I’m feeling better now, sort of, so let us dig in to the hope-suffocating debacle that was last night’s Republican candidates debate. Why debacle? Well, thanks to the complicity of Tucker Carlson, there was no way for viewers to compare any of the candidates to the front-runner who thinks it’s ethical to sit on his lead. (Certain to achieved a .400 average by sitting out a season-ending double-header in 1941, Ted Williams, as a matter of integrity, insisted on risking the historical achievement and played both games anyway, raising his average to .406.) In the harsh glare of live TV, none of the assembled did what they had to do, which was convince substantial numbers of viewers that “Hey! This option is less obnoxious than Donald Trump and would beat Joe Biden!”
As a group, the candidates failed the easiest test, when they were asked by Martha MacCallum, “Do you believe in human behavior causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.” None of the candidates had a sufficiently articulate and knowledgeable response, and having one should be hard. DeSantis used it to grandstand (We are not schoolchildren. Let’s have the debate…”) and then ducked the question. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, meanwhile, ducked the question ANd fled into Fantasyland, saying, “First of all, we do care about clean air, clean water. We want to see that taken care of, but there is a right way to do it. The right way is first of all, yes, is climate change real? Yes, it is. But if you want to go and really change the environment, we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.”
Yeah, that’s going to work, Nikki: tell China and India to lower emissions. It might have been helpful to point out that unless China and India (among others) lower emissions, all of the economy and quality of life disruptions Democrats want to inflict in the name of “climate change” will have no palliative effect other than to make Greta Thunberg happy, but Haley didn’t have the wit to do that. The one person on the stage who was ready with a response to this completely predictable query was Vivek Ramaswamy, who said, “I’m the only candidate on stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — the climate change agenda is a hoax,” he said. “And so the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.” I don’t know what the “agenda is a hoax” means, but I do know those words will be widely understood to mean that he believes that climate change itself is a hoax, which is an ignorant position. It also would have been helpful if Vivek spit out some substantive examples of climate change policies that killed people, or cost jobs, or otherwise harmed Americans while not doing a damned thing positive. He didn’t. All the audience heard was rhetoric.
The major failure was Gov. Ron DeSantis. He was the hope of the party and Americans who want to see Biden voted into a rest home and Trump blocked from his Revenge Tour, but it was clear, as I feared, that DeSantis lacks the charisma, instincts and gravitas to do it. He’s a nerd, essentially, socially awkward and pleasant neither to look at or listen to. We have elected nerds as Presidents occasionally, but only in unusual circumstances, and before the news media became a full-time, unapologetic propaganda machine. DeSantis is the Scott Walker of 2023. Too bad.
Nikki Haley probably was the sharpest, but she clotheslined herself by condemning Trump after the January 6 riot, then trying to come crawling back to regain the good will of the Trump mob. I lost respect for her, and it will take the support of voters less inclined to vote for a woman than me for her to have a chance.
Mike Pence is delusional. He didn’t have a strong enough presence as Trump’s VP to elevate his national standing, and he is this cycles’ Mike Huckabee, with his ostentatious religiosity, saying in his closing statement that we need to “renew our faith in Him.” Bret Stephens, the Times’ sometimes conservative pundit, registered this verdict: “Pious and pompous; he seems to think Jesus wants him to be President.”
Chris Christie, as usual, had some sharp take-downs, but he’s wasting his time and ours. Nothing he said last night would change anyone’s opinion of him. No chance.
I was rooting for Doug Burgum, who has an impressive record as a businessman and governor, and isn’t insane. He looks good, and seems vigorous. But he faded into the background during the debate, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Moreover, his decision to play in a pick-up basketball game right before his one chance to creates a plausible route to the nomination was so irresponsible that I would hesitate to trust his judgment on anything else. Naturally he got hurt, and was standing on the Milwaukee stage either on pain-killers or in pain.
Sen. Asa Hutchinson faded into the background even more than Burgum. Good. Disgracefully, he endorsed the sinister Constitutional theory the Democrats and some allied legal partisans that the 14th Amendment bans Trump and any Senator who supported him in the January 6 insurrection that wasn’t an insurrection from holding high office. He also showed all the stage presence of wilted lettuce.
Did anyone watching last night not find Sen. Tim Scott bland?
Finally, we got to see Vivek Ramaswamy try out his Donald Trump impression, which wasn’t bad: like Trump in 2015 and 2016, he is unqualified, glib, and obnoxious. Unfortunately, he has disadvantages in a general election that Trump doesn’t have. He’s the Republican Andrew Yang, and you know how well Yang did in the Democratic primaries in 2020. I did like Vivek’s closing parody of those virtue-signaling lawn signs in his closing statement: “God is real. There are two genders.… Reverse racism is racism. An open border is not a border.…”
It looks like I’ll have to save some comments on the media for Part 3.
Ethics Alarms 
I got a request from the Burgum campaign to contribute a small amount and in return he would send me 20 bucks. I suppose his game was to get more individual donors to get a spot on the debate stage. Sorry, my vote isn’t for sale.
I did not watch either debate or interview because neither would give me a real understanding of what their agenda will be. One minute answers to complex problems does not allow time to make your case. While I agree with your suggested response to the climate change question it too lacks proof that without others the palliative effort by the US alone will do little. Evidence may be there but how you can explain it all in such a short time?
Getting people to raise their hands is an idiotic method to get a reasoned opinion. DeSantis was correct in challenging that practice. Ramiswamy may call it a hoax and most of the hype is just that hype. Is that what is deemed a hoax. I’m ok with that characterization.
My belief is that because energy is the lifeblood of any economy it stands to reason that by taking down the industrial leaders (fossil fuels) it would open up new avenues for green entrepreneurs to rise to power. Because green power is currently inefficient these tech entrepreneurs are using government edicts to remove market impediments to their quest for industry leadership and the power that comes with it. Do I have proof? No but it makes sense when you evaluate it with Karl Schwabs statements about the “great reset”.
Steve Witherspoon wants what I want. Every candidate should be asked the same questions and be allowed sufficient time to give nuanced answers. Then give time for others to challenge the others positions and a bit more time for a response. That is a debate. Instead of having 5 debates using the same format break down the debates into discrete topics.
Let’s assume Trump showed up. Does anyone truly believe that the others would have had any other opportunity to shine and provide the nation with their understanding of the issues and plans to deal with them? I would be surprised if anyone thinks That would be so. Trump sucks the air out of every stage he steps on because there are two factions in the debate ring; the heavyweight champion and the others who represent the side wanting to take down the champ. (I am speaking metaphorically and not using champ as a descriptor for Trump). Fox is no different than Don King. The networks see politics as a blood sport that will appeal to the base instincts of the electorate. These debates are designed to only confer benefits to the organizer and the network. They are designed to entertain and evoke an emotionally visceral response. I am done playing into that. I will read their position papers. I will follow their campaigns and I will make my decisions based on those experiences and not on whether the candidate is pleasing to the eye and ear or whether they agree with me 100% on specific issues except one; the protection of individual liberty and adherence to the Constitution.
ARRGH! I meant to write about Burgum’s cheat, and then forgot.
Ethics alarms? I didn’t hear one go off. Should there have been one? Some?
If you buy into CIA/MSNBC man John Brennan’s shrugging off his and others’ shameful partisan bent, Hillary Clinton’s documented crimes of email destruction, her commissioning the so-called Steele dossier, her bullying the DNC and hijacking its purse, the Mueller set-up, Comey’s fatuous (and criminal) leakage of classified documents to a Columbia U professor pal, HRC sidling up to Brazile with that particular Clinton charm and a fistful of dollars hoping to get the debate question, then there’s no such thing as, nor need for, an ethic alarm. No alarm called for in response to Brennan’s slimy reduction: (mere) “campaign activity.”
Meanwhile, thanx for the rundown. Not having watched either the debate or the other affair I wanted a reflection off someone, someone mature and at least peripherally aware of disingenuity.
Burgum’s cheat is the cheat that isn’t. Can’t win a sweepstake unless you enter it. A little money, X, exhanged for more (X + Y) so as to become eigible to participate in a public candidate evaluation exercise ? Who’s harmed? (Uh oh, openning up for a Marshall plan of attack on my ethics.)
Should have had a “free agent” avenue to the debate, a joker card, for Elder and Burgum, maybe the others. Of course several just want a pole position on a VEEP slot, a cabinet position, some favor they can curry for later …
The items listed have been discussed ad nauseam here. Ethics alarms were blaring at the time.
The focus here was on those on stage. As for Burgum’s cheat, the rules to be eligible to debate were that you had to have x number of donors. This was a proxy for legitimate support. Voters who gave 5 bucks to get 20 back are skewing the methodology of rationing time on the stage. Paying voters to create the illusion of support is dead wrong. If allowed Tom Steyer(?sp) or Trump could simply say I’ll pay you to vote for me in the right states to ensure electoral victory. At which point the richest candidate wins
Does anyone else have the feeling that we’re dialoguing with an artifice of algorithmically generated responses?
RH – I do very much enjoy your comments but I admit my pea brain doesn’t understand this one. Who is the “we” here and with whom are they “dialoguing”? Narrowly, this could mean commenters on Jack’s blog talking amongst ourselves. But more widely it could be interpreted as the public/voters talking with candidates. I assume it is the later but, sometimes, and no offence to the group of regulars, some comments and dialogue here is so predictable as to be capable of generation by a good set of rules. I think we all play our self-assigned roles very well, and respective commenters hold and espouse their particular views consistently. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I know it drives some new, typically progressive, commenters nuts. Too bad (not).
Regarding the broader interpretation, I think most political campaigns in the last long while have been little more than regurgitated lines from well-rehearsed pantomimes. Candidates tend to play archetypes and if they think they have a winning game, rarely move away from their scripts. The responses sound artificial and the candidates seem out of touch because they are. This is one reason why Trump was so different. I think the MSM prefers the predictability of the archetypes as that predictability lends itself to low cost/low effort “journalism”.
JLo,
I’m sorry. I was trying to be somewhat oblique, and I guess I was maybe too oblique.
I have not been responding to a certain commenter because the word crafting used in his responses makes me wonder if he is using an AI (or is one himself). Maybe that is really unfair of me, especially since most of the time I think I deserve a t-shirt with the caption “I failed the Turning Test” on it.
But I definitely like your reflection on the predictable, trite, unimaginative dialogue from the political world. It is depressing how much the same tired arguments are trotted out time and again. I can imagine that part of the problem there is that if you go off script, you might find yourself saying something that hasn’t been vetted six ways from Wednesday against hostile interpretations or hurt feelings. Do campaign managers subscribe to big data analyses that recommend things like, “say this, and you should see a 2% rise in the polls, but if you say this, you’ll go down 3% in the polls”?
Thank you for the explanation. Much appreciated. I won’t speculate on the other commenter but I think you can skip the t-shirt, though it would be a good one.
Campaigns have long used big data and analysis. I would bet that through both regular polling and certain types of simulations that they can predict outcomes from particular positions. If banks and other consumer companies can predict behaviour and tailor their offers accordingly then so can the pols.
Now that you mention it, an AI trained on Ethics Alarms comments would sound like that.
I’m not sure if I’m agreeing with you or you are a little tongue in cheek here, VG. I have tough time with pronouns and determiners like “that”. Not because I am an AI but because of my (computer science and legal) training and thick skull.