And Then There Will Be Three

As I watched last night’s slimmed down Republican debate I couldn’t get one question out of my head: why am I watching this?

Only five Republican primary candidates made the cut to appear in a debate that was essentially about which one of them would remain standing as the sole line of defense against another Trump candidacy. But Trump’s ahead by 40 points and his supporters show no signs of bolting for one of this group. So, the whole thing seemed kind of pointless.

To their credit, it was much less of a food fight than the previous debates have been, although seventh grader Vivek Ramaswamy kept trying to get one going. (Ok, so, my apologies to all those seventh graders in the audience. No one deserves to be compared to Vivek Ramaswamy.)

But the whole thing seemed like one of those old PBS nature shows, maybe about the life of salamanders, that you come across while channel surfing and you think you’ll watch a couple minutes and before you know it it’s ten o’clock, time for bed, and you’ve completely missed the rerun episode of Friends that you sat down to watch in the first place. Which is to say it was kind of entertaining, but there’s really not much about salamanders that is important to your life.

Well, anyway, let’s see how they did.

Ron DeSantis gave his strongest performance of the season, well, if you like that kind of thing. He’s now in a dead heat with Nikki Haley (they’re both at 16%) and so he knew he had to do well in relation to the former UN Ambassador, though he didn’t attack her directly much. But he did take a jab at Trump right off the bat when he reminded viewers that Trump said we’d get sick of winning, but he’s sick of Republicans’ losing as they did again on Tuesday. His most memorable line of the night was when he said about drug dealers crossing the southern border, “we’ll shoot them stone cold dead.” Ah, that’s the kind of sober, statesmanlike leadership we’re all looking for in a president. I don’t think he meant that he planned to shoot them himself, but he left the impression that he would if he had the time given the other demands of the office to shoot other people for other reasons.

Nikki Haley did well again, but seemed to take a step back vis a vis DeSantis. Vivek Ramaswamy went after her over and over again, I suppose because he sees her as the frontrunner and also because he seemed concerned that he still had a handful of female supporters. He sure took care of that by bringing up her high heels and criticizing her grown daughter for her use of Tik Tok. She shot back with humor about her heels, correcting him on their height, and with indignation on bringing her daughter into his attack, calling him “scum,” which, like my reference to seventh graders above, was somewhat unfair to scum. She showed her foreign policy chops again taking down Ramaswamy over his answer on aid for Ukraine. She called Vladimir Putin a “thug,” a reality that seems to elude Ramaswamy. “Putin and Xi are salivating that someone like that could be president,” she said, aiming at Ramaswamy. Her answer on abortion is the best anybody who is serious about being a Republican candidate for anything can put together. “I’m unapologetically pro-life, but I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice and I hope they won’t judge me.”

Vivek Ramaswamy was even more obnoxious than he has been before and that’s saying something. He attacked Ukraine’s flawed democracy without mentioning a single thing about Vladimir Putin’s rigged democracy, murders and imprisonment of his political opponents and unprovoked attack on Ukraine. But he did attack the press. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk” moderating this debate, referring to the Larry, Moe and Curly of hard-right politics. And there was that barb tossed at Haley, “do we want Dick Cheney in three inch heels?” I know. None of us want that image in our heads. Another reason to really, really dislike this guy.

Chris Christie has apparently decided that, as long as he’s not long for this race, he’s going to go out classy. He seems to have stopped coloring his hair, so that he could let that touch of gray and its gravitas come through. He was the most forthright in attacking Trump, he showed some smarts on international affairs and he echoed Haley on abortion, pointing out that conservatives had fought for half a century to give the issue back to the states and now they can’t suddenly decide it’s a federal issue because the states are deciding it on the pro-choice side. And he talked about services for kids. “Pro-life isn’t just in the womb, it should be for people’s whole lives,” was a nice line. His most ironic statement came in his closing. “I’m tired of the anger and the pettiness,” said the man famous for his short fuse who closed down a toll bridge to punish a mayor who had crossed him.

Tim Scott gave the weakest of his weak performances. He leaned heavily on the Christian stuff, stopping just short of saying this is a white Christian nation, which would have been a heck of statement coming from a guy who is only one of those things. “America does not work without faith in a Judeo-Christian foundation,” he said. On foreign policy apparently his strong Christian faith leads him to the notion that we should attack Iran. I guess he wants to get to that Judgement Day quicker than most of us. He supports a national 15 week abortion ban. Apparently, God hates abortion more than he loves states rights.

My guess is that Scott and Christie will be the next to leave the race, leaving Haley and DeSantis to vie for the mildly anti-Trump lane while Ramaswamy is alone in the “I’m just like Trump only smarter, so if he dies or goes to prison, how about me, all you nut jobs out there?!” lane.

One thing that did strike me about this debate was the number of lines that could have come from a discussion among Democratic candidates. Ramaswamy said that, “Biden is a puppet for the managerial class.” Haley said, “The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. We need to rebuild the middle class.” Ramaswamy said, “We need to end our blood-thirsty wars.” And Christie talked about expanding the social safety net for children after Dobbs restricted abortion rights.

It’s a crazy mixed-up world, people. But we can count on one thing. Barring something I can’t anticipate, none of this matters. The guy who wasn’t there, the elephant not in the room, will be the nominee.