A reader on Twitter recently complained that an earlier article referred to the candidates as “losers,” so I’m curious to know how that reader reacted to Vivek Ramaswamay’s opening remark at the GOP primary debate in Miami which used that same word to refer to the modern Republican party. Republicans lost big in Tuesday night’s elections, leading to both an Ohio constitutional amendment protecting abortion access for women as well as the passing of a bill legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults (Senate President Matt Huffman has promised to repeal the recreational marijuana bill, but there’s nothing to be done about a constitutional amendment at this time). 

In addition to big losses in Virginia and deep-red Kentucky, Vivek also brought up national losses in 2018 and 2020 and lamented the failure of the prophesied “2022 red wave” to materialize. He put a hefty amount of blame on Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel for the losses, who, as it turned out, was sitting in the front row. She declined his offer to immediately resign on camera. He also used his opening statement to attack the moderators of the debate and mainstream media in general, pointedly ignoring the opening question that tasked him with describing his virtues compared to those of national frontrunner Donald Trump. He got some applause, he got some boos, and later Nikki Haley told him that he was scum live on national television and was applauded for it. He had a big night. 

Vivek’s Strategy

Wednesday night’s debate was much more substantive than previous events, possibly because a lot of dead weight has been shaken off. Without Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, or Asa Hutchinson taking up space candidates had more room to maneuver and draw distinctions between themselves and their competitors, and no one accomplished this more successfully than Vivek Ramaswamay. 

Several times throughout the night he was able to sharply separate himself from the predictable Republican talking points the other candidates were giving out. He was far ahead of the curve when it came to Ukraine and the United State’s growing, if unspoken, reluctance to continue funding a war that is taking far too long and accomplishing next to nothing, especially in light of increased spending on Israel’s military assault on Gaza. He alone was willing to question the wisdom of simply attempting to ban a social media app with almost 150 million users in America because China built it. He alone noted some difficulties in going to war with a country that happens to do over 150 billion dollars worth of business with America every year. 

Glorious war with China, banning the perfidious TikTok, and assured victory in Ukraine are all things that almost all republican candidates think they have to vocally believe in and support, but they are all also extremely unlikely if not outright impossible. But only Vivek Ramaswamay is apparently willing to go against the orthodoxy. Vivek has always sought to set himself apart from the crowd of established politicians, and on Wednesday he cranked this up a notch.

But Aren’t Vivek’s Numbers Still in the Toilet? 

Boy, are they ever! Immediately after the last debate, a Fox focus group of Republican voters had found Ramaswamay “untrustworthy” and “arrogant”. His numbers in Iowa reflect this attitude. His unfavorables are a disaster and a shocking number of republican voters have straight up said they will never, ever vote for him, no matter what happens or who is still in the race, which is not what you want to hear going into an election. 

Will This Debate Help?

Help him become president? Absolutely not, except in one very, very particular case. It’s important to remember that Chris Christie has the exact opposite opinions on China, TikTok, and Ukraine, and he’s bouncing along the bottom of the toilet bowl underneath everyone else. Republican voters aren’t deciding this election based on foreign policy. In fact they’ve already decided who they want to be president, and his name is Donald Trump. As long as he’s alive and eligible, he is going to be their pick for the 2024 nominee, and every loser on that stage knows it. They stopped running for President a long time ago. Most of them aren’t even running for Vice President; over half of them either worked directly for Trump, or owe their political career to him, and as a result are seen now as back-stabbers and betrayers for having the temerity to run against him. None of them are getting the nod from Trump. Standing behind them is Tim Scott, a weird possibly-50 year old virgin who pronounces the word “do” with three distinct vowel sounds. He’s probably not going anywhere either. 

And then there’s Vivek, who, while deeply unpopular, has not betrayed Donald Trump, and even went out of his way to avoid criticizing him twice on Wednesday night. There’s more than one way to end up in the White House, even if your campaign is a joke and falls apart a year before  the election. Just ask Kamala Harris. 

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As of right now, the only reason to watch these losers jump through hoops on the debate stage at the Ronald Reagan Library was to see if any of them have found a way past the primary obstacle on their way to become the next president of the United States, namely that the votes they desperately need belong to people who think Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. In fact a significant portion of those same people think Donald Trump is the actual, legitimate president right now. So the candidates are all stuck in the unenviable position of having to argue that, yes, Trump is great, he was the best, I love him, I want him to fuck my wife, but—crazy idea, hear me out—what if he wasn’t president again? 

This would be a difficult line to walk even for a talented politician, and there weren’t very many of those on stage this past Wednesday night. Chris Christie is the only candidate who side-stepped this dilemma long ago and made it clear that he does not think the former president is a great American and has been very critical of Trump’s time in and out of the White House. This would be more commendable if he hadn’t worked directly with the former president as recently as 2020, when he was close enough to the president to contract COVID from him. Regardless, he performed very well in the debate and was even acknowledged as the most skilled debater by the Fox talking heads during one of the breaks, despite him cribbing an lame insult from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.  

Doug Burgum Begs To Be Taken Seriously, Is Brutally Denied 

One of the constant complaints one hears regarding primary debates, both Republican and Democrat, is that weak moderators are frequently unable to control or even guide the debate and get repeatedly strongarmed by the moderators. But Univision anchor Ilia Calderón, whose name caused such a problem for her co-host that he ended up simply calling her “Univision”,  wasn’t putting up with any of that shit on Wednesday night. Again and again candidates tried to go past their speaking time, interrupt other speakers, or take a turn speaking as they pleased and were politely but forcibly overruled. Early in the debate Governor Doug Burgum fought back hard to get a word in edgewise, managed to get himself some airtime, and proceeded to completely blow it. I am not exaggerating when I say that nobody, not on stage, not in the audience, not at home, had any idea what the hell he was talking about. He would not get another chance to speak for a long time. 

Attacking Vivek Ramaswamay Is Easy And Everyone Seems To Love Doing It

The previous debate featured less attacks on second-place Ron DeSantis and more attacks on up-and-coming Vivek Ramaswamy, a theme repeated on Wednesday night. Ramaswamy enjoyed a brief bit of press attention after the previous debate and swung for the fences every time he’s at bat, but it seems as though the other candidates all simultaneously realized that he’s still a shrimpy little nerd and that it would be very easy to push him around. His upbeat attitude disappeared pretty quickly after repeated attacks from most of the people on stage around him. Before long he was reduced to “sticks and stones” platitudes after Nikki Haley told him that she feels dumber every time he talks. 

Ron Desantis Keeps Talking About His Military “Service”

You were a Navy lawyer, Ron! You’ve never worked anywhere that didn’t have air conditioning and a comfortable chair. The roughest thing you ever did was (allegedly) help torture people at Guantanamo Bay, and those guys were bound and in cages. Middle school teachers in the Bronx have more salt than you. 

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Each of the eight participants in the first 2024 Republican primary debates went to Milwaukee knowing they had to make an impact. It’s likely that they imagined this would be easier given the absence of Donald Trump, the attention-grabbing frontrunner currently crushing his opponents with ease despite his frankly impressive list of state and federal indictments covering a variety of crimes. Unfortunately for them, his absence only reminded viewers why he easily coasted to victory the last time he had to compete against Republicans. 

No one really questions Trump’s decision to skip the debate. The math makes sense: he’s polling miles ahead of Florida Governor Ron Desantis, his closest rival and the only other candidate polling in double digits, so why bother sharing space with his lessers while fielding uncomfortable questions about his several alleged crimes from moderator Bret Baier, with whom he is already nursing a grudge? Why not just stay home and watch on TV as Chris Christie, his (ahem) biggest critic, takes shots at his closest competitor instead? Plus, by scheduling his surrender and booking at the Fulton county jail for the day after the debate, he can ensure that in the aftermath the press will again be focused almost entirely on himself instead of anyone’s performance at the debate. 

Truth be told, he needn’t have gone to all that trouble. The Republican Party without Trump is exactly as boring, disconnected, and soul-crushing to watch as they were before Trump’s arrival. Nobody made an impact, nobody knew who half the participants were, and nobody will remember this debate. 

WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Everyone attacks Ron Desantis, Desantis has mental breakdown 

It’s hard to imagine someone fumbling the bag harder than Ron Desantis. He began the year in an amazingly strong position and was seen by many as a sincere danger to Donald Trump, but it didn’t take long for him to reveal himself as a freak of the highest order and a shockingly terrible politician. Month after month he would helplessly watch as his lead in the polls steadily shrank while the politicians he counted on for endorsements would immediately spurn him and endorse Trump. His campaign would face multiple staffing shakeups over the summer, leading to potential funding problems that could end his run before 2024 even rolls around. 

But even with these problems he’s still twice as popular as his closest competitor, which, when you look at the numbers, is still some damning-ly faint praise. He was expected to be a target at the debate, and sufficient firepower might have cracked his extremely fragile “I’m normal” disguise wide open and caused an incident on stage. His sweaty, shakey smile moments before the debate began seemed to presage this breakdown. 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Everyone attacked Vivek Ramaswamy instead

Vivek Ramaswamy has the energy of someone from Corporate who looks you in the eye for too long and laughs too much when he talks to you, and then lays off your entire division. A lot of pundits recently became convinced that Vivek Ramaswamy had charisma, but he was probably just standing next to Mike Pence. On Thursday night he unexpectedly and repeatedly became the target of several of his competitors and, once, after he claimed that man-made climate change was a hoax, the audience as well. The booing was unexpected and seemed to catch him off guard. Chris Christie had the best insult of the night when he remarked that Vivek talks like a Chat GPT response, but Vivek was able to laugh off most of the attacks until Nikki Haley went for his throat in the last half-hour and we finally saw him get flustered.

WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Mike Pence is booed, possibly attacked by audience

Former Vice President Mike Pence, once referred to as a “Sun-faded Department Store Mannequin” and “Fat Slenderman” by local wits, has been polling at roughly 4% nationally and is not expected to do well in this primary, or possibly anywhere in Republican politics ever again. Fans of the extremely popular former President have, on multiple occasions, expressed an earnest desire to hang him, and the president he served seemed to think that was an appropriate opinion to have about Mike Pence. He’s not very popular outside of the more evangelical part of the Republican Party, and even there he’s significantly less popular than Donald Trump. He was getting repeatedly booed even before he finally started criticizing the guy who supported the idea of him being lynched, and was expected to get just as chilly a reception at the debate. 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Mike Pence was only booed a little bit 

Shockingly, when Mike Pence spoke about his refusal to acquiesce to Trump’s demands on January 6th, the audience was largely supportive. During his clashes with Chris Christie and Nikki Haley the crowd was often on his side as well. He did get some boos during an exchange with Vivek Ramaswamy, though they were pretty mild.

WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Chris Christie attacks Trump a lot, is booed a lot

His unabashed criticism of Donald Trump has earned Chris Christie a lot of negative coverage in Republican circles. Even in a field of losers his numbers are hovering near the bottom. So far this hasn’t stopped him from being one of the most vocal and insistent critics of the former president. 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Chris Christie attacked Trump a little, was booed a lot

Though he did get applause for some boilerplate lines about the economy or Joe Biden, his small but overt digs at Trump resulted in extended booing and shouting that Christie attempted to wait out. But the audience, seemingly emboldened by the effect they were having on the proceedings and Christie himself, kept going until Bret Baier threatened to turn this car around and head right back to Winnipeg. I expect this to keep happening at every debate Chris Christie attends. 

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