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 rig Read more
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.  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. 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. 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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