Also-Rans Anonymous

Thoughts on the GOP Primary Debate

The GOP Presidential debate was going to be irrelevant even if Trump did bother to show up to withstand two hours of Fox News throwing stale libtard gotchas at him. Not only did Trump decide, wisely, to dodge the debate, but he teamed up with Tucker to release a sit-down interview on twitter at the same time as the debate.

A bunch of also-ran candidates who don’t matter gathered for a cable news channel that no longer matters to be asked a bunch of libtard gotcha questions that don’t matter. Why in the world would you ask for litmus test answers on climate change at the GOP primaries? That certainly isn’t to help GOP voters decide, but to corner the candidates into saying things now that could hurt them if they made it to the general election.

For lack of ability to land a punch on Biden or Trump, the candidates settled for punching the most punchable candidate in the race: Vivek. Pence and Christie were livid. Even his aunt Nikki wandered onto the debate stage to brutally attack him. But Vivek is no stranger to capitalizing on a brutal beating. After a Black kid sent him to the hospital in public school, he guilt tripped his parents into sending him to an elite private school.

Christie landed the only prepared line of the evening that arguably landed, calling Vivek “ChatGPT.” But the only thing Vivek has in common with ChatGPT is that he can easily replace a dozen talentless administrative professionals. It was every other candidate who came off like an NPC last night, with Vivek as the undisputed main character.

And in a debate this irrelevant, the only thing that mattered was being the candidate people are still talking about the next day.

We’re blessed to have Vivek in the race, as he’s the standard bearer of Dissident Right talking points. Without him, it would be a dozen tea party stooges versus Trump, who’s retired from speaking about politics in favor of speaking about his personal problems. Vivek is the only thing standing in the way of the GOP lurching back to pre-trumpian neocon business republican boilerplate. Even Trump isn’t standing in the way of that happening.

DeSantis has had such a hard time the last few months that he had to walk off the stage feeling relieved that he got away without sustaining any damage. Of course, DeSantis isn’t really in a position where playing it safe is the safe play, and he would have been smart to try to be the guy that Christie and Pence are yelling at.

But there’s only so far a person can lean into a strategy given their personal limitations. The way to win the debate was to be an obnoxious smartass, and Vivek is in a league of his own. DeSantis is a competent public speaker who can hold his own on a debate stage—if not stand out. It’s the intimate encounters in random Iowa restaurants that really trip aspies up, not the public performances.

Vivek is trying to drag the GOP in the direction I would like to see it go: rejecting neocon warmongering, challenging civil rights orthodoxy, empowering parents against public school indoctrination, and going after the federal government because it’s evil (not just because it’s expensive and inefficient). Several candidates tried to earn applause on cutting taxes or re-federalizing the abortion issue, but even that especially old school crowd could barely be bothered to clap.

The GOP is no longer the “conservative” party but the bloodthirsty revenge party. Tim Scott is literally the only American who’s in a cheerful mood about things right now. His shtick felt out of place even in this uncanny debate stage where everybody and everything felt oddly out of place. The UFO question summed up the mood, with Christie lampshading how embarrassing and stupid the question was in the midst of the most embarrassing and stupid presidential primary debate in living memory.