“You’re just scum.”
—-GOP Presidential nominee hopeful Nikki Haley, taking her feud with debate troll Vivek Ramaswamy to the next, uncivil, level in last night’s debate.
Nice. I suppose this is a victory for feminism, as the first Presidential candidate debate participant to resort to direct personal insults is a woman. Yay! I knew they could do it! Prior to this, the limits of what had been considered over-the-line personal denigration had been Barack Obama’s snotty “You’re likable enough” faint-praise shot at Hillary Clinton, and, though technically a Vice-Presidential debate, Lloyd Bentsen hitting Sen. Dan Quayle below the metaphorical belt by saying that he was “no Jack Kennedy.”
Ramaswamy and Haley have been spitting criticism at each other from the first debate, but when the tech entrepreneur accused the former South Carolina governor of hypocrisy for criticizing his having a TikTok account while her adult daughter also uses the the platform, the feud escalated quickly.
“She made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time,” Ramaswamy said. “So you might want to take care of your family first before preaching to anyone else.”
“Leave my daughter out of your voice!” Haley said, doing her best imitation of Will Smith after he slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. When her derivative line prompted a few claps after his remark had sparked some boos, Ramaswamy added, “You have her supporters propping her up — that’s fine.”
“You’re just scum,” Haley responded wittily.
Nice. Be proud, Republicans! It was only moral luck that we were not treated to an ensuing exchange of,
“Bitch!”
“Asshole!”
“Slut!”
“Dickweed!”
I confess, I assumed Donald Trump would be the first to lower public discourse to this level, but Nikki beat him to it. Now that the protective fence keeping pure insults from being regarded as an appropriate debate tactic has been torn down, how long will it be before someone calls Chris Christie, “Sopranos”-style, “You fat fuck!”?
Gee, thanks, Ambassador Haley, this will be fun, though it will be one more ratchet down for democracy.
In truth, we should be grateful for Haley’s outburst. Situations like that present an opportunity for an aspiring leader to show grace and wit, if he or she possesses those characteristics. Now we know that Nikki Haley, like Dan Quayle, is no Jack Kennedy.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t have a problem with her standing up and defending her family. I also don’t have a problem with her calling someone out who she thinks is a rotten person. I haven’t got a daughter, but if I did and someone talked about her like that I would probably not even bother with insults, I’d probably have sent him to Bruise City by way of Thump Road. Personally, I find it amusing when people abuse one another, because it’s just proof that at the core most people are rotten people.
Well yes, but part of the obligation of national leadership is to present a plausible role model image that is not rotten, indeed admirable.
I don’t think anyone can agree on whether any of the Presidents since Ike have been admirable. JFK, the womanizer? LBJ, the racist bully? Nixon, the criminal? Carter, the feckless? Reagan, the senile cold warrior? Bush the elder, the wimp? Clinton, the adulterer and the perjurer? Bush the younger, the warmonger? Obama, the empty suit? Trump? Biden, the walking dead?
Sorry, Jack, but the days of any president ever being thought of as generally admirable, are over. From here to the end the best a President can hope for is to be loved by half the country and hated by the other half, although if he belongs to a protected class the other half may mute their hatred.
Sorry, Jack, but the days of any president ever being thought of as generally admirable, are over.
Wrong. It will just take a real leader with values. We have them, and we’ve found them before.
Who?
I agree, Jack. I like to say we’re waiting for a Garfield, who had the potential to be one of the greatest president if he hadn’t\’t been…y’know, killed.
We’ve had long dry spells before–worse than Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden even.
The spell prior to the Civil War comes to mind.
Yes, the stretch between Jackson and Abe was pretty terrible, with a brief respite of competence by James K. Polk. Between be and McKinley was also weak, though Arthur was surprisingly solid, and Cleveland was strong if not inspiring.
Even many Reagan-haters grudgingly admit he was, if nothing else, admirable. When I wrked for the Chamber of Commerce, its head of lobbying, a dyed in wool Democrat, told me, “I have to admit, the guy knows how to be President. And it drives me crazy.”
I agree with you, Jack. The debates are intended to not only give candidates an opportunity to share their message with the electorate, but also to demonstrate their leadership experience and potential. Nikki has failed miserably in this regard.
I would point out; however, that she’s already failed in that regard and perhaps last night’s performance should not be a surprise. She previously rolled out the Magaret Thatcher quote: “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”
A true leader, especially in today’s environment, does not immediately exclude 50% of their colleagues as inconsequential. It seems that Nikki thinks she can succeed with fully half the voting public against her; if fact, perhaps her comment to Vivek was intended to rile up the “mom” voters.
For myself, I can only say that, as someone who once strongly considered voting for Nikki Haley, I’m out.
I was hoping the debate would be like my state’s Republican Senate primary debate last election. The first hour was a tag-team effort of the two candidates against the moderators. This climaxed with one candidate stating something along the lines of “We are 50 minutes into this debate and every single question asked has been about Donald Trump. Donald Trump in not on the ballot, he is not an elected official. There are serous issues facing this country and I think the voters might want to hear our ideas about how to solve those.” The second half was about the candidates going after each other, which was illuminating. I think we elected the wrong person based on the performance and the performance in the Senate so far has only reinforced my view on that. It was the only political debate I can remember where I actually learned a lot about 2 candidates I really didn’t know.
People have taken the entirely wrong conclusions from Trump’s popularity. People don’t support Trump because he is mean and nasty, because he says inappropriate things, or because he is a bully. He may be all of those things, but those things are incidental to his support.
People support Trump because he comes across as authentic when he says he supports particular policy positions. The Republicans have spent decades blowing smoke up the voters asses, and the Trump supporting voters are sick and tired of being lied to about what the Republican politicians will actually support or oppose when they get into office.
Saying you oppose illegal immigration and then rubber stamping open borders and amnesty is bullshit. Campaigning on repealing Obamacare and then voting to keep it is bullshit. Pretending to care about lowering the debt then vomiting new debt all over the place in massive omnibus bills is bullshit. The list of bullshit the Republicans pretend to oppose then become miraculously helpless to oppose in even the most minor way the second they get in office is endless. The bullshit is miles deep. The country is blanketed in a giant pile of bullshit, and the Republican politicians don’t seem to care about any of it. They continue talking out of both sides of their mouth, raking in pork and lobbyist money for themselves, and the bullshit just gets deeper.
Shrill insults and inauthentic nastiness is not going to help them. Try finding some candidates with more authenticity than the local lemon lot car dealer. Stop copying superficial crap Trump does.
I think this is spot on. (But Trump whiffed on spending too, even before Wuhan…)