LifeZette asked leading conservatives, debate experts, political scientists, and GOP consultants to identify key takeaways from the vice presidential debate and what, if any, impact the contest will have on the race.

There was consensus that on style and substance Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was the clear winner — but whether the strong performance would alter the dynamics of the race was the subject of some disagreement.

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The team was particularly hard on Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine for appearing petty and canned.

Here is what LifeZette’s Debate Squad said about the vice presidential debate Tuesday:

Ron Bonjean
Governor Pence was polished and presidential, and won the night. Senator Kaine came off as scripted, hurling pre-written barbs and zingers at Pence but was unable to throw him off course. Kaine’s strategy of constantly interrupting Pence clearly backfired, making himself look partisan, small, and ineffective.

In addition, Pence successfully counter-attacked Kaine’s attacks by leaving nothing on the field over Hillary Clinton’s server, the Clinton Foundation, and examples of failed domestic and foreign policy under President Obama. However, Pence’s critical rhetoric over Russia was greatly different from Trump’s praise for Putin, which raised eyebrows.

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Trump would be well-served to see how Pence’s debate practice can really help a candidate’s performance. Having said all of this, VP debates don’t often move the needle outside of base voters. This is likely true for this election. Voters will look to the VP nominees as reinforcements to back up their choice for president.

Ron Bonjean is a partner of the public affairs firm Rokk Solutions. He remains the first person to serve as the lead spokesman in both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He has served as a strategist for the Republican National Committee in numerous senior communications roles for high-ranking officials.

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Robert Kaufman
The vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine will not influence significantly the trajectory of the presidential campaign. Though each candidate succeeded in their central task, Pence won the debate in tone, style, and content. He radiated poise, gravitas, and graciousness, refusing to go for Kaine’s relentless attempts to bait him into exchanges defending the particulars of Trump’s controversial statements. Instead, Pence wisely focused on the big picture — Hillary Clinton’s terrible record as secretary of state; the precipitous erosion of American moral, material, and military power internationally as a consequence of President Obama’s feckless policies that Hillary Clinton endorsed; the economic stagnation and mounting debt that Obama’s statism has wrought. He effectively linked the Obama administration’s laxity on border security with the rise of terrorism at home and abroad.

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In contrast to Trump himself during the first debate, Pence also made a compelling, sustained, and disciplined case for Trump’s economic and security policies. He contrasted Trump’s emphasis on generating economic growth with Hillary Clinton’s politics of redistribution and envy. He contrasted likewise Trump’s emphasis on peace through strength with the Obama Doctrine of dangerously lowering the barriers to aggression everywhere, including that of Putin’s Russia in Ukraine.

Kaine sacrificed gravitas and civility in favor of serving as Hillary Clinton’s Nixon to Eisenhower — hectoring, interrupting, often crossing the line to rude surrogate who largely ignored Pence while assailing Trump for his plethora of incendiary statements and roiling controversy over his tax returns. Kaine also defended Clinton’s controversial record with equal fervor, though less accurately. Kaine insisted in defiance of massive evidence to the contrary that the feckless Iran deal staunched rather than exacerbated the gathering nuclear danger. Kaine repeated the canard that Dexter Filkins falsified in the New Yorker that Bush rather than Obama deserves the blame for failing to negotiate a status of forces agreement in Iraq that would have consolidated our provisional but significant victory and forestalled the rise of ISIS.

Donald Trump would benefit enormously from learning from his running mate how to debate Hillary Clinton effectively. Focus on policy rather than personality. Appear presidential rather than petty, calm rather than bombastic, good-natured rather than mean.

Hillary Clinton may rue the next debate if he does.

Robert G. Kaufman is professor of public policy at Pepperdine University in California and author of “Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America.”

Brian Darling
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence killed it tonight. A confident Pence took a shaky Sen. Tim Kaine to the cleaners.

I think most Americans expected a boring debate with not much fire, yet this turned out to be a contentious battle. Pence showed poise and a deep knowledge of the issues. Pence made a winning point that America needs to be very careful when allowing resettlement of refugees from troubled nations like Syria.

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Sen. Kaine did well, but lost on style and substance points. When Pence hammered the Clintons for funneling foreign dollars to the Clinton Foundation, Kaine was defensive by arguing that Hillary was cleared of wrongdoing by a State Department inquiry. When Pence attacked Russian strong man Vladimir Putin, he neutralized the argument that the Trump-Pence ticket is cozy with the Russian leader. Pence was relentless in his attacks on Hillary’s record of failure.

Mike Pence won the debate.

Brian Darling is a former senior communications director and counsel for Sen. Rand Paul. Follow him on Twitter @BrianHDarling.

Ben Voth
Mike Pence scored a strong performance in Debate No. 2. While the moderator continued a pattern of favoring the Democratic candidate, she took a far less interventionist role in protecting Kaine from Pence’s analysis and probing critique of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy under Obama. Kaine appeared to rely too much on political clichés and the idea of invoking Trump’s tax returns anytime he felt pressured by Pence. Kaine interrupted Pence scores of times and often appeared defensive.

Pence also did an exceptionally good job of managing the new split-screen mandate for the debates. While not interrupting Kaine, he provided clear nonverbal signals suggesting disagreement with Kaine’s arguments. Kaine appeared to need the moderator’s help but she was not willing to intervene as directly as Lester Holt, who made nine separate arguments against Trump apart from the assigned questions. The Trump campaign likely gained some ground from this debate because the media caricatures of it are so distorted that 90 minutes of debate causes it to appear more normalized to the public. The debates provide relatively unfiltered access to the public and take the edge off sound bites [and] de-contextualized claims about the Trump campaign.

Ben Voth is director of debate Southern Methodist University and associate professor of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs.

Eddie Zipperer
Mike Pence won the debate soundly. The Clinton campaign is officially nothing more than a list of mischaracterized Trump quotes. After they run out of those, they’ve got nothing.

Pence dominated the debate from beginning to end, and he proved that the Clinton campaign has nothing to run on. He also articulated Trump’s policies in a way that most people haven’t heard them articulated, including making the point that Trump’s plan to deal with immigration is already the law.

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Tim Kaine, as predicted, tried hard to make this a debate about Donald Trump’s personality, but Pence was having none of it. Pence even called out Kaine for using memorized zingers. Kaine employed an elementary school “Donald-Trump-said…” strategy.

Elaine Quijano did a marvelous job as moderator; I fully expect her to catch loads of flak from the Left for her objectivity.

The Mike Pence we saw last night was the anti-politician politician — blasting focus groups, skillfully using zingers, and exercising manners. That’s the future of American politics.

Eddie Zipperer is assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College and a regular LifeZette contributor.

Jenny Beth Martin
Gov. Mike Pence won the debate against Sen. Tim Kaine in a rout by calmly outlining the conservative agenda that will put Americans back to work and keep them safe, while pointing out the Clinton-Kaine record of supporting failed big government liberalism, undermining our national security, and lying to the American people.

Gov. Pence showed the stark contrast between the tickets: a Trump-Pence ticket that promises to cut taxes for American families against a Clinton-Kaine ticket that will raise them to grow government. A Trump-Pence ticket that will secure our border by building a wall and enforcing our immigration laws versus a Clinton-Kaine ticket that promises to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in their first 100 days. A Trump-Pence ticket that will restore strength to American foreign policy versus a Clinton-Kaine ticket that supports President Obama’s terrible nuclear deal with Iran that has made us less safe.

Tonight was a fantastic evening for the Trump-Pence ticket — thanks to a substantive performance from Gov. Pence.

Jenny Beth Martin is chair of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.