The Dark, Dreary, Down and Dirty GOP Debate

On the menu today: Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley square off, Chris Christie drops out, and Vivek Ramaswamy deftly handles a heckler. In fact, Ramaswamy fans, don’t blink, because I’m about to write something nice about your guy.

A Dispiriting Display of Nonstop Negativity

I am sure that if you’re a fan of Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, you’re convinced your candidate had a great night last night. And I’m sure both candidates accomplished what they set out to do: Attack, attack, attack. On paper, that approach is logical; this is a contest to be the voters’ first choice, and in order to stand out from your opponent, you need to draw contrasts.

DeSantis and Haley are almost certain to finish second and third Monday night, so they need those second- and third-place finishes to be as high as possible and for Donald Trump to finish as low as possible. And while both candidates had sharper and more frequent attacks on Trump than usual, they were relentless in attacking each other at every opportunity.

The result was a dispiriting display of nonstop negativity, treating relatively small-ball differences and long-forgotten actions as if they were fundamental philosophical divides and/or egregious betrayals of conservative principles. Yes, as governor from 2011 to 2017, Haley welcomed Chinese investment into her state; back then, almost all governors did. We have a more recent and more pertinent example of how she would respond to China from her time as ambassador to the United Nations. Yes, as a member of Congress, DeSantis voted to raise the debt ceiling in 2018; so did 166 other House Republicans, because the consequences of defaulting on the debt would be horrific.

Haley seemed really convinced that she could score points by arguing that the DeSantis campaign wasted money. But then there’s this other more pertinent measurement of how DeSantis handles money, called the state government of Florida. That record surplus in 2022 looks pretty good! DeSantis used his jab, “People like Nikki Haley care more about Ukraine’s border than she does about our own southern border,” which is a variation of the dumb, false, “If you care about X, then you don’t care about Y” attack.

And on and on it went, with neither candidate generating any sense of warmth, amiability, optimism, or can-do spirit. Haley sounded like a malfunctioning robot when attempting to shoehorn her campaign’s attack website, “DeSantisLies.com” into answer after answer. (According to the transcript, she mentioned the site 16 times.) DeSantis probably had the better night; Haley’s failure to come out for the usual post-debate interview with CNN probably tells us something. But if one of DeSantis’s problems is that too many voters perceive him as a cold fish, he probably didn’t help himself with two hours of “Nikki Haley is basically a carbon copy of what Biden is” and “We don’t need a candidate who’s going to look down on Middle America.”

Look, I get it. In the final debate before the caucuses, both candidates wanted to get their shots in against each other. But I think those opposition-research dumps and rehearsed zingers needed to be leavened and lightened with a more positive closing message. Americans are in a particularly gloomy mood right now, with a real dearth of confidence in our ability to solve problems anymore, and a real fear that this presidential-election cycle will end in political violence. Two hours of “Here’s a hundred ways that my opponent sucks and doesn’t care about you” isn’t really going to perform any useful alchemy for anyone.

By the way, there is another debate scheduled for next week, and it looks like DeSantis will qualify only because he is unlikely to finish fourth Monday:

Candidates will be invited to participate in the New Hampshire debate if they receive at least 10 percent in three separate national and/or New Hampshire polls of Republican primary voters that meet CNN’s standards for reporting. One of the three polls must be an approved CNN poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters. Candidates who finish in one of the top three positions in the Iowa caucuses will receive an invitation to participate in the New Hampshire debate.

DeSantis hasn’t prioritized New Hampshire, but he hasn’t hit 10 percent in a poll there since mid December.

Vaya Con Dios, Chris Christie

For a long while, many of us argued that by remaining in the race, Chris Christie was helping Donald Trump. The non-Trump or anti-Trump portion of the GOP was barely half the party — maybe less than half. If the non-Trump vote remains divided among several candidates for long, Trump will easily cruise to the nomination. But less than a week ago, Christie insisted that this analysis was nonsense. Apparently, something dramatically changed in that six-day span.

Christie withdrew from the race yesterday, and while he was never likely to endorse anyone else, he offered a de facto anti-endorsement, trashing both DeSantis and Haley on the way out.

First, on a hot microphone, Christie was overheard declaring, “She’s spent $68 million so far just on TV.” He added DeSantis had spent “$59 million . . . and we’ve spent twelve. Who’s punching above their weight and who’s getting a return on their investment? You know? And she’s going to get smoked. And you and I both know it, she’s not up to this.”

Then in his farewell speech, Christie mocked DeSantis for slowly raising his hand in the Milwaukee debate, when the candidates were asked whether they would still back the former president if he is found guilty in any of the four criminal cases. He joked that DeSantis deserved a little credit for hesitating and added that looking around to see what everyone else was doing was like copying someone else’s homework.

“Anyone who is unwilling to say (Trump) is unfit to be president of the United States,” Christie concluded, “is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”

So there you have it: Chris Christie does not feel that any other Republican candidate is fit to be president, and thus he can’t endorse any of them.

Christie says he wants to stop Trump. But he just can’t bring himself to say that anyone running against Trump is a better choice than the man he insists he’s determined to stop.

That calculation is awfully convenient for Donald Trump, isn’t it?

Ramaswamy at the Iowa Capitol

Yesterday afternoon, I went to that rally opposing eminent domain and carbon-sequestration pipelines in the Iowa state capitol. First, if you didn’t know any better, you would think that the Iowa state capitol was in Prague or Budapest or some other central European city:

Second, the capitol building, and in particular the rotunda, are every bit as spectacular on the inside:

An Iowa Republican who’s plugged into state politics shared the observation of a friend of his who went to work for Ramaswamy. After this year, presuming they don’t win the Republican nomination, the futures of DeSantis, Haley, Christie, Hutchinson, etc. all look pretty cloudy. (Recall DeSantis is term-limited, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s itching to run for a Senate seat, even if one were to open up.)

But Ramaswamy just became old enough to become president in 2020. He’s worth about a billion. If Ramaswamy wants to run for Senate or a governorship somewhere, he can do it. If he wants to self-finance another presidential bid four years from now, he can do it.

You watch Ramaswamy speak, and you know he must have knocked them dead in all those pitch meetings with venture capitalists out in Silicon Valley. Clearly enunciating every word, fired up but not wide-eyed, he seems utterly convinced that he’s cracked the code and rewritten the playbook for absolute victory. As someone put it to me, “You wish he used his powers for good instead of evil.”

And that stage presence was abundantly on display when Ramaswamy spoke in the state capitol rotunda Wednesday. It helped that instead of nonsense such as his claim that Nikki Haley wants to kill your children so she can buy a bigger house, Ramaswamy was making an argument I largely agreed with: that eminent domain should not be used to help build pipelines running from ethanol-production plants to underground caverns in other states. (See yesterday’s newsletter for background.)

At one point, Ramaswamy was interrupted by a heckler, a young woman who called him a hypocrite for opposing the carbon-sequestration pipelines but supporting the construction of natural-gas and other pipelines. Ramaswamy responded, “The climate-change agenda is a hoax,” but then he offered the young woman the microphone for one minute, if she agreed to not make personal attacks on anyone in attendance. The woman agreed, said her name was Olivia, said that climate change was already destroying her home country of Cambodia, and . . . well, it was the sort of diatribe you would expect from a young, impassioned activist. “This man is lying to you!” she shouted. “This man thinks you’re stupid!”

As you would expect, the crowd in front of her was not persuaded. But after a minute, Ramaswamy took the microphone back and pointed out that we were in the state capitol building where, “We agree on free speech and open debate. I disagree with your opinion.” He pointed to recent research that determined the Earth was getting greener. (Boston University notes, “The Earth has increased its green leaf area by a total of 5 percent, which is roughly five and a half million square kilometers — an increase equivalent to the size of the entire Amazon rain forest.”)

“Carbon dioxide is plant food,” Ramaswamy said. “I will not bend the knee to this new religion.”

The hecklers weren’t persuaded, but they were never likely to change their minds. The pro-Ramaswamy crowd in the rotunda ate it up with a spoon. But Ramaswamy got to look magnanimous and generous by giving the young activist the microphone, accurately predicting that her anger and need to speak quickly would overtake any coherent arguments she could muster. Metaphorically, he gave her just enough rope to hang herself; she came across as almost incoherently furious, and he came across as the guy who had actually done the research and knew what he was talking about.

Like Schwarzenegger, he’ll be back. I just hope that Ramaswamy refines his philosophy between now and then.

ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication’s live-blog of the debate, I shared:

This isn’t the most important point of the night, but the venue for tonight’s debate is pretty unique. The Sheslow Auditorium at Drake University is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, part of the university’s Old Main building which was constructed between 1881 and 1883. The auditorium was added in 1900 and renovated in 1992. The two sides of the auditorium are lined with more than 50 stained-glass windows. There’s a vaguely church-like feeling when the light comes through them. Perhaps it’s a metaphor about how these candidates, taking on Trump, need a miraculous change in the polls in the coming days. . . .