By Robinson Terry
August 24, 2023
Super PAC puppets. UFOs. Donald Trump and a Fulton County jail. The recipe for a B-movie screenplay? No. The contents of the first Republican debate on Wednesday night.
Every candidate tried to pitch themselves rather than saying what they actually believe: I’m a better candidate than Donald Trump. Every person watching knows the candidates believe this, otherwise they wouldn’t be running. Yet none of them actually said it directly. Nobody took on Trump except for Christie and Hutchinson, and Hutchinson’s attack (if it can be called that) had all the force of a finger flick. Christie’s disparaging of Trump earned him the most boos of the night, something I feel like he’s bound to brag about.
The fealty to Trump feels like the biggest takeaway for me. This is a man who’s been indicted in four different places for dozens of different crimes. A man who’s currently on his way to surrender to some of those crimes. A man who did everything he could short of join the crowd on January 6th to overturn the election. If he wins the nomination, I don’t think Republicans have a chance. Of course, nobody thought he did in 2016, but it’s a little different now. He’s been President. We know what we’re getting. (By we, I mean the slimming pool of independents and undecideds across the country.) That the GOP is so set on being loyal to him despite his potential electoral downfall feels like a newsworthy story.
Now let’s move on from the “elephant not in the room,” as moderator Bret Baier said, and talk about the actual debate.
1) Winners and Losers
Winners:
– Trump is ultimately the biggest winner of this debate. By not participating, he made the conversation about him and managed to be an outsider despite being an incumbent. I shake my head at the irony and the ease with which he manipulates millions of Americans.
– Haley. She got major cheers at a couple of different times and delivered the best answer about abortion. As the only woman and mother on stage, she has a unique appeal to a segment of voters that Republicans need badly: suburban women. If she can rise in the polls, it’s possible she gets strong enough to take on Trump. Or become his VP, which is honestly terrifying to me, because I could see her getting a lot of suburban support.
– DeSantis. He was as Trump-ish as he could be while following his stump themes: Florida is a blueprint for the nation, I won in a landslide, I have experience to take on the federal government, etc. Nothing that he said was particularly revealing, but his attitude seemed to prove why he’s currently running in second.
Losers:
– Ramaswamy? It’s hard to tell if this will be a loss for him in the long run, but in the short run it seems like an L. His climate change line led to big boos. His exchange with Haley was a definite loss. He was attacked by both Pence and Christie. He had some great lines, especially in his closing speech, but I don’t know if his first debate appearance is going to generate big returns in the short term.
– Pence. He finally learned how to punch, but too little too late. There were a few times when he cost the moderators time and was clearly being unreasonable, and one or two times when he seemed to lose his train of thought mid-sentence, a true Michael Scott predicament. He hammered home what he believes will help him—his experience, his association with Donald Trump and Trump’s policies—but it’s quite unclear if those things will actually help him in today’s party.
– Scott, Hutchinson, and Burgum. None of these three made a splash. Scott was the closest, and maybe he rippled the water, but nothing serious. They’re really just rehashing old conservative values. Scott gives us the bootstraps story, that anyone can make it in America if they’re given the right opportunities. Hutchinson gives us the limits on federal spending, something that apparently doesn’t clash with the nearly $8 trillion that Trump spent during his years in office. Burgum gives us the small town vibes, telling us that America needs someone from the heartland. Each of these candidates delivered a stump speech at the end of the night. None persuasively so.
2) Trump 2024
As already stated, every candidate except for Christie and Hutchinson supports Trump. By this I mean that they’d support him if (when?) he becomes the candidate. The sheer non-story of this makes it a story to me. No eyebrow raising or second guessing or head shaking. None of these six people, some of whom seem highly educated, are against him. There seems to be nothing Donald Trump can do to lose support within this party, something that any objective observer should be concerned with. Even ardent Democrats don’t support everything Biden does, which leads to the third takeaway.
3) Similar Lines of Attack
At one point in the debate Tim Scott talked about the “weaponization” of the DOJ. A few seconds later DeSantis used the exact same word describing federal agents: “weaponization.” Their mutual use of a five-syllable word is no accident. Conservative media outlets across the country have done an amazing job amplifying the attacks against the federal government. Many of these attacks sound the same whether they’re made in SC or FL. I’ve heard them made in NY and in IA. The ability for conservatives to sound the same across states is a huge boon for them in national elections, something that Democrats absolutely need to learn from.
To bring home this point, let’s talk about “abortions on demand.” A few candidates repeated this line—Hutchinson, Scott. Democrats have never made abortions on demand part of their platform, and something tells me their dreadfully milquetoast nature would never allow them to do something so drastic. The fact that this line sticks around—I remember hearing this phrase back in the Bush era—is a testament to either the success or stagnation of their soundbite kind of politicking.
A final similarity is the candidates’ position on climate change, which is basically, it’s real but not a big deal? It was hard to tell what their actual beliefs were, besides Ramaswamy, who openly said, “Climate change is a hoax.” For this, he received some of the loudest boos of the night. Which was encouraging but also…strange? Like I’ve said a lot, it’s a confusing party to me. None of them implicated humans, many of them feel that the federal government needs to keep its hands out of industry, and all of them are against Joe Biden’s climate policies. That much I know for sure.
4) Rama-swampy
Man did they (try to?) drag him down. It’s hard to know what attacks are going to stick with today’s Republican party, but it’s undeniable that the professional politicians took him to the swamp tonight. They didn’t pull their punches and he did his best to punch back. It remains to be seen how this will affect his polling. Throughout the night, Vivek was attacked by Pence and Christie and was the sore subject of some terrific lines:
– “I’ve had enough of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” was particularly amazing for me to hear, because I’d been thinking to myself about how clear and automatic Vivek’s voice was at the precise moment Christie said this.
– “Now is not the time for on-the-job training,” one of a few nice rehearsed lines from Pence that highlighted a point he drove home repeatedly—that he’s the best person for the job. I don’t think his prior proximity to the presidency is going to help him as much as he thinks it will, but again, today’s Republican party is unpredictable to me.
– “We don’t need a President whose too young.” Another Pence line that directly attacks Ramaswamy. Vivek responded to this attack by saying he was building a “multi-ethnic working-class majority,” five words I never thought I’d hear a Republican say.
– “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.” This was a Nikki Haley line from a segment in which she just demolished Ramaswamy. The crowd was behind her all the way and she felt it. She dug her teeth in and didn’t let go. He tried to respond but the crowd was so loud he couldn’t be heard. This will dog Ramaswamy in more areas than just foreign policy. He’s young and inexperienced politically. Those are just facts.
It’s unclear if any of these attacks will land against him. He’s clearly the outsider, and that seems to be a treasured trait among conservatives these days. He’s got a ton of great lines and is much more youthful than the other candidates. But his ideas are radical, even for a party that has become more radical in recent years, and it’s tough to see him becoming their eventual candidate in 2024. Maybe 2028.
5) Debate Style Boxing
It’s hard to overstate the influence Donald Trump has had on the way modern Republican candidates communicate. Ron DeSantis basically did his best Trump impression for two hours and it’s going to help his campaign immeasurably. Ramaswamy is basically a younger, smarter Trump. He’s even got the outsider tag still. Mike Pence, not known for his sparring ability, delivered a few good uppercuts to Vivek. Nikki Haley got in a few good shots. Chris Christie, probably the best on his feet of all of them, was Trump-y before Trump was President, and so basically continued being himself.
The three unmentioned—Hutchinson, Burgum, and Scott—will not win the nomination. Burgum looked like he was clenching his cheeks for two hours and Hutchinson seems to be jockeying for a Cabinet post. Scott has the best chance, and he may yet prove me wrong, but he doesn’t seem angry enough. Today’s GOP seems to want a candidate who’s pissed off about something, and I don’t know if Scott is pissed off enough. If he can find areas where he sounds sufficiently Trump-ish, then he could become the candidate. If not, next debate might be the beginning of the end for his 2024 campaign.