GEOFF BENNETT: Let's turn now to the historic week in politics.

To take a deeper look at the first debate of the Republican presidential primary and the issues shaping the race, we're joined now by Washington Post columnist Gary Abernathy, who's based in Ohio, and Sarah Smarsh.

She's a freelance journalist based in Kansas.

Both David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart are away tonight.

Welcome to you both.

So let's delve right into the issues.

The GOP presidential candidates clashed Wednesday night over whether the next president should sign into law a federal abortion ban.

This is a major issue dividing the candidates, even as all of them identify as pro-life.

Here's that key exchange between Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.

NIKKI HALEY (R), Presidential Candidate: When you're talking about a federal ban, be honest with the American people.

MIKE PENCE (R), Presidential Candidate: I am being honest.

NIKKI HALEY: We have had 45 pro-life senators in over 100 years.

So no Republican president can ban abortions, any more than a Democrat president could ban all those state laws.

Don't make women feel like they have to decide on this issue, when you know we don't have 60 Senate votes in the House.

MIKE PENCE: Seventy percent of the American people support legislation to ban abortion... NIKKI HALEY: But 70 percent of the Senate does not.

MIKE PENCE: ... after a baby is capable of... GEOFF BENNETT: Gary Abernathy, why haven't Republicans -- excuse me -- been able to rally around a single strategy on abortion more than a year after they were successful in having the Supreme Court overturn Roe?

GARY ABERNATHY, The Washington Post: Yes, I think that's a good question, Geoff.

Republicans have overstepped on abortion.

I think the Supreme Court was right to send it back to the states.

Nikki Haley was exactly right.

There's not the votes to do a federal ban, but there also shouldn't be a move to do the federal ban.

That's not what Republicans have always said they wanted to.

This is a states issue, and that's where it should remain.

But Nikki Haley was very strong in that answer.

She did a great job in the whole debate.

I felt she was the strongest in that debate overall.

She was prepared.

Her experience as a governor was clear.

Her experience as a U.N. ambassador was clear.

And it was a good night for Nikki Haley, and she was exactly right, Geoff, on that answer about abortion.

GEOFF BENNETT: Sarah Smarsh, you live in Kansas, and voters in Kansas decided last year to keep abortion legal in that state.

And Democrats have pointed to that as evidence that reproductive rights is a winning issue for Democrats that they should focus on in the year ahead.

How do you see it?

SARAH SMARSH, Freelance Journalist: That's right, Geoff.

Kansas held the first post-Roe vote in the form of a voter referendum that potentially would have laid the groundwork to strip the state Constitution's granting of a right to an abortion.

Moderates and even Republicans joined Democrats, liberals and progressives in voting down that referendum.

And what followed was a number of midterms campaigns in which Democrats of various stripes followed suit, leaning into what I would describe as a strategy of kind of reclaiming the notion of freedom or liberty and applying that to bodily autonomy.

It was a winning strategy.

Democrats obviously think that it's a win for them going forward.

I think what we saw on the stage last night -- and I agree with Gary that Nikki Haley had the strongest performance, actually -- I think that what we saw in that sort of sparring between her and Mike Pence was perhaps grappling on the right with how now to proceed, being cognizant of the fact that the post-Roe landscape seems to have affected voter behavior in ways that their old political models can't necessarily predict.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk about Ukraine, because even without Donald Trump on that stage, the Republican Party's biggest foreign policy fight was over Ukraine.

So here's an exchange involving Vivek Ramaswamy.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), Presidential Candidate: I think that this is disastrous that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border, when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own Southern border here in the United States of America.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) FMR.

GOV.

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), Presidential Candidate: They have gouged out people's eyes, cut off their ears and shot people in the back of the head, men, and then gone into those homes and raped the daughters and the wives who were left as widows and orphans.

If we don't stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world, we will be next.

GEOFF BENNETT: That was Chris Christie talking about the Russian troops.

Gary, how and why has support for Kyiv become a wedge issue among the GOP?

GARY ABERNATHY: Well, it is because, if you look at polling -- CNN did a poll just a couple of weeks ago showing that I think it was 55 percent of Americans don't -- aren't in favor of more aid, more congressional aid to Ukraine, and that broke down heavily among partisan lines.

Most -- it was like 70 percent of Republicans felt that way.

Most Democrats do support more aid to Ukraine.

So, right now, it's just like on the abortion issue, Geoff.

They're playing for the Republican vote.

They're trying to win the Republican primary right now, and not so much looking at general election questions.

So they're looking at people like Ramaswamy and others who are really questioning how deep we're getting in with Ukraine.

That plays well with the Republican base right now, just like you can't be too pro-life on the abortion issue for the Republican electorate.

And that's where their focus is at right now.

GEOFF BENNETT: Sarah Smarsh, how is it that Democrats are in many ways embracing the Reagan doctrine, assisting another nation fighting, for freedom for reasons both strategic and moral, as Republicans, MAGA Republicans, are increasingly rejecting it?

SARAH SMARSH: Right.

I think, on both sides of the aisle, you see some interesting fractures.

And some of those were, I believe, on display during the debate.

Among Democrats and liberals, there doesn't seem to be a clear line of agreement within the discourse, at least.

Voting might be another matter.

But what I hear on the ground is a sort of split between a more moderate, typically hawkish version of a Democrat and their views and anti-interventionist mode that's -- actually right now resonates more with the left in a way that strangely coincides with the far right.

So it's a highly complicated foreign policy issue, to be sure.

I think that the debate revealed, to me, at least, that they -- the Republicans have not coalesced around a single narrative.

GEOFF BENNETT: And on climate change -- that's a top issue for young voters, both Democratic and Republican and independent -- most of the Republican presidential candidates haven't talked much about it, but it came up during that debate, again, involving Vivek Ramaswamy.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Let us be honest as Republicans.

I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for, so I can say this.

The climate change agenda is a hoax.

FMR.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR), Presidential Candidate: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: The climate change agenda is a hoax.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, climate change, it's settled science.

But, Gary, what should we make of the varied and evolving ways that Republicans are trying to address climate change?

GARY ABERNATHY: Well, it's not settled among Republicans, Geoff.

It's -- again, just like abortion, just like Ukraine, it's one of those issues where what Ramaswamy is saying about it plays very well to the Republican voters who he's trying to win right now.

The Washington Post just had a poll on climate change.

It came out -- August 23, they reported on it, where it said Republicans and Republican-leaning independents don't think that manmade global warming is responsible for the hot days that we're having, whereas a majority of -- 85 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents do think so.

So, again, it's just the difference in how members, strong members of both parties or those leaning one way or the other feel about it.

And Ramaswamy was playing right to that base.

GEOFF BENNETT: Sarah, how do you see it?

SARAH SMARSH: Well, I want to tease out just a bit of nuance, a distinction between the way that your question was framed, Geoff, and Gary's response.

Climate change itself is, among the Republicans and right-leaning folks I speak with, not so much a matter of dispute.

It's - - the key is whether it's manmade, and that, of course, points to whether various regulations and changes in human behavior, specifically consumerism, would be required to remedy it.

(CROSSTALK) SARAH SMARSH: The moderator's question during the debate specifically said, raise your hand if you agree with manmade climate change.

And I think that, while that too is settled science, from as far as I know, that seems to be the piece that certainly relates to big business interests and their involvement in that political wing of the national discourse.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, lastly, Donald Trump is now the only sitting or former U.S. president to have had his mug shot taken, this mug shot, of course, connected to a criminal trial in Georgia.

In the couple of minutes we have left, I just want to have you reflect on the moment and this mug shot, Sarah first.

SARAH SMARSH: Well, it's certainly striking.

I think that there aren't really any surprises here in this immediate wake of the mug shot's release, in that his sort of cult of personality is rallying behind it.

I believe he's already using it as a lever for fund-raising purposes.

And, meanwhile, millions of Americans are aghast that this person facing all these indictments and criminal charges is still the eminent front-runner.

So, I don't think that the mug shot actually changes anything.

It's historic, no doubt.

And perhaps the folks who are a little wary, a little tired of Trump, that are more on the moderate edges of his piece of the electorate will be moved by it.

But it seems like a sort of symbol or totem that's now being embraced by his followers.

I have seen avatars being switched out for Trump's mug shot among Republicans on social media and so on.

GEOFF BENNETT: Gary.

GARY ABERNATHY: Yes, I agree with Sarah.

Sarah is exactly right.

It depends on what side of the aisle you're on and where you're at politically on how that mug shot is going to play.

Let's be honest.

Mug shots aren't what they used to be, or at least not that one from Fulton County, where you don't have the height board behind you and you're not holding up the numbers.

That's a portrait Trump may have commissioned and sat for himself, the way it turned out.

GEOFF BENNETT: Gary Abernathy and Sarah Smarsh, my thanks to you both.

Have a great weekend.

GARY ABERNATHY: Thanks.

Thanks, Geoff.

SARAH SMARSH: Thank you.