An adopt-a-pet event for the billionaire class

I didn’t watch the Republican debate Wednesday evening. I didn’t want to waste the brain cells. The good people at Daily Kos provided enough highlights and commentary to show I didn’t miss a thing. Kos of Kos discussed the winners and losers. Among the winners are Ukraine – Pence and Haley came to Ukraine’s defense and the crowd cheered. Topic done. Also a winner: Rule of Law – Christie talked about it and got a good response. Among the losers: Allegiance to “life” got a bored response from the crowd at a Republican debate. As for how the actual candidates did, read the article. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed that in addition to the Republicans in the audience at the live event many independents were given dials they could turn to show how much they agreed or disagreed with what the speaker was saying. One could see in real time what lines brought what kind of response.

When it came to the key issues on which the general election will likely be fought—Trump's alleged crimes, fitness for office, and abortion—the Republican crowd's reaction was almost always polar opposite of the dial-in independents. For instance, when Christie looked directly into the cameras and said of Trump, “Someone has got to stop normalizing this conduct,” the crowd began booing just as reactions from independents started trending up. "Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong," Christie continued, "the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States." By the time Christie finished, he had cleared 90% among independent women and 80% among independents overall. ... The other side of the coin was Ramaswamy absolutely plummeting with independents as he declared Trump "the best president of the 21st century." The crowd went wild.

Hunter of Kos wrote that nobody won the debate. However, it did show the party doesn’t need the nasty guy anymore.

If you're an insufferable godbotherer then you've got Mike Pence, who's willing to channel Jesus Christ Himself at the drop of a hat so Jesus can tell you all about how brilliant Pence is while Mother looks on with adoration. If you want a rough-and-tumble asshole, Chris Christie is your guy. Nikki Haley is for the fans of tactical evasiveness, and Ron DeSantis is the jackass who grew up thinking he would be America's Julius Caesar, only to learn that the general public already has a lot of people like that in their family and at their workplace and aren't particularly interested in adding in another.

There was a telling moment. The candidates were asked if they would support the nasty guy – the one indicted for attempting to overthrow the last election – all but one “took sheepish looks at one another and timidly raised their hands.” That included Pence – “Not even Pence thinks sending a violent, police-attacking mob after him is something that should disqualify a person from being granted the power to try it again.”

It was all just another evening of dull nihilism, one with a flashy opening and a lot of yelling and no real principles you could plant your flag in. This is a party that has lost its way, a set of performances even the most partisan of crowds appear to be tiring of. There should be a lesson there, but there's nobody left in the party who seems capable of finding it.

Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

“Woke” has been one of the top Republican refrains of recent months and even years, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in particular turning to it whenever he feels the need to score a point. So it was shocking when the word was used only once in the first Republican presidential debate, and not once by DeSantis. ... From catchphrase to dead and buried in record time.

Before the debate Hunter offered advice to the candidates. I’ll skip all that and go to Hunter’s description of the evening.

But the main thing they’ll be going after this evening is convincing the conservative press—and conservative big-dollar donors—that they look "presidential" enough to be worth sponsoring. This is an adopt-a-pet event for the billionaire class.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the NBS News’ “Meet the Press” blog. In this excerpt candidate Tim Scott had a discussion with a voter from New Hampshire, with the voter speaking:

You don’t stand up to Trump, how are you going to stand up to the president of Russia and China?

Eleveld discussed the performance of candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, perhaps more dangerous than the nasty guy. It seems when Ramaswamy became a candidate he had no beliefs. He crafted his message based on what sort of reaction he got from the audience. From that process the ten point platform, uh, philosophical positions he came up with is a doozy. Well, much of it is a much better articulation of what the nasty guy said and did. But Ramaswamy does add two points the nasty guy didn’t: “God is real.” “The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.” I and a great number of LGBTQ people know quite well what a candidate means when he starts his ten points with “God is real.” And it ain’t gonna be good for us or the nation. That second point is the one that took up most of Eleveld’s discussion. First, Ramaswamy blames our problems on fatherlessness. That conjures up Reagan’s racist “welfare queen” stereotype. There’s a whole lot of ugly misdirection that goes along with that. The second part of that is the comparison that in the same way a father is needed to rule the family this country needs to be ruled by a father figure – a patriarch, one who embodies patriarchy and can define for the country what is patriotic. Conservative Christians are delighted with that line of thought. And that thought is what makes Ramaswamy more dangerous than the nasty guy.