Republican presidential debate in Miami on NBC News

The 2024 Republican primary begins in two months, but many of the talking points that defined the 2016 and 2012 GOP nominating contests dominated the opening volleys of this campaign’s third debate.

There were five candidates onstage this time out in Miami, with two previous participants failing to qualify and former President Donald Trump again absent by choice.

But even as he misses out to host a rally in nearby Hialeah, Florida, Trump — or the idea of him — dominated the top of the hour, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley gave their elevator pitches for why Republican voters should deny Trump a third straight presidential nomination.

Haley too, if more directly, contrasted the Trump of 2016 with the current front-runner for the GOP nomination.

“I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time,” said the woman who served as Trump’s top diplomat at the United Nations. “We can’t live in the past”

But there were sharp divisions over whether the United States should continue to support Ukraine against Russia’s aggression.

Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy left no doubt where he stood, issuing a lengthy rebuke of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while accusing the war-torn country of harboring Nazism and anti-democratic beliefs.

Haley, continuing to tussle with Ramaswamy onstage, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were “salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed.

DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott shifted the conversation from Ukraine to the US-Mexico border and left doubt as to whether they believe US support for the country should continue.

Ramaswamy comes out swinging: During the first debate, Ramaswamy called the other Republican candidates “super PAC puppets.” At last month’s Simi Valley, California event, he toned it down, calling them “good people tainted by a broken system.”

Within minutes from the start of the third debate, the biotech entrepreneur came out swinging against the media, Haley, the debate moderators, the media, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, DeSantis and the Florida governor’s boots.

Basically, anyone but Trump was fair game.

On Israel, Ramaswamy said he would encourage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “smoke those terrorists on his southern border” while the presidential candidate would be “smoking the terrorists on our southern border.” Ramaswamy, who has sought to distinguish himself as an America First candidate in a field of “neocons,” then took a dig at Haley for her foreign policy. DeSantis, who has battled speculation over his boots, got caught in the crossfire.

“Do you want a leader of a different generation who’s going to put this country first, or do you want Dick Cheney in 3-inch heels?” Ramaswamy said. “We’ve got two of them.”