I did watch the GOP debate Wednesday night. So, first I’ll do a quick rundown of how I think the candidates did:
- DeSantis – won, but no break-out moments
- Vivek – will probably get a bit of a bounce due to some of the GOP now loves sideshow antics
- Nikki Haley – performed better than expected
- Tim Scott – a few good moments, but faded as the debate went on
- Chris Christie – way more subdued than expected
- Mike Pence – preaching to a GOP about principles that the Trump GOP replaced with unswerving devotion to Trump.
- Asa Hutchison – came across as angry and bitter – a relic from an older GOP.
- Doug Burgum – governor of ND, unknown nationally – came across as a really nice guy.
Now for a bunch of rambling opinions, here goes.
There’s probably a good portion of Trump’s hardcore base who consider everyone other than Trump, and whoever his current groupies surrounding him are, as part of the Deep State. A lot of terms get thrown around in MAGA circles that are the same sort of “othering” that people on the right accuse the left of doing to demonize and marginalize them. MAGA Republicans fume about being labeled Deplorables, but they throw out RINOs or neocons or communists labels constantly And no, DeSantis did not call MAGA Republicans “listless vessels,” because in context, he was speaking about Republicans in Congress, who only kiss Trump’s butt rather take action based on principles.
Certain names, like Paul Ryan or Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, get spit out like curses. The people who believe Trump is the only person who can “save” America, won’t be persuaded to even consider any other GOP candidates. I’ve never been that dedicated to a politician and I sure was an admirer of President Ronald Reagan, but I still saw his flaws and I disagreed with him on some issues. Trump loyalists are all-in on Donald J. Trump – no matter what he says, no matter what he does – they will support him – no matter what. And they demand no accountability for mistakes he’s made – like keeping Dr. Fauci in charge of COVID policy up until the day he left office
I recognize my views aren’t what “most other Americans” believe or think, but within our very partisan echo-chambers – Trump supporters believe most of America believes what they do and Democrats believe most of America believes what they do. America is over 334 million people – that’s a whole lot of people to assume that most of them believe the same thing you do. While I am not big on trusting polls, consistently both Trump and Biden have very high negatives across the political spectrum. I’ve always been rather a contrarian and am used to holding opinions that aren’t popular and I’m fine with that.
There are plenty of Republicans, who are sick to death of Trump’s sideshows, sick of all the chaos and long for there to be some principles to the GOP platform, beyond loyalty to Trump. These people aren’t all RINOs – many of them are committed to conservative principles and the Constitution. There’s also a faction of Never Trump, former Republicans, who threw in their lot with Democrats in 2020 and became Biden supporters, but I truly believe most of the ones in the media were bought and paid for, to be Trump-bashers on liberal media.
Some of Trump’s most devoted mouthpieces were Democrats and became Republicans like 5 minutes ago and some, like Trump himself, have closer ties to the Clintons and George Soros than any Republicans in Congress. Trump was golfing buddies with Bill Clinton for years, after Clinton left office, and he was friends with both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trump made a call to Bill Clinton in 2015, to discuss entering the 2016 race – that’s how close they were. Bill Clinton urged Trump to run (the perfect Bill Clinton triangulation strategy formed – portray Bernie as the far-left kook and Trump as the far-right kook, clearing the middle path for Hillary.) Hillary was such a terrible candidate that even Bill Clinton’s brilliant political strategy didn’t get her past the finish line. I thought the Clintons were total crooks and corrupt to the core – but I also think Bill Clinton is a political genius. Trump squeaked by in 2016 (Hillary won the popular vote with 48% to Trump’s 46%). I live in a world where I look for information and facts – Trump’s 2004 Trump Tower Chicago project was funded by Deutsche Bank and a trio of hedge funds – one which was Soros backed. Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:
“On October 16, 2004, Donald Trump and Hollinger International, the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times, completed the $73 million sale of the former home of the newspaper a week after it relocated.[95] On October 28, 2004, Trump held a ceremony to begin the demolition of the former Sun-Times Building.[96][97][98] The demolition and construction were financed by a $650 million loan from Deutsche Bank and a trio of hedge funds, one of which George Soros backed.[99]“
For me, DeSantis’ strongest selling point wasn’t in the debate. I watched him during Hurricane Ian and saw principled, servant leadership, day after day, as he led disaster relief efforts in FL. I realized then that if there was a crisis and he said, “Come on, follow me!” I would trust him to try to get us safely through the crisis and I haven’t felt that way about Trump, Biden, any other politicians in a long, long time. Biden is a walking disaster all by himself – just look at his handling of this Maui wildfire disaster. We have the situation in Maui right now, with a president who didn’t want to interrupt his vacations and all he had to say was, “No Comment” for almost a week.
Trump was more invested in fighting the liberal media and Democrats during more than one disaster – especially with the hurricane in Puerto Rico. The Democrat mayor of San Juan was waging a political sideshow against Trump and Trump was battling her and the liberal media – all while the people of Puerto Rico were suffering. And yes, Puerto Rico has big problems with corruption, but the President should rise above all that and put getting help to suffering people first. DeSantis just focused on disaster relief and he ignored the liberal media efforts to bait and attack him.
I disagree with Trump, DeSantis and most other Republicans on Ukraine, because I see the situation not as simplistic as just stop sending money and Ukraine is “not our problem.” Nikki Haley made a case for not abandoning Ukraine, somewhat, and so did Chris Christie.
The thing about believing it’s just as simple as stop sending money to Ukraine is that both Russia and China have global economic and territorial expansionist ambitions. I’ve heard more than one Trump person online talk about the threat of China and BRICS expanding and saying we should be focused on China, not Russia. That’s absurd. Russia and China have been longtime allies and partners. The BRICS founders were China, Russia, India and Brazil. Both China and Russia pose some serious threats to US interests and them working together against our interests is even more of a concern. If we walk away from both our NATO allies and Ukraine, we won’t have any friends left in the world. NATO came about in 1949 and it’s a treaty passed by the Senate. It’s a law the president must honor. We have a security agreement with Ukraine, that came about in the 90s after the USSR collapsed. It’s called the Budapest Memorandum – it’s not a treaty, so a president can just not honor it.
If we abandon Ukraine, China and Russia would be even more emboldened than they’ve been after the Biden administration Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. That debacle likely emboldened Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in the belief the Biden administration and Europeans would not respond.
Too many Americans see things only through a Dem vs. Repub. lens, while the rest of the world sees us as just America. It would be very hard to create some America First vision of American greatness if America abandons it’s closest allies and just gives carte blanche to Russia in Ukraine. All of America’s adversaries would be emboldened if we abandon Ukraine and our European allies. We would be much weaker and no other countries would trust us – and they’d be rushing to cut deals with the strong horses on the world stage – Russia and China. Foreign affairs is a lot more complicated than just do A or B, because all the other countries involved have their own interests and concerns.
Yes, the past 20 years of regime-change and democracy-building in places most Americans don’t care about – like Iraq and Afghanistan or Hillary’s Libya mess, have been failures and I don’t want to do that anymore either, but I also don’t think America becoming an isolationist country will keep us safe. The past 20 years of failed regime-change/forever wars policies were a disaster, but isolationism has a much longer history of failing and coming back to bite America in the butt – usually in that we were unprepared for war and to defend our nation. A lot of people, even Trump, blab about what a great president Reagan was, because Reagan transformed the conservative movement in America and he stood firm challenging the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union collapsed. I formed a lot of my foreign policy views during the Reagan years. Reagan was about peace through strength.
None of the GOP candidates on stage or Trump are where I’m at on foreign policy and Biden and Democrats are a complete foreign policy nightmare (and that’s why so much of this Ukraine effort is failing, I think). I feel the dumbing down of America has reached critical mass, when I listen to so much of the political discourse these days, especially the Vivek silliness or the MAGA crowd talking points like MTG and Kari Lake or Steve Bannon’s blustering “burn it all down” crap.
It’s much easier to get involved in military adventures than it is to get out of them, as we learned in the 1990s and all through the Global War on Terror/regime-change adventures, so just jumping ship on helping Ukraine would likely be very messy, especially if both Russia and China (and other adversaries, like Iran) read that as a green light to move full-speed ahead with their own territorial aspirations, while here in the US, we had an American President who is even weaker than Joe Biden on responding. Biden did send money and weapons to Ukraine (not timely and definitely lacking any coherent strategy – but he did send aid). Trump and some of the other GOP candidates are stating they won’t respond – it’s just “No more money to Ukraine!” and “No more wars!” Problem solved. And some of these same people complaining about aiding Ukraine are also alarmed at the BRICS expansion… wonder how much they think BRICS will expand if the US abandons Ukraine and our NATO allies (who stuck by us in Afghanistan for 20 years). How on earth they believe abandoning our closest allies will Make America Great Again, baffles me.
On domestic policy, I support DeSantis’ efforts to push back on woke policies and support of strong law and order policies. I also heard other candidates express various positions I agree with – except for Vivek, who’s staked out contradictory positions on just about every issue. Plus, I found his antics annoying and his grandiose big talking points total nonsense.
Mike Pence is now a pariah in the MAGA GOP and I think he did the right thing on January 6th to certify the electoral college vote. I don’t think J-6 was an insurrection and I also don’t think it was some Deep State plot, but I do think the events that day were disgraceful. Trump’s demands had no constitutional foundation. I remember the Dems 2000 election efforts – hanging chads in FL. Trump’s J-6 effort topped that in being disgraceful by a long shot. Pence spoke up at the debate about the question on promising to pardon Trump, if Trump were convicted and he was president. Pence got roundly booed for stating what the pardon process is. Here again, I felt like a dinosaur, because treating these constitutional processes with due deference and diligence is vital if we’re going to protect our constitutional republic. It’s about way more than loyalty to Trump, it’s about fidelity to the Constitution. It’s not just liberals who are trying to tear apart the foundation of our republic – it’s many Republicans too, who have bought into all these special rules for Trump.
I want one set of rules for everyone and that means that this Dem lawfare to bury Trump in indictments is thoroughly corrupt and it’s appalling to see this mugshot fiasco to try to humiliate Trump and these other, mostly lawyers. These indictments also will bury them in legal fees. This is the road we’re on ever since the over-the-top raids on the homes of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Last year there was also a federal raid on the home of Trump attorney, Jeffrey Clark. He was marched outside in his boxer shorts and the video was leaked to the media. He was asking if he could put his pants on.
Trump used his mugshot as his first post on X (formerly Twitter), so he’s back to his old tweeting stomping grounds. An interesting thing about X is that since Elon Musk bought it, it seems like a lot of liberal journalists and Dem politicians left or aren’t active there anymore. I am sure they have their own online meeting place now, but the Twitter Trump owned is no longer the same.
The first Republican debate didn’t change anything in the GOP field as far as Trump maintaining a big lead. The GOP field should start to thin out quickly. And, no, contrary to Kari Lake posting over and over on X, that the other candidates must drop out and support Trump and declaring the primary’s over, it’s still early days. Lake who is still grifting for money to continue her “stolen election” sideshow in AZ, thinks the primary’s over, because of polls that are getting hyped. Not a single Republican vote has been cast in the primary yet. It’s a bit hard to swallow that this Obama/Kerry supporter is now ordering Republican candidates to drop out of the race – no need for Republicans to get to vote – just shut up and, unite behind Trump, while she’s still contesting the 2022 election she lost in AZ.