Milwaukee — A week from now, are you going to remember anything said during the Republican debate in Milwaukee last night? I mean, Vivek Ramaswamy said the U.S. Constitution “won us the American Revolution,” and, if anything, he walks out of the debate with an elevated name ID.
That is because debates aren’t about words — they are, as the youngs like to say, about “vibes.” Ramaswamy had the right MAGA vibe. The other candidates, most notably Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, took turns using Ramaswamy as a speed bag on issues such as support for Donald Trump, funding for the Ukrainian defense effort, and the U.S. relationship with Israel. (At one point, Haley barked at Vivek, “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows.”)
Team anyone-but-Trump saw a group of skilled, experienced politicians taking a flamethrower to a know-nothing dilettante. But if you watched the debate with the sound off, you’d see a group of Republican heavy hitters spending an inordinate amount of time attacking a guy who just burst onto the scene a few months ago.
The news before the debate helped Ramaswamy’s profile even more. Last week, we saw an embarrassing episode that made us choose which aspect was the most pathetic — that Ron DeSantis’s super PAC was trying to feed him one-liners attacking Ramaswamy, or that the white-hot insults they came up with were bone-chilling duds like “Vivek the Fake” and “Fake Vivek.”
If you listened to what he actually said, Ramaswamy exposed himself as a fraud. In an Inception-like moment in which Ramaswamy called DeSantis a “super PAC puppet,” Vivek used a canned, pre-rehearsed line to take a swipe at DeSantis for using canned, pre-rehearsed lines. His takes on foreign affairs sound like Wikipedia articles that have been translated from English to Hungarian, then back to English.
But attention is the primary currency in today’s Republican Party, and Ramaswamy now has a Brinks truck full of it. The big boys are gunning for him — and even if it’s because he’s an irritating Trump sycophant, Republican voters will notice his elevation.
Also elevating herself on stage was Nikki Haley, who came out swinging against big-spending Republicans, efforts to pass a national abortion ban, and plans to pull funding from Ukraine. She was forceful and direct, even making the case that Trump is the most disliked politician in America, and Republicans have to dump him if they want to win. (At another point, of course, she raised her hand when the candidates were asked if they would support Donald Trump for president even if he is found guilty of any felonies.)
Perhaps the most surprising vibes were from former Trump vice president Mike Pence, who jumped right in and took a flamethrower to Ramaswamy. The moderators, sensing a moment, gave Pence extra time to explain the day Trump urged Pence to overturn the results of the election. He made the perfectly rational point that just as he wasn’t able to choose a different set of electors, neither should Vice President Kamala Harris in 2025.
But more than what he said, Pence, who looks like the principal of a school where kids are expelled for holding hands, looked aggressive. It’s a side of him we haven’t seen, and it may just double his vote share. (From 1 percent to 2.)
DeSantis, on the other hand, was shaky throughout. The one-liner-o-matic machine was belching smoke all night, as he tried desperately to resemble an actual human. It is a tough act for the Florida governor — if he were to flame out of this race (and recent results haven’t been good), it means returning to a state where he set a bonfire of bridges on his way to becoming a national candidate. Imagine the pathetic image of poor Ron walking back to his state, gluteus in hand, and having to repair relations with Disney and his university system.
But perhaps most disappointing was Senator Tim Scott, who shrank into the background all night. Scott decided to let the debate come to him, so he disappeared for long periods of time as the moderators kept rewarding the most gregarious combatants.
Same goes for Chris Christie, who actually tried to tone himself down to make himself more appealing to Republican voters. But tepid Christie doesn’t work — he has one trick, and it is bombast. And while he did set himself apart from the other candidates by directly taking on Trump, he did so in a calm, measured way. Maybe this will pay dividends in the future if other more plausible candidates follow him. But he committed the sin of being boring.
Of course, none of this will matter as Trump continues to vacuum up any and all news coverage about the race. It is always fun to hear pundits discuss whether candidates have pre-debate strategies and whether they carried them out. You guys all know that in one debate, Donald Trump talked about the size of his genitals, right? And he ended up as president?
That’s because Trump is a living vibe. And it is clearly still the one Republican voters want.