The table is set for Monday's Iowa caucuses, but Thursday's Republican presidential debate did little to whet voters' appetites.
The fact front-runner Donald Trump petulantly refused to attend probably did little to change the mind of Hawkeye State voters who think he's all that and voters who think he's not.
It made for a more substantive debate, without the name-calling and childish behavior the New York businessman engages in, but it didn't raise anyone head and shoulders above anyone else, either.
The Fox News-Google debate allowed moderators to show - via video clips - how Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio had changed their minds on various pieces of legislature involving immigration and forced them to defend or talk their way around their votes.
As U.S. senators, where members can hold the same position and vote two different ways on the same bill, and as presidential candidates, the pair of senators have mastered the technique. The problem is, the nuances of such votes go over the head of most Americans, and the candidates come off looking wishy-washy.
In the wake of such exchanges, two current governors, New Jersey's Chris Christie and Ohio's John Kasich, and a former governor, Florida's Jeb Bush, appear stronger because they can cite actual accomplishments in their states and have formulated specific plans for the country.
But all three are polling in the single digits nationwide, and none appears poised for a surprise in Iowa. Likewise for the debate's other two candidates, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Several of the debaters managed to get in good lines about the candidate Republicans are likely to face in November, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Christie scoring her as not "being qualified" after she said in a town hall meeting earlier this week she maintained an unsecure email server for her convenience, Paul saying her support of women sexual assault victims doesn't square with her lack of support of those who accused her husband, and Rubio maintaining "anyone who lies to the families of Americans who have died in the service of this country (as she did when she blamed an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya on a video) can never be commander-in-chief of the United States."
Iowa caucus voters, thus, will start the ball rolling next week toward the nomination of what is likely to be either a nonideological outsider (Trump), an ideological insider (Cruz) or the last standing survivor of the rest of what at one time was a field of 17 Republican candidates.