GOP Debate: Watch of Shame and FBI Arrests Racist Cops
Spain's Kissing Soccer Prez Suspended, India Finally Not Blaming Rape Survivors, What I'm Watching on TV, Joe & Eddie Sing
Before we start, I want to take a moment to tell those who commented on the last newsletter how impressed I was by the level of discourse. There was so much passion and depth of conversation that I felt proud to be part of this articulate and informed community. Some of you shared personal struggles, which is greatly appreciated. Thank you, not just for your continued support as a subscriber, but for offering your thoughts with such grace, intelligence, and compassion.
The GOP Debate: The Watch of Shame
Last week I wrote an article for The Daily Beast about the Republican debate (GOP Debate Showed How Not to Pick a President). I hope you’ll follow the link and read the article. I discussed the debate in general, then gave each candidate a 1-10 score for how well they did. However, I had a few more things to say that I couldn’t include due to space limitations. So, I’ll share them with you today.
Just to get you started, here are the first two paragraphs from The Daily Beast article:
Black Panther is one of my favorite films. Yet, I’ve always been troubled by the idea that Wakanda, the technological and social embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, decides who its leader will be based on ritual combat. The ability to hurl your opponent off a cliff doesn’t translate into crafting treaties or intricate economic discussions. It’s good theater—bad politics. Just like the debates.
Choosing a president’s qualifications based on a debate is like beauty pageant judges assessing a woman’s intelligence based on her waist-to-hip ratio in a thong bikini. The skills required to bluster on a stage are not the same ones crucial to creating meaningful legislation, negotiating with international allies and enemies, or dealing with domestic challenges. It’s like trying to choose your brain surgeon by watching them bake cookies.
Man, did Wednesday’s debate prove me right. It was a night of posturing, pandering, and polemics—but very little substance. They all spoke about major issues in the vaguest terms possible because they weren’t there to offer concrete solutions but to promise to someday look into problems.
But the debate was never about issues, just the cult of personality, which is much more of a thing among Republican voters than Democrats and Independents. Republicans prefer tough-talking, arrogantly confident, strict daddy types who wag fingers and scold.
Trump Is Irrelevant
Trump is irrelevant to this election. He wasn’t the elephant in the room, he was the poodle’s pee stain on the rug, mildly irritating but easily overlooked. He has never won the popular vote, and it’s doubtful he will be able to pull together the electoral votes necessary this time.
The reality is that core Trump supporters in their MAGA hats and mugshot t-shirts are merely cosplayers prancing around in costume like children putting on a play. The other Republican candidates realize that, unless Trump goes to jail before the election, they won’t be getting any of those votes. Their goal in the debate wasn’t to win Trump supporters over, it was to not piss them off so they wouldn’t publicly tarnish the real candidates, creating bad media voodoo.
The Hype from High School
In the article, I confessed that I approach political debates the way I used to a Muhammad Ali fight. There are three parts: The Hype, The Fight, and The Spin.
The Hype is the pre-match trash talk. Ali promised his fight against Joe Frazier would be “a chilla, and a killa, and a thrilla, when I fight the Gorilla in Manila.” Against George Foreman he waxed poetic: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't.” If only DeSantis and Pence had the wit to rhyme like that.
The pre-fight Hype was pretty lame. When Ron DeSantis’s debate game plan was revealed, there was immediate response. Vivek Ramaswamy, who was targeted in the plan (“take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramaswamy”), responded with, “Another boring, establishment attack from Super PAC-creation ‘Robot Ron’ who is literally taking lame, pre-programmed attack lines against me for next week’s debate.” Chris Christie slammed Trump, who won’t physically be there but will certainly be sucking all the oxygen out of the air, as a “self-centered, self-possessed, self-consumed, angry old man.” Name calling! Ageist insults! Yeah, baby, that’s how we choose our presidents: through their dignified presidential demeanor.
Most of the pre-game Hype came from Fox, which giddily suggested that viewers, “Grab your popcorn!” That was followed up with excited comments about the drone footage of empty stairs and empty corridors—which they repeatedly showed. Even Fox was eager to portray it less as serious television and more as a kitschy telenovela.
The lack of seriousness is supported by having a live audience who acted like it was a midnight show of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They booed and hooted and taunted candidates throughout the night. You know, the way people do who are there to reach a better understanding of the candidates who might guide the course of our country’s future.
The status of the debate as a legitimate political forum can be determined by the presence of GOP darling Fox as moderators. This is like having George Santos teaching a course on the ethics of resume writing. Fox News is one of the least reputable organizations, having admitted to lying and manipulating the news, and has been proven by various studies to be among the least accurate in reporting facts. So, of course, Fox.
Fox wanted to stir up emotions by trying to tap into pop culture to show their Party of the People street cred. They ran a video clip of Oliver Anthony’s viral song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which has been embraced as a national anthem for conservatives. However, Anthony’s reaction to the GOP using his song as a political prop was to decry them because the song “is written about the people on that stage.” He continued, “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them. It’s aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies and act like we’re fighting the same struggle here, like that we’re trying to present the same message.”
Ouch. Fox Hype rejected.
The Main Event Was Mainly Lame
It wasn’t really a fight among brilliant strategists with irrefutable logic and unassailable facts. It was more like this:
Facts were the real loser here. Candidates threw out poll numbers, statistics, and “facts” that were wrong, taken out of context, or deliberately misleading. In other words, they were lies, and the candidates knew they were lies. For the details: “Fact-check: What Republican candidates got right, wrong in first debate on Fox News.”
To summarize what I said in The Daily Beast article: Based purely on some degree of integrity and honesty, the winners (and I use that term loosely) were Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley. Pence abandoned his usual passivity and came out swinging at Vivek Ramaswamy. His political stances are abhorrent, but he didn’t back down when challenged. He’s not evil like Trump and DeSantis, he’s just not very smart.
Christie pummeled Trump even when the audience booed him. And he offered touching support for Pence’s refusal to taint the election at Trump’s request. He and Haley were the smartest candidates on the stage. Also, they’re not evil.
Nikki Haley, with whom I disagree on almost everything (she began by invoking Margaret Thatcher!), actually acquitted herself the best. When Pence and others promised to pursue a national ban on abortion, she accurately brought up that they would never be able to get the votes in Congress. She also scolded Ramaswamy for his willingness to abandon Ukraine in favor of Putin: “This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.” Unfortunately for her, the GOP is not ready to elect a woman president, especially a non-White woman.
Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, and Asa Hutchinson weren’t losers, just non-entities with little to say that was meaningful. They have already faded from memory, like Rudy Giuliani’s career.
The clear losers were Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, DeSantis is a human being designed by a drunk committee. He looks lifelike, but the brain doesn’t seem wired to the face. For a guy who likes to play strongman, he cowered throughout the night. He refused to answer direct questions, even when the moderators kept asking him to stop digressing and just answer the question asked. He lied, misinformed, and touted imaginary accomplishments. He implied he was a Navy SEAL, “I learned in the military—I was assigned with the U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq…” Grammatically, he told the truth. But he knew that this sentence was misleading, suggesting he was a SEAL, which he wasn’t. Actual SEALs were not amused: “He was never a Navy SEAL,” said Billy Allmon, a former member of SEAL Team 1. “It’s a misleading statement.” (“Actual SEALs Fume at DeSantis’ Navy Service Claims”) DeSantis was a legal advisor to the SEAL commander in Iraq. This in no way diminishes his service, but it certainly doesn’t pay tribute to other SEALs or his own honesty.
Smirky Ramaswamy is at once arrogant and uninformed, a lethal combination because he doesn’t realize how little he doesn’t know, yet will push ahead anyway. He’s basically Trump-lite, hoping to take up the mantle as a ranting outsider. Here’s what I wrote about him:
Tried to push his youth and his business knowledge. He thinks climate change is a hoax and promotes fossil fuel as the savior of our economy. I was shocked by how uninformed he is on, well, everything. T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” ends with “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.” Ramaswamy is that whimper. He’s a man with no political experience and no substance. He’s proposed getting rid of Juneteenth. He wants to raise the voting age to 25, thereby eliminating many young voters who would align with Democrats. These aren’t ideas, they’re political pranks. Score: 1
As the debate progressed, I could feel my blood pressure rising because of the cavalier way that major issues were discussed in the vaguest terms possible, with solutions based on slogans, not specifics. It was an insult to Republicans, whom they treated as if they were too dumb to expect better. The politicians pecked at each other like angry pigeons. It would be shocking if anyone made up their mind about a candidate based on this patriotism-bedazzled drivel.
Here’s the final nail in the coffin for GOP wisdom: Polls taken of potential Republican primary and caucus voters before and after the debate said that DeSantis won the debate (29%), with Ramaswamy coming in second (26%). So, the two worst candidates, who avoided questions, misled the audience, and lacked substantial programs, won in the minds of polled Republicans. That says it all.
Kareem’s Video Break
This is how you show gratitude to a teacher. And this is why people become teachers.