First Republican Debate of 2024 Season
Vivek Ramaswamy's national coming out party was, well, interesting.
As has become my custom, I skipped last night’s debate and simply read about it this morning. There’s typically not much to be gained by watching the silly made-for-television scrums with too many non-serious candidates and that’s especially true when the odds-on favorite didn’t deign to participate. Still, we got some useful insights into those on the stage.
NPR senior political editor Domenico Montanaro (“5 takeaways from the first Republican primary debate“):
1. Trump won’t likely be hurt by not showing up, but the potential risk was highlighted.
Surprisingly, perhaps, almost all the candidates stood up for former Vice President Mike Pence and said he did the right thing on Jan. 6 in his ceremonial role in counting and recording the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Pence noted that Trump asked him to reject the votes and “asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution.”
You can imagine that portion of the debate would have gone very differently if Trump was on that stage. The fact that everyone said Pence did the right thing, except Ramaswamy, really has to make Trump seethe, but the fact that the candidates felt like they could also says something.
Trump has a deep well of support among the GOP base and has huge leads in the polls. He likely won’t suffer from not being at this debate, but his pride may have just a little in that moment. It’s why there’s probably a higher likelihood after this debate than before it that Trump shows up to the next one. But anything’s possible with Trump.
2. We have to talk about Ramaswamy.
Who would have thought that at the beginning of this primary campaign that after the first GOP primary debate we’d be talking about a previously little-known former tech CEO, who wrote books about “woke” corporate culture.
[…]
Watching him, though, it was like watching the rise and metaphoric fall of a campaign in one night. At first, his fast-talking style dominated, but he was grating on the other candidates, and he was on his heels, especially on foreign policy.
“You are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country,” former Trump U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley fired at Ramaswamy for his position on the war in Ukraine. She added for punctuation, “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows. It shows.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, at one point, blasted him this way: “I’ve had enough of a guy who sounds like chatGPT.”
There is something to that. He did come across like a personification and channeling of the young, right-wing social media posters and podcasters – lots of opinions, but little experience in actually handling the things they’re professing expertise about.
3. Most of candidates embraced a pre-Trump “peace through strength” GOP position on foreign policy, but that’s not the heart of the party right now.
Yes, Haley and Pence got in their shots on Ramaswamy when it came to the Ukraine-Russia war. It was one of the strongest exchanges of the night for Pence before Haley stole his thunder.
But saying that most of the candidates on this particular stage agreed on a traditional GOP foreign policy, where the U.S. is the moral leader in the world, ignores that the top-three polling candidates in this primary – Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ramaswamy – feel differently.
And that matters. They are channeling many in the base. There’s a clear generational divide in this GOP, especially on foreign policy. Trump has pushed this more isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy, and it’s changed the Republican Party in many ways.
Ramaswamy is an eager disciple, and it’s a stance that many younger Republicans, who came of age after 9/11 or with little memory of it, echo. They simply don’t see the United States as needing to be the moral leader overseas the way the country did for decades after World War Two.
4. DeSantis faded into the background, and Haley sounded like an adult and serious candidate.
Judging solely on speaking time, how he answered questions and the lack of attacks on him, you would never know that DeSantis was the top polling candidate on this stage.
His campaign has been sputtering to this point. Wednesday night was an opportunity to shine out of the shadow of Trump, but instead DeSantis came off as wooden, practiced and awkward. He didn’t command the stage the way many Republicans – and powerful donors – might have hoped or expected.
On the other hand, Haley showed some humanity on the issue of abortion and forcefulness on foreign policy. But her campaign has not taken off to this point. She has lagged behind in fundraising and hasn’t gained tons of attention since the first few weeks of her campaign.
Despite a strong performance, she will likely still have a difficult time getting the nomination because she seems out of step with the pro-Trump wing of the party. She has to hope that the big donors who thought DeSantis would be the principal alternative to Trump abandon him and go to her.
5. The Trump counter programming didn’t seem to work this time.
For once in eight years of GOP politics, Trump didn’t command the spotlight.
He thought he was delivering a two-for-one jab with his interview with Tucker Carlson – one in the direction of Fox News since Carlson is no longer with the network, and one at the party establishment.
I haven’t paid much attention to Ramaswamy, who’s simply unqualified by resume to be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate. But, while he may indeed be a ChatGPT version of what the MAGA tribe wants to hear, his childish answers on fundamental questions disqualified him in my eyes. While most of the candidates dodged on climate change, which is still a controversial issue among the base, he went out of his way to beclown himself:
“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,” he said.
Mr. Ramaswamy added, “And so the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”
Contrast that with Haley’s dodge:
“Is climate change real?” she said. “Yes, it is. But if you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.”
Which, while eliding the need for US leadership and action on the issue, has the virtue of being true. Those two countries have 2.8 billion people between them, after all, and much worse climate policies than ours. (In fairness, though, it’s probably unreasonable to ask developing countries to bear the brunt of the solution given our own outsized contribution to the problem.)
Haley’s dodge on abortion was also relatively artful:
Haley also ducked a direct answer on the question, as she has in the past, arguing that a national ban isn’t likely to garner the needed 60 Senate votes to pass. Instead, she called for narrower legislation.
“Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortions shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we agree that contraception should be available? Can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”
Ramaswamy’s answer on Ukraine was as befuddling as it was shameful:
“I find it offensive that we have professional politicians who will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv, to their pope, Zelenskyy, without doing the same for the people in Maui or the south side of Chicago,” he said, referring to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
Haley, again, took him on:
Those calls to stop Ukraine funding earned applause in the room, but were not shared by all candidates. Haley, a former U.N. ambassador under Trump, accused Ramaswamy of wanting to “hand Ukraine to Russia” and “let China eat Taiwan.”
“You are choosing a murderer” over an ally of the U.S., Haley said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I wish you success on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon,” Ramaswamy retorted, naming two large U.S. weapons manufacturers.
“You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” Haley shot back, earning raucous applause in the arena.
Again, ultimately none of this likely matters. I find it hard to imagine the scenario where Trump is not the nominee. But Haley, Christie, and even Pence at least came across as plausible candidates who espoused policies and principles that would have been at home in the pre-Trump GOP. Poor Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum got essentially no mention in the press accounts—which was more surprisingly also true of Tim Scott.
Short summing up of Vivek Ramaswamy by veteran Brit FT journalist Ed Luce:
I didn’t watch, so all I have is other reactions.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1694655998969942481
They were asked to raise their hands if they believe human activity affects the climate. No one did.
Like you James I didn’t watch. I was stuck by this line in CNN’s report that seems like a perfect distribution of DeSantis and the problem with his campaign:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/politics/takeaways-republican-debate/index.html
I found a video of that moment via Twitter and Yikes on multiple counts. Perhaps even worse than DeSantis is the sad moments where Pence folds and raises his hand.
Also the crowd’s reaction.
https://twitter.com/SergeantAqGo/status/1694556802619158722?t=cKoHv4dp38vpOWdNwJsdJw&s=19
It was a clown car, even though Bozo himself was absent. I tuned in just long enough to see Christie slap down Ramaswamy, but the slap was incoherent beyond the ChatGPT thing because he then compared Ramaswamy to Barack Obama – “a skinny guy with a funny name.” Ramaswamy seemed to be delighted and Christie’s bully act fell flat. That said, Ramaswamy is a headache inducing putz and another reminder that money does not = intelligence.
What kept him off that stage wasn’t just cowardice, it was laziness. Preparing for a debate is work, and he knows it. That had to have been a factor given his need to focus on his legal troubles this week. What’s more, the very person who helped him prepare for his debates against Biden in 2020 was up there, tearing into him.
I didn’t watch the debate, but it sounds like Christie was trying hard to remind everyone of his now-legendary takedown of Marco Rubio back in 2016.
I watched 6 minutes of it, and it was…terrible.
I turned it on in time to see Asa Hutchinson rip Trump, then didn’t even see the guy the rest of the time. Ron DeSantis somehow changed the moderator’s mind about a stat (murder rate in FL, which has doubled since 2019) by simply disagreeing with him – but they agreed that Miami is a terrible place! He then got an applause line about dismissing elected officials and only just barely answered whether Pence did the right thing after trying to avoid that question entirely.
Christie sounds like a pretty old pol at this point, but he did go hard on Trump’s character being disqualifying – and was booed for about 20 seconds. In spite of sounding slightly rational, zero policy was offered. What distinguishes him from everyone else? Er…disliking Trump I guess?
Vivek’s delivery is like an impersonation of a TED Talk if all the facts in that talk were replaced with weird conspiracy theories. At one point he said “dismantle the administrative state”, which sounded like an applause line he’s delivered repeatedly, but he was trying to get it out while talking over Christie.
Tim Scott said “weaponized Justice Department” and said he would fire Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray. That’ll show that hippie-lovin’ law enforcement!
This is a sad, sad group of characters. They’re so far down this hole that there’s no chance they get out anytime soon.
No, no we don’t.
eta: Almost forgot, I wanted to put this little tidbit up as well:
Would not surprise me in the least if it’s true.
@ptfe: Speaking as someone employed in the U.S. government in a Constitutionally-mandated role, what do these idiots plan to do with my agency? Get rid of it together? Fire us all and replace us by People With The Right Mindset? Accuse us all of communism and throw us out of the country?
At some point you’d think that the US business-industrial complex would realise that taxes and low regulation aren’t the only thing worth worrying about and you do, in fact, need people who have a speaking acquaintance with reality running things. People won’t play in a sandbox where the rules differ for different people or change at the whim of the owner (yes,I’m looking at you, Elon.)
@grumpy realist: Accuse us all of communism and throw us out of the country?
Seems likely. Hope your passport is up to date!
Is this all that different from Trump? Replace TV News for DJT with podcasts and YT for Ramaswamy. Regardless, they are beneficiaries of the multi-generational campaign to deify “business leaders”.
On August 5, his account tweeted/xed/musked/shat/vomited this:
I really don’t know why I am raising this issue. I just happened to see it before and remembered it. Off the top of my head as justification, I have a couple questions:
Why no reference to the border during the debate?
As of this morning, the stats for this musing are:
1M Views
1,152 Reposts
226 Quotes
6,650 Likes
69 Bookmarks
I know nothing about social media engagement analysis. Is this good, bad, sad? Even with baiting xenophobiacs with the invasion rhetoric, only 0.665% bothered tapping the heart icon. That seems…unimpressive. But, again, I have no idea how to contextualize it.
I’ve only watched a few clips, but I can see none of those people as POTUS.
We are doomed should that ever come to pass.
Sounds a lot like Trump. I fear your reaction, James, makes me fear Ramaswamy did well with Republican primary voters. It’ll take a couple weeks for polling to settle out, but I expect he’ll rise.
I did see one clip where most of them said they would support Trump even if convicted of any of the charges outstanding. Perhaps not surprising as he has already been found liable for RAPE and no one seems to care.
But think about what that says about them…
They don’t care if Trump illegally kept secret documents, including held Nuclear Secrets, Military Plans, Intelligence Sources, etc.
They don’t care if Trump illegally tried to overturn a free and fair election and, in the process, deny people their right to have their votes counted.
They do not care if Trump has repeatedly Obstructed Justice.
One of the prime hallmarks of a cult;
One of our two major political parties is a full-blown Kool-Aid drinking cult.
@Daryl:
To me the real question, who would you fear to have as President? For instance, I didn’t for for McCain or Romney but if either of them won, I wouldn’t get all hot and bothered about them. On the other hand, some of the Republican candidates would give me an existential dread.
Absolutely none of these people will even become the nominee, let alone actually win a general. So everything else is sort of moot.
Who the hell is the target audience for Ramaswamy supposed to be? If you want a dumbass who “just asks questions” to dog-whistle at conspiracy-theory-loving traitors, who’s a full-on MAGA doofus, and who thinks Trump is the messiah, why not just vote for DJT himself?
With regards to Pence: is there anything more pathetic than saying that your old boss defied the constitution on the day they asked you to deny an election and throw it back to Congress, a day when their supporters turned up to a riot with a noose with your name on it, and then say you’d support your old boss if criminally convicted because you’re scared of those same supporters who literally bayed for your blood? Spineless doesn’t conver it. Shamelessly doesn’t cover it. It’s as if Reek from Game of Thrones was running for president against Ramsay Bolton.
@gVOR10:
There will only be one Trump, and it’s hard for anyone else to replicate his vaguely brain-damaged way of speaking. Ramaswamy doesn’t have that vibe; I agree with the comment earlier that he sounds more like a TED talk guy. Even if what he’s expressing is the same stew of dangerous ignorance, bigotry, and denial of reality, it’s more polished, and that changes everything. With Trump, you can’t separate the medium from the message.
@Kylopod:
I also think it’s his lawyers wanted to keep him away from anything unscripted for as long as possible. The Tucker interview, at least the bits I’ve seen, was really, really controlled. I have to think anything that would have been legally dangerous from him ended up being cut from the interview and the “b-roll” was set on fire.
I didn’t watch, but did have it text-narrated by the eldest kid as we watched Justified. None of these people is going to be the nominee. One of them may get the Veep nom. Tell me which of these people frightens professional Democrats, because I suspect the answer is none of the above.
No, the GOP is not going to nominate a Hindu, FFS.
No, the GOP is not going to nominate a never-married Black man.
Look at all the time we wasted on DeSantis who seemed so plausible until I started listening to the old pros who shook their heads and advised waiting until we actually saw the guy try out.
The big question – and it’s not really very big – is where the disappointed DeSantis money goes. To Haley? So she can go after all the toothless West Virginia hicks who care deeply about foreign policy?
@Michael Reynolds:
A much better expenditure of your time.
Such a damn good show. Hasn’t quite hit the stride of the original, but close.
I think it suffers from the villain not being Walter Scoggins.
@Scott:
Every single person on that stage, including Christie, would cause me existential dread.
I’d be tempted to call this debate an unprecedented clown act, but Atrios reminds us,
As I may have remarked once or twice before, it ain’t just Trump.
@Daryl:
Indeed, which is why this was all kabuki. Cults of personality don’t generally transfer. Sure, when Jerry died some Deadheads followed Phish, but it was never the same. The ideal way for a cult of personality to end is a Waco or a Guyana, that’s what the culties at least subconsciously expect, what they want.
@Daryl:
We actually never saw Justified on the first go-round, started watching the new one, decided wait a minute, let’s start back at the beginning. There’s something satisfying about watching the writers come up with new rationales for Timothy Olyphant to shoot bad guys. The Elmore Leonard influence makes for excellent characters and genuinely original story lines. Mr. Leonard can write.
@gVOR10:
Also, while Trump never entered the race that year, he did (at least publicly) flirt with doing so, and he went on his birther blitz that sent him to the top of the polls for a couple of months. It helped establish him as an icon of the far right. Despite his long history of racism, up to that point he had been commonly perceived as a somewhat apolitical centrist (he even attacked Buchanan as a racist during his 2000 Reform Party run).
@Matt Bernius:
The Carlson interview was pre-recorded for that very reason.
@Matt Bernius: Excellent points.
@Chris J:
Hey, at least Theon eventually summoned up the courage to escape, and rescue Ramsay’s rape victim. Pence is still Reek, and always will be.
@Michael Reynolds:
You should definitely find time to watch the first go-round.
P.S. For those who are interested in an example of how not having rules by which everyone plays by, look at the Italian stock market. This may have changed recently, but back when I was in law school there were no rules in Italy securities regulations against insider trading. What this meant is that a) a high percentage of insider-trading by people high up in corporations, and b) there was a constant suspicion that when a large block of company stock became available on the market there was something horribly bad hidden in said company’s accounts. Which meant that c) no one took any chances on purchasing said stock unless they had their own double-secret insider information or if was being sold at such an estimated discount that they felt they could take the risk.
What this all boiled down to was a much smaller stock market than Italy’s GNP would otherwise seem to indicate and much less active trading.
@gVOR10: This wouldn’t have done at all with with the Republican primary voter of 2008 but the focus radically changed with the Tea Party in 2010 and Trump in 2016. Both because they’ve been propagandized into a different direction but because a lot of the normals have abandoned the party and been replaced by people who weren’t energized previously.
@Michael Reynolds: @Daryl: I haven’t seen the sequel yet but the original was one of my favorite shows ever.
@Kylopod:
@Matt Bernius:
But in Trumps pre-recorded interview with Carlson he did flirt with a civil war.
That, should it happen, would simply be another Trump failure.
@OzarkHillbilly: from a factual PoV, that fellow is/was in the Biotech/pharma space, where one is structurally operating at a high level of uncertainty.
That is fundamentally not comparable to Trump.
Trump managed to run into bankruptcy previously profitable plain vanilla low-uncertainty operations like casinos, the NY-DC shuttle, etc. That shows complete operational management incompetence.
Not really comparable – one would need to compare the fellow against other early stage biotech/pharma performances.
Didn’t watch the debate and haven’t read much commentary about it. These shows are pretty worthless for me as someone who is much more informed than the average American about politics, current events, etc.
Ramaswamy got the most interest from people online:
“Post”
Snip
snip
Online watchers probably not representative of all watchers – probably tilted towards those who “do their own research,” IOW conspiracy nuts like Vivek himself.
@Chris J:
Only Democrats have agency. The strategy for many of these candidates, may be to hope Benito gets disqualified or imprisoned or something, so then they can sweep in like Andy Kaufman doing Mighty Mouse and save the day.
More rationally, some may be running for VP, and others for 2028.
@Daryl:
Most cults simply peter out and fade away.
Violent, apocalyptic endings, like those at Jonestown, Waco, and Heaven’s Gate are outliers.
This from Steve K. D. Eichel, Ph.D.;
So when Trump and Carlson bandy about the idea of Civil War is it just banter between two idiots, or does it portend something far worse? Was J6 a wake-up call, or a rallying cry? If the debate last night showed us anything it is that the fever hasn’t broken; this is still a cult zealously committed to one man.
Three questions;
Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine something like J6 happening?
What would a MAGA civil rebellion look like?
Is our Nat’l Security Apparatus prepared? Especially when you consider that many in the security apparatus are cult members…
@Daryl:
Yeah, but I was in —–high school the year that the ROTC building at the University of Washington was bombed (in fact, I was on campus for a music lesson the next day) and was in Seattle for the forming of the Weather Underground, so my dreams are pretty wild.
@Chris J:
The conventional wisdom is that Pence showed a spine on Jan 6, but I think the more likely scenario is that he didn’t have the spine to go through with his part. He would have been happy with electoral votes being thrown out if he didn’t have to do it himself.
If you shut down from fear, you might not want to create a huge commotion with yourself at the center.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Sure…Include the OK City bombing.
But thousands of people storming and occupying the Capitol Building?
I sat at my desk and watched all of that happen, live, on J6…and I remember saying “holy fuq” over and over again…
@Daryl:
Depends what you mean by “something like J6.” In the weeks following the November election, I and most people who were paying attention were well aware Trump was making a concerted effort to stay in power, and I think most of us realized that if his nonviolent means of doing so failed, he would look toward other means. This was pretty patently obvious.
Did I imagine specifically that he’d encourage a mob of supporters to enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6? No. But my failure to anticipate the exact method he’d use in his final gasp to retain power doesn’t strike me as significant. I think lots of people knew he was preparing something in that territory–something at least that extreme–even if they weren’t quite sure what it would be.
And if you don’t believe me, here’s what I wrote at OTB on 11/23/2020:
Even in hindsight, I don’t believe I was being overly hysterical. The success of J6 was always ultimately going to come down to whether he could get the military on board.
@Gustopher:
He spent weeks trying to find a way to make Trump happy. He’s spineless.
@Kylopod:
As I recall, Trump started suggesting in August 2020 that if he lost in November, it would be because the election had been rigged and “stollen,” to use his favored spelling. What I don’t recall is if the polls indicated some impending loss, or if Trump had some inside knowledge of coming defeat. Either way, he was laying the groundwork for some kind of action months before Jan. 6.
@Kylopod:
I guess I was expecting something more on the scale of the kidnap attempt on Whitmer…not J6
@CSK:
Well, he makes a coup sound tastier than it probably is in reality. That said, he’d been talking this way as early as 2016. It was even brought up at one of the debates that year, whether he’d accept the results of the election if Hillary was declared the winner, and he refused to make that commitment.
The main concern at the time wasn’t that Candidate Trump was weakening public confidence in US elections, which could be damaging to democracy down the line. Few that he would successfully pull off a coup in that particular cycle. Unlike in 2020, he didn’t already hold the levers of power. After he won, however, the possibility became a lot more real, and many people did in fact realize it.
Let me once again quote a mid-2019 Washington Monthly article, which anticipated a lot of the elements of what was to come the following year:
Obviously, this was written before anyone knew who the Democratic nominee would be, or that the Covid pandemic was coming, much less that it would lead to a massive increase in mail voting. But it’s overall pretty prescient. Notice that the scenario involves the Dem winning the three crucial Rust Belt States, but nothing else, whereas Biden managed not only to rebuild the blue wall, but break into the red wall by winning AZ and GA. It was still right on the knife’s edge. But his winning more states than he needed made Trump’s attempts to overturn the results harder.
My biggest fear at that point, and indeed throughout 2020, wasn’t his using force to stay in power, it was his finding ways to rig the vote to his advantage, both in advance and in terms of challenging the results afterward, and getting the right-wing courts to go along with it. That’s largely the theme of the above article as well.
“Atlantic”
@Michael Reynolds:
I have faith that Vivek Ramaswamy will convert to Evangelical Christianity if Trump dies or something and clears a path the the nomination. Some Iowa farmer will show him the light.
(And Tim Scott will scrounge up a wife in similar circumstances, or at least a fiancé if he is having a polling boomlet)
@Gustopher: Or at least, evangelicals will claim he has. (Which is actually just as good given evangelicalism’s history with candidates.)
@Daryl:
There is also a lot less gunfire, I don’t think Raylan has drawn his gun once in his series …