metastasis of the leftist illiberal “woke” ideology and the fusing of state and corporate power to more efficiently subjugate enemies of the corrupt ruling Regime — something that political science textbooks would, in the not-so-distant past, have readily identified as “fascism”?