The Third Republican Debate Doesn't Matter

But here's a summary anyway

The news sure does keep happening. Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian who believes that America’s framers were deeply religious and based the Constitution on the Bible, is Speaker of the House now. The sheer bloody carnage happening in Gaza is finally beginning to make the mainstream media uneasy. And, all across America, voters told Republicans to get fucked. Moms for Liberty lost school board races. Democrats now control the entire Virginia state legislature (sorry Youngkin, guess you’re not the Chosen One of the woke wars after all). Ohio codified the right to an abortion. Kentucky’s Democratic governor won reelection. Absolute carnage.

All of these developments are very important — in fact, I’ve spent the last week writing about one of them (article about Mike Johnson dropping Friday in Politico). But you know what doesn’t matter? At all? The third Republican primary debate, where an ever-shrinking pool of losers fights over second place.

Did I watch it anyway? You already know the answer.

This is sicko shit. It does not matter. But if you’re a sicko too, keep reading

**

There are only five podiums on this stage for the five candidates left in the race for second place: Ron DeSantis still in the lead with 13.9 percent, Nikki Haley behind him with 9 percent. Ramaswamy is a distant third at 5.2 percent, followeed by Chris Christie at 2.9 percent and Tim Scott at 2.2 percent

NBC is hosting this debate, and the anchors are engaging in some circle-jerking about how Maybe Tonight Will Be The Night This Becomes A Competitive Primary, but that will not happen. There will be no exciting primary to cover this Spring. There is only the sad, exhausted slog to 2020 part 2, which no one wants and everyone is getting.

The debate is in Florida. The audience is mostly donors. Trump is also in Florida, holding one of his big populist rallies. Which basically tells you everything you might want to know about the state of the party right now.

As the debate begins, the moderator declares that we are about to have two hours of serious debate over the issues Republican voters care about most. He begs the contestants to not talk over each other so everyone can hear the very important things they have to say.

Question 1: How would you convince a Trump voter that you’re the better choice?

• "The elites don't care about you," DeSantis began, then listed a bunch of things that are bad right now, like fentanyl and the economy. "I care" he says, his weird teddy bear face distressingly earnest. Trump isn’t the same guy he was in 2016, and he also didn’t go far enough. Why didn't Trump pay for the wall? Why didn't Trump drain the swamp? Trump said we'd get sick of winning, DeSantis reminds us: but we lost big yesterday. He won Florida in a landslide, so he’s qualified to lead Republicans to victory on the state level. I do not believe that last part for a second but it is a great way to spin yesterday’s election results

• Nikki Haley’s only critique of Trump is that he’s getting "weak in the knees" about Ukraine. Aside from that, she mostly stays positive. As an accountant and a mom and the wife of a combat veteran she's ready to reduce the debt, save the children from bad books, fix the border, reduce crime, and stand by Our Heroes The Troops

• Rather than attack Trump, Ramaswamy decides to attack everyone else. Republican chair Ronna McDaniels is responsible for yesterday’s electoral shellacking, and the NBC has no business moderating this debate. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We'd have ten times the viewership, asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about!" He has just enough time to claim that the Democrats have stolen every election since 2020, at least, before the moderators managed to talk over him loudly enough for him to stop. Ramaswamy is a parody of everything wretched about the GOP. He is the absolute worst, and I love him so much.

• Chris Christie, forced to follow Ramswamy's psychosis, sounds bored and tired as he talks about about Israel, Ukraine, and the economy. America can make the world safe, it’s the best country in the world because we’re hard workers, etc etc. He sounds like Republicans sounded 10 years ago, because that is what he is. Christie ends by pointing out that Trump is about to spend years trying to avoid prison and maybe he's not the best candidate for that reason. He is right. He is also dead wrong

• Tim Scott, asked about an earlier claim that Trump can't win, launches immediately into how his individual success destroys woke claims of systemic racism. "You don't have to be a Christian for America to work for you, but America does not work without a faith-filled Judeo-Christian foundation. I would be the President who helps us restore faith in God," Scott says, and thereby make America "the city on the hill" again. As someone pointed out on Bluesky, MATCOTHA is a bit more clumsy than MAGA, but Tim Scott is a bit more clumsy than Donald Trump, so it makes sense.

Question 2: What would you say to Netanyahu if you were President, and what would you do about the Israel/Palestine conflict?

The candidates immediately embark in a competition to see who can get closest to calling for war crimes. Here are my rankings: ymmv

(No one mentioned the Palestinian people at all; everything was either Hamas or Hezbollah, heavily implying that there are no civilians in this conflict)

• 5th place: Chris Christie."America is here no matter what it is you need, at any time, to preserve the state of Israel." Christie believes we should help Israel with their intel operations, and also mentions an "Evil Foursome: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea." This is not necessarily what I think of when I hear the word foursome but I am not here to kink shame so we’ll just move past it

• 4th Place: Nikki Haley. "Finish them. Finish them." Haley goes on to talk about how Iran is the real villain and declares that we should never tell Israel what to do. "It is not that Israel needs America, America needs Israel"

• 3rd Place: Tim Scott. "Not only do you have the responsibility to wipe Hamas off of the map, we will support you." Scott says that Obama and Biden's appeasement of Iran is to blame and...yes, I believe he is openly calling for war on Iran "You cannot negotiate with evil. You have to destroy it"

• 2nd Place: Vivek Ramaswamy. "I would tell him to smoke the terrorists on his Southern border, and I'll tell him that as President, I'll be smoking the terrorists on our Southern border" Did Ramaswamy just threaten to carpet bomb Mexico?

  Regardless, he goes on to say that we cannot repeat the mistakes of the neocons with the disastrous War on Terror. He accuses Nikki Haley of being part of that neocon machine and calls her "Dick Cheney in Three-Inch Heels." No notes.
  
  "They're five-inch heels, and I don't wear them unless you can run in them,” Haley retorted later. “They're not a fashion statement, they're ammunition." I do not know what she means by this.

• 1st Place: Ron DeSantis. Was there ever any doubt?"I would tell Bibi finish the job once and for all with Hamas," DeSantis says, perhaps fondly recalling his days torturing Muslims in Guantanamo bay.

Question 3: Do you support military force against Iran?

(from Matthew Brooks, CEO of Republican Jewish Coalition)

Oh wow. Cool. Is this really the direction we’re going to go? Really? Not enough to fund the war crime, now we have to do one of our own? I need a drink. Or maybe five. Who knows.

• Nikki Haley says we should"take out [Iran's] infrastructure" that they're using to do strikes against Americans. "Iran responds to strength. You punch them once and you punch them hard and they'll back off" Citation Fucking Needed. If all it took to incapacitate a country is a sufficiently hard punch, 9/11 should have destroyed us. Instead, it drove us mad and made us bloodthirsty. Don’t

• DeSantis talks about his brave service in Iraq (as a lawyer to Special Forces) "You harm a hair on the head of an American servicemember and you're going to have hell to pay"

Question 4: What do you say to Jewish students on college campuses that feel unsafe and what should be done about those dreadful academics who refuse to condemn Hamas?

The first thing is happening in some places, and it needs to stop. That second thing though—is that happening? Or are people just saying that perhaps, perhaps, Israel should not use bombs to destroy a heavily populated urban area? Because those are two really different things, and they’re getting treated as the same thing an awful lot.

• Ramaswamy takes the college question in an interesting direction. Says the scourge of Antisemitism is a symptom of a deeper cancer, which he does not specify. But then Ramaswamy says something surprising: he doesn't think censorship on college campuses, which DeSantis and Haley want, is the answer Instead, Ramaswamy says that we need to have better leadership that won't stand for antisemitic hate rather than censoring idiot college kids

• Tim Scott opts to make Ramaswamy look like a moderate by threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges that don't toe the line on Israel, and threatens to deport any foreign students who "encourage Jewish genocide" I am straight up not having a good time

• DeSantis opts to make Tim Scott look like a moderate by urging Joe Biden to send the DOJ onto college campuses to deal with the problem. He would like campuses to stop trying to "combat islamophobia" which, he says, isn't actually a problem. Oh, and he insists he wanted to deport woke foreign students way before Scott did.

• To NBC's credit, after DeSantis finishes saying that islamophobia isn't real, the moderator immediately asks Chris Christie to talk about the 6-year-old Muslim boy recently stabbed to death. Christie talks about his experience on 9/11 and dealing with threats against Jewish students while also meeting with mosques and ensuring that Muslims also had protection. He then spoils his actually good answer with a refusal to equate Hamas with the People of Israel: a thing that very few people are doing. Some people think that it’s bad to kill Israeli civilians and also Palestinian civilians. This only sounds like equating Hamas to Israel if you believe that all Palestinians are Hamas.

• Haley's turn to talk about antisemitic terrorism on college campuses "Antisemitism is just as awful as racism," Haley says. Less than 10 minutes after saying Israel should “finish them,” she declares that we must stop celebrating genocide.

Question 5: How would you handle the war in Ukraine

• Tim Scott says it's important to degrade Russian military capacity by supporting Ukraine but that there needs to be accountability for the money. He then decides we haven't talked enough about Israel, then moves to closing our Southern border. The moderator presses him to answer the question: would you send more military aid? Scott says a bunch of bullshit to avoid answering directly, but heavily implies that he would

• Ramaswamy goes on a rant against Ukraine. Says that many of the provinces invaded by Russia are actually Russian and not Ukranian. This is profoundly untrue. I have a friend currently in Ukraine and I can hear them screaming obscenities from here.

• Nikki Haley says that Putin and Xi hope that Ramaswamy becomes president, and the audience applauds, and Ramaswamy yells, and the moderators tell him to shut up, and it’s fantastic. The former UN ambassador says says we should give equipment, not money, to Ukraine, and that abandoning them would reveal us to be a fair-weather friend and make it difficult to create alliances in the future

• Christie points out that the last time we turned our back on a shooting war in Europe, World War II happened. America promised to protect Ukraine in the 90s and we need to follow through on that now, he says.

• DeSantis: No troops in Ukraine, but yes troops to the Southern border. He's going to deport everyone who illegally immigrated here from the Middle East. The top threat to America is the Chinese Communist Party. A barrage of classic DeSantis talking points. I really hate this guy. His existence offends me on a deep level

Question 6: How would you deal with our “cold war” with China?

• Haley says that we need to modernize our military, end trade relations until China stops sending fentanyl over the Southern border, and arm Taiwan

• DeSantis says that Xi wants to "export authoritarianism." Maybe that's where DeSantis got his authoritarianism from

• Scott: Our military needs to be ready to fight wars in three continents at the same time, so we need to invest in the miltary and the industrial base. Make a complex of some kind, i guess

• Ramaswamy claims that we can't get tough with China because we're economially intertwined, which is why we need to "declare economic independence from our enemy. That's the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson, at 33, would have signed." Ramaswamy is an AI version of a Republican. You cannot change my mind. Frustrated, the moderator asks for specific plans to build up our military and Ramaswamy says we need to increase naval power by 20%

• Christie points out that no one is actually answering the question. He wants more nuclear submarines, and he wants to treat the Ukraine war as a proxy war between America and China

Question 7: Would you ban TikTok?

• Christie: Yes, not just because of the spyware problem but because it is"polluting" the minds of Our Children and creating divide on purpose as a psyop of some sort. Trump did not ban TikTok, Christie points out, but he will. "In my first week as President, we would ban TikTok"

• DeSantis: "My policy on the Chinese Communist Party is: We Win, They Lose.” A truly groundbreaking approach to conflict: never tried before. This is not ust a military war, DeSantis says, but an economic and cultural one as well. TikTok is a weapon. We need to disable that weapon. Etc

• Haley is irritated because Ramaswamy and DeSantis have said she sold land to China. She says that was 10 years ago and it's also happening in Florida. Haley and DeSantis argue about the details of Chinese land acquisition: I don't know and I don't care

• The moderators ask Ramaswamy how he could possibly ban TikTok when he uses it to campaign, and he immediately hits Nikki Haley, saying that her daughter uses TikTok and maybe she should take care of her family The crowd boos. "Leave my daughter out of this!" she says. Then, as Ramaswamy talks over her: “You’re just scum.” It is the best moment of the debate, and if you’ve seen one headline about tonight’s circus, it was probably that quote

• Haley allowed to respond to the personal attack. Her praise of China was because they helped coordinate sanctions against North Korea, she says. Ramaswamy talks over her. He's almost good at this but overplays his hand, just as he did in the first debate.

• Tim Scott brings us back to the original quesiton by saying he too would ban TikTok and prevent China from buying farmand and stealing our intellectual property. He wants to keep jobs in America. Hey, fair enough

Question 8: Venezuela. What’s up with that? We know it’s your very favorite thing to talk about

• DeSantis: we won't depend on Venezuela for oil, and we should "turn the screws" on them Say what you want about DeSantis: as someone who provided legal justification for torture at Guantanamo, he probably knows a thing or two about turning screws

• Haley opts to dodge the Venezuela softball and insetad accuse DeSantis of opposing fracking and being a liberal on climate. DeSantis says he loves fracking but we shouldn't do it in the Everglades. I also think that’s a bad idea. Maybe it’s a bad idea other places too, for similar reasons?

Question 9: Seems like things are really expensive. What will you do about this?

• Tim Scott invokes his single mother's struggle, while he was growing up, then promises "curtainty and predictability" of gas prices and prices generally by keeping jobs in America. The moderator says it doesn't really answer the question, and Tim Scott retorts that Drill Baby Drill is totally an economic policy actually. He then quotes from the Bible.

• DeSantis, the ivy league darling, says that he used to work minimum wage jobs and was able to get ahead. Now people are falling behind, he says, because of Biden. Apparently real wages went stagnant in 2020 and not the mid ‘70s like we all thought. His solution: deregulate everything and also to "rein in the federal reserve." The COVID problems with the economy is all their fault, apparently

• Ramaswamy's big plan to help the economy is to "increase the supply": Drill Baby Drill, increase labor supply by cutting off unemployment, and increase housing supply by undoing zoning regulations. He says not enough Republicans talk about housing, and he’s not wrong. He mentions the debt burden millennials and Gen Z are carrying and says that he could solve that problem as President, but provides no further details

• Christie: Drill Baby Drill, and help Israel end the conflict as quickly as possible to avoid destabilizing oil prices. This is why Jesus won't come back. Shit like this. I wouldn't come back either

• Haley will save the middle class by cutting gas taxes and...reducing government spending. Yeah. That'll do it. Drill Baby Drill, obviously.

Question 10: What would you do about Social Security?

Time for everyone's favorite game: talk about Social Security without scaring the hoes

• Christie says he wants to raise the retirement age for people in their 30s and 40s, but not boomers. Of course. Why not. Why not sacrifice for the boomers one last time. He refuses togive a specific new retirement age, then says that Social Security is a safety net and that rich people shouldn't collect it.

• Nikki Haley has the same solution: Boomers keep their social security. The young get to pay taxes and retire late

• Ramaswamy: We can save social security if we cut military spending (YES), by which he means aid for Ukraine (NO). We can also save it by slashing bureaucracy and deregulating businesses, apparently.

• Tim Scott's amazing plan: build the economy and cut spending. Holy shit. Why has no one thought of this. Scott joins Haley and Christie in saying that seniors should get social security but young people should have it slashed.
  
  Scott is asked whether he would ever raise the retirement age. This is Scott's answer, verbatum: Scott: "All you have to do is go to a farm in Iowa. And watch the hard work and dedication." Moderator: "Yes or no, senator?" Scott: "My answer is no, but listen to this, though--"
  
  Scott finishes his point by saying that raising the retirement age for people who do physical labor is a huge deal actually, which is a great argument. But if Scott believes this, why does he want to raise retirement age for blue-collar workers in their 20s and 30s?

• DeSantis trots out his “I feel your pain” act once more. "Promise made, promise kept. I understand what you're going through," he says to the seniors. He says if we control inflation we can reduce the cost of social security, then concludes with an actual good point: life expectancy is decreasing in this country. How are you gonna increase retirement age when people are living shorter lives?

Question 11: It’s finally time to talk about the border

• Tim Scott asked how we can fight the fentanyl epidemic. He points out that opiate addiction is the real problem, that it was pushed by pharmaceutical companies, and that harm reduction can solve these overdoses—
  
  HAHAHAHA jk, we need to close the Southern border and create blanket surveillance there. Creating a panopticon all along the 1,954 miles of border between the US and Mexico would also help fight human trafficking, Scott says

• It's Chris Christie's turn to solve the border crisis:

  • More technology at ports of entry

  • Send national guard to partner with border patrol

  • Lower demand for opiates by treating people for addiction. Not joking this time: Christie is actually advocating for sane drug policy right now

• DeSantis, when asked about China's role in the fentanyl crisis, surprises me by not immediately launching into fantasies of extreme violence but instead tells the story of a friend who lost his son to fentanyl...before launching into fantasies of extreme violence. “The elites don't give a damn," DeSantis, who attended both Harvard and Yale, says, which is why, as President, he will send the US military to the border, build the wall, and authorize the use of deadly force. "We're going to shoot them stone cold dead"
  
  Ron DeSantis can't orgasm unless he's committing a war crime

• Nikki Haley's turn. What would the UN think about sending special forces into Mexico? "I don't care," Haley says. She will end all normal trade with China until the fentanyl epidemic stops, which is not how drugs work. Haley concludes by calling for more mental health facilities and addiction treatment: another drop of sanity in this ocean of bad takes

• Ramaswamy says that fentanyl is "Closer to bioterrorism." He says Obrador will lose power in Mexico in 2024 and complains that Obrador insulted him Why is no one talking about the northern border? he asks. "Build both walls"
  
  BUILD BOTH WALLS
  
  Oh Ramaswamy, why can't I quit you.

Question 12: Abortion

• DeSantis asked about last night's election results, which once again revealed overwhelming support for abortion rights. DeSantis says he "promotes a culture of life" but says that different states are going to do it differently, and that people need to be more careful about how they write these laws. This relatively moderate approach is a pretty big departure from DeSantis' competition with Pence during the first debate to see who could be more rabidly pro-life.

• Nikki Haley says she's pro-life but doesn't want to judge people for being pro-choice. States get to decide. As she did in the first debate, she advocates for compromise, bans on late-term abortions, increased availabilty for contraception. The reception is much better this time around. "We don't need to divide America on this issue anymore,” she said.

• Tim Scott, who never knows what time it is, says there needs to be a national 15-week limit on abortion, and that, despite mountains of evidence to ths econtrary, it would pass because most Americans want that ban

• Nikki Haley asked if she would support a 15-week ban and she said she'd support if it if it could pass, but it can't, once again showing herself to be the smartest person onstage when it comes to this issue

• Ramaswamy is super mad that his home state of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment codifying abortion. The problem was that Republicans presented no alternative amendment, he says. What we really need is male responsibility. Paternity tests can make that happen. His time runs out before he can explain further

• Christie sidesteps the abortion debate by saying states should decide. The bigger issue, he says, is that "We're not pro-life for the whole life." Once again, Christie stridently supports treatment for addiction. Hell yeah, man

Closing Statements

• Scott: "We need a renewal and a great awakening...we should turn back to faith, patriotism, and individual responsibilty," he says. "We should stop kneeling at protests and start kneeling at prayer." He doesn't just want to win the presidency, but also"the war for our Christian conservative values"
  
  (As someone who grew up in a very evangelical area and in fact got the shit kicked out of her by said evangelicals for being an atheist: it is impossible to overstate how much I hate that this kind of rhetoric is happening on national stages right now)

• Chris Christie: "I'm tired of seeing division." People are exhausted by the "petty personal politics" of the last few years. Essentially, he is running on the platform Biden ran on: I will take you backwards, to a time before Trump, and everything will be fine. "You can't truly say you love America unless you're ready to open your heart to every American,” Christie says: an astounding thing to hear from a Republican in 2023. While I dislike Christie strongly, I am touched that someone on this stage thinks that liberals aren't literal demons

• Vivek Ramaswamy swoops in to destroy that touching little moment of "wow not everyone on this stage thinks I'm out to destroy America" by declaring, immediately, that America is at war, not "between Black and white, or Democrat and Republican. It's between those of us who believe in our founding ideals and love this country, and a fringe minority who hates the United States of America" Ramaswamy demands that the Democratic party end the farce that Joe Biden is going to be your nominee. We know he's not even the President of the United States. Do you have the guts to step up and be honest about who you're actually going to put up"
  
  It's adorable that Ramaswamy thinks the Democrats are playing some kind of long game by nominating Biden, rather than the Occam's Razor explanation that they are idiots.
  

• Haley opens her closing statement: "The world is on fire" Hard to argue that point. Haley believes we have to "defeat terrorism and socialism.” I think it's really cool and good that we're equating terrorism and socialism. I’m sure that won’t have any horrible repercussions. "We can't win the fights of the 21st century with politicians from the 20th century," she finishes.

• DeSantis did not fantasize about violence towards others in his closing remarks, but did consider violence towards himself. "I will take the hits. I will take the arrows. I will take the barbs. Because it's not about me. It's about you...I am going to win for you and your family"
  
  DeSantis once again mentions that he's a veteran "As the governor of Florida, I delivered on all my promises, and you can trust me to deliver for you as the President of the United States"
  
  Buddy, that's kind of the whole problem actually

That's it. It's over Moderator says we had "really good, deep conversation." I must have missed that part.

Analysis

No one stood out to me as the clear winner tonight. Ramaswamy did himself no favors by bringing Haley's daughter into the debate: he's probably the biggest loser of the evening for that reason

Compared to other appearances, DeSantis did well. I was typing more than watching, but from what I saw he was making more or less human facial expressions throughout. He didn't say anything super whiny. His violent fantasies will no doubt play well with this crowd

Haley did great. Her response to Ramaswamy was extremely on point, and she came across as smart and more or less level-headed. I think she's a neocon monster, but there's a reason so many of the other contestants came for her tonight. She could be the ultimate winner of this completely pointless competition.

Tim Scott terrifies me and I do not understand why anyone takes him seriously but no major gaffes, his answers flowed well, he did fine. Chris Christie attempted to channel a long-dead age of nominal bipartisanship and did a decent job, but it won't save him or any of us.