Last night’s fourth Republican debate may end up as a footnote in presidential history — Donald Trump, who is leading the race by leaps and bounds, wasn’t on the stage, and the debate aired on NewsNation rather than Fox News.
But in some ways, the debate was by far the most interesting debate of the race. It was interesting for a few reasons.
First, it showed that governance actually matters.
The battle between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley is a battle over policy positions, sure. The debate exposed serious differences of position on social issues, for example, wherein Haley has posed as more moderate and DeSantis as more conservative. But DeSantis’ main advantage against Haley is that he can point at his accomplishments and contrast them with the empty words of his opponents.
In a normal world, DeSantis would be running away with this nomination. DeSantis was by far the most classically conservative person on the stage last night. Speaking of American president Calvin Coolidge, he said, “Silent Cal knew the proper role of the federal government. The country was in great shape when he was president of the United States, and we can learn an awful lot from Calvin Coolidge.”
Silent Cal knew the proper role of the federal government.
We can learn an awful lot from Calvin Coolidge. pic.twitter.com/mOs3MTpcCh
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 7, 2023
DeSantis pointed out that he, unlike Haley, signed a bathroom bill in Florida so boys could not use girls’ bathrooms.
Second, the debate showed that Trump remains the dominant force on the Right.
That’s because of all the stocked-up goodwill he has from his tenure as 2016 candidate and president — and because his one point of true electoral vulnerability, the fact he already lost to Joe Biden in 2020, has been obscured both by the media’s election malfeasance and by Biden’s awful poll numbers now.
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DeSantis correctly stated that Democrats want Trump to be the nominee. DeSantis happens to be correct. Democrats still believe Trump is the most beatable nominee, no matter what the polls say. But when the polls have Trump up on Biden — when he’s in the best polling position of his career, actually — that’s a hard case to make.
Which leads to the third point: There is no reservoir of anger at Trump over his erratic and often awful behavior itself.
Only if that behavior threatens electoral viability will Republicans become queasy. Republicans have essentially decided — rightly, given the nature of today’s politics — that we’re well beyond questions of civility. Many Republicans have decided that if the most plausible candidate happens to be the guy who tweets dumb stuff and makes jokes about becoming a dictator — jokes that really underscore the fact every president since Barack Obama has used executive power in dictatorial fashion — we don’t care. If the alternative is Joe Biden using that dictatorial power, we’ll pick our own giant pulsating middle finger, thank you very much.
This means Chris Christie’s attacks on Trump, asking if he is “fit” to be the nominee and calling him “Voldemort,” fell flat too.
Fourth, the debate showed that these campaigns have been opportunities for additional exposure for the marginal — and the best way to exploit that opportunity is to run directly toward X on social media.
But, as the polls show, X is not real life.
Now, I know three of the four candidates on stage. I know DeSantis, who is a straightforward, good guy; I know Haley, who is personally a delightful human being; and I know Ramaswamy. He is personable, really charming, and glib as hell. He’s a salesman’s salesman. But he is also chameleonic and has been throughout this race. He’s trying to play Trump’s game — say the unsayable! — except what he’s saying is less unsayable now that Trump has been in the game. As the realm of the unsayable shrinks into more marginal viewpoints, Ramaswamy has to chase it. And that’s precisely what he’s been doing.
In reality, Ramaswamy — like Trump — needs an opponent. In a vacuum, his viewpoints don’t make all that much sense. He has been on most sides of a wide variety of issues. But that also gives him leeway to fire at other candidates from every side of every issue.
Last night, his target was Nikki Haley, whom he perceives as his candidate of differentiation: He was going after her using the same angle Trump himself used in 2016 against the so-called interventionists in the Republican Party.
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Now, there are a few problems with this. The biggest problem is that the Right has always been divided between hawks and isolationists, going back to Pat Buchanan and, before him, Charles Lindbergh. In the pre-World War II era, the isolationists had their way. In the post-World War II era, the hawks had their way. In the aftermath of Iraq, it’s an open question — but as the world grows more dangerous, isolationists tend to lose sway.
The most obvious line of attack against Joe Biden on foreign policy, for example, isn’t that he’s too interventionist; it’s that he’s weak and waffling and sends mixed signals, and that our enemies can see all of this and are taking advantage. Even in Ukraine, the problem for Biden is that he refused to choose a line: Either give Ukraine the weaponry necessary to actually smash Russia in the Donbas and Crimea, or define your off-ramp and pursue it. Biden has chosen neither.
But when it comes to Israel, the attack on Biden isn’t that he’s too pro-Israel from the Right. It’s that he enabled Iran, delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization, fostered more funding for the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and is now trying to handcuff Israel in its ability to finish off a genocidal anti-Jewish terrorist group.
So, Ramaswamy attacking Haley for being too pro-Israel is not going over well with a Republican crowd.
Now, obviously Israel isn’t in America. The interests of the United States are not always the interests of Israel. But suggesting Haley holds some sort of dual loyalty is asinine, and the crowd knew it, even if the fever swamps on X cheered this sort of silly posturing.
Likewise, the internet cheered Ramaswamy quizzing Haley on the provinces of the Donbas region in Ukraine and saying, “She doesn’t know the names of the provinces that she wants to actually fight for.”
Haley did, in fact, name two of the three provinces right after the question; although she substituted Crimea for Kharkiv.
But the reality is that most Americans don’t know the answer to this question — and that lack of knowledge isn’t dispositive as to what American action should look like in a particular region. Geography Bee quizzes are a quick and easy way for isolationists to score a cheap point — Quick, name all the provinces of East China! You can’t? Then how can you say we ought to oppose an invasion of Taiwan?! — but they don’t actually work with the American public.
In 1999, a reporter asked George W. Bush to name the leaders of Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Chechnya. He responded, “Can you name the foreign minister of Mexico?” Bush won the election.
Americans don’t need you to be an encyclopedia. They need you to make the right decision when pressed. And that comes from a baseline worldview, not a quick search of the Google machine. That’s why Trump became president.
But being right isn’t the point of Ramaswamy’s campaign. It’s oppositionality. Which is why he went so hard at Haley personally last night, in the most conspiratorial of ways: accusing her of bad faith, of fascism, of fakery. It was all pretty ugly.
Ramaswamy isn’t running for president and he hasn’t been for a long time. He’s currently polling at less than 5% nationally, and he’s not breaking 10% in any state. But he is capturing the hearts of the people you need to launch a podcast or perhaps a Senate primary run. And he’s single-handedly making Chris Christie somewhat amusing. Christie called him “the most obnoxious blowhard in America” during the debate and a “smart-a**” and “jacka**” afterward.
X is not real life. And Trumpism is not an ideology, transferrable to other neophyte candidates. There is only Trump.
Finally, last night’s debate showed that the gap between winning a primary campaign and winning a general election is very real. By polling data, Nikki Haley is the Republican best positioned against Joe Biden: DeSantis leads Biden by one in the RealClearPolitics polling average; Haley leads by five on average, and in some polls, by 10.
But — aside from foreign policy, where Haley is a hawk’s hawk — her positions are “moderate” across the board, from abortion to gender surgery for minors. Last night, she walked back her stated position on gender surgery for the underage, which she had said should be a question for parents.
The Republican primary electorate is not in the mood for moderation.
You have to be either militant in policy or in affect. Which is, again, why Trump — a moderate on many of the same policies, ironically, as Haley — is way out front. He may be closer to Haley on policy than to DeSantis, but his affect is always militant.
And the Republican base is angry.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is betting that the Republican anger will backfire on Republicans the way it did in 2020.