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September 28, 2023

A useless GOP debate, but plenty of interesting observations

By Monica Showalter

I caught the second half of the Republican presidential debate held at the Reagan Library, starting with the part when Mike Pence was studiously avoiding a pointed question about what he would do about DACA, the illegal executive order put out by President Obama to make illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children exempt from deportation and allowed to work.

That was about how it went with the debate, with lots of canned answers and seven candidates saying what they thought GOP voters wanted to hear. There were fights over trivial stupid matters. There were people shouting over each other and frustrated moderators trying to restore order. There was Chris Christie doing his anti-Trump schtick. There was television time for candidates who had no chance at all of winning, clogging up the airtime.

Once again, the only winner was President Trump. I listened to this as though it were a vice presidential audition, or an understudy audition, in case the left really did manage to knock President Trump out of the race. But in general, it seemed to be pretty futile.

The biggest loser was probably Mike Pence, who came off as so dull and anodyne and slow-thinking he was a one-man ratings depressants. My eyes glazed over every time he made an extended intro about his background instead of just answering the question. That he avoided answering tough questions like DACA made him come off as a coward. And it was intriguing how he touted the success of his term as vice president under President Trump as "our administration." He was hitching his star to Trump's achievements, in other words.

Chris Christie was another eye-roller. His attacks on President Trump were so annoying and hypocritical it was impossible to follow him. I heard he made some good points but I was too offended to listen.

The North Dakota guy? He tried to interject here and there, but c'mon -- he's not going to win.

Tim Scott was another non-winner. I thought he did well in the first debate, but in the second, he was just recyling a lot of old stuff about his upbringing and the damage the Great Society did on the black family, which is perfectly true, but not news to Republicans. He lacked energy, and worse still, went off on a fact-challenged attack on Nikki Haley that fell flat as she refuted each of his points irrefutably. Those refutations, by the way, were in the news at the time so he was repeating debunked stories. Sad.

Vivek Ramaswamy made his good points but was unable to explain how he would execute them perhaps owing to time constraints. And nobody asked him how he thought he would be able to dismantle the deep state in an instant when we all know how hard President Trump tried with effort in the last administration. He's an 'if I ran the world' kind of dreamer. His proposal to effectively leave Taiwan to its fate wasn't smart either.

Nikki Haley was less of a loser to my mind -- she was energetic, she was well briefed and her policy proposals were generally good, other than her neocon argument about endless support for Ukraine. I didn't see the first part of the debate but I understand she launched a lot of nitpicky attacks on the others, which likely would have been useless nonsense. The GOP should be uniting at this point, not ripping itself apart.

Ron DeSantis probably had the best night -- he was energetic, well briefed, and good at defending his record. He did avoid or didn't get enough time to explain a charge that he shut down fracking in Florida. It would have been good to hear an explanation on that one. But his talk about shutting the border was on point, his vow to go after cartels and denunciations of fentanyl imports was pretty good and he was spirited and animated. He reminds us why we like him.

The debate did lack some points that GOP voters do consider important - about election fraud, the weaponization of the Department of Justice. and whether voters should pick these candidates instead of Trump to protect Trump. It would have been good to hear about these white hot issues because voters are thinking about them but the Fox News hosts must have had their marching orders.

Here are some good observations from others who saw the debate:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Twitter screen shot

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