All posts tagged: debate stage

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

“We’ve become a party of losers,” the conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy declared during the opening minutes of tonight’s Republican primary debate in Florida. He bemoaned the GOP’s lackluster performance in Tuesday’s elections, and then he identified the Republican he held personally responsible for the party’s defeats. Was this the moment, a viewer might have wondered, that a top GOP presidential contender would finally take on Donald Trump, the absent frontrunner who hasn’t deigned to join his rivals on the debate stage? Of course not. Ramaswamy proceeded to blame not the GOP’s undisputed leader for the past seven years but Ronna McDaniel, the party functionary unknown to most Americans who chairs the Republican National Committee. After calling on McDaniel to resign, Ramaswamy then attacked one of the debate moderators, Kristen Welker of NBC News, before turning his ire on two of his onstage competitors, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The moment was a fitting encapsulation of a debate that, like the first two Republican primary match-ups, all but ignored the candidate who wasn’t there. Five Republicans …

It’s Still Trump’s Party – The Atlantic

It’s Still Trump’s Party – The Atlantic

Last night’s GOP presidential debate featured eight candidates, none of them named Donald Trump, but it was the former president who won the night. His aggregate lead in the national polls is titanic—he is more than 40 points ahead of the fast-fading Ron DeSantis—and nothing that happened on the debate stage in Milwaukee will change that. Those who watched the debate will, for a few hours anyway, remember certain moments, good and bad, and take away certain impressions, positive and negative. For my part, I thought two former governors, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, were the most impressive. Haley was particularly strong on foreign policy, lacerating Vivek Ramaswamy for his stances on Ukraine (hand it over to Russia), Israel (cut funding), and China (abandon Taiwan). “You don’t do that to friends,” the former United Nations ambassador said, attacking his stance on Israel. “What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.” She added, “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows!” Haley also called out Republicans for promising in campaigns to cut …

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Big Night in the Milwaukee Debate

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Big Night in the Milwaukee Debate

The epigraph for the first 2024 Republican presidential debate came from Vivek Ramaswamy. “It is not morning in America. We’re living in a dark moment,” he said, midway through the melee in Milwaukee. He seemed to speak for every candidate on the stage during a dour and punchy evening on Fox News. Ramaswamy was a fitting messenger for the mantra, because the debate was his coming out party. He was, if not definitively the winner of the debate, clearly the main character. No candidate was so eager to get in the mix on every issue, none so ready with quips, none so eager to land a blow on rivals, and none so likely to be the target of blows himself. “Who the heck is this skinny with a funny name and what the heck is he doing on this debate stage?” Ramaswamy joked at the outset, borrowing a line from President Barack Obama. It’s a set piece that he’s unlikely to have to use again. Anyone watching the debate knows now. Perhaps the most surprising …

The Republican Presidential Debate Is a Pageant of Also-Rans

The Republican Presidential Debate Is a Pageant of Also-Rans

What are we all doing here? The Republicans’ first primary debate dangles on the calendar like one of those leftover paper snowflakes slapped up on the mini-fridge. It feels like a half-hearted vestige—it’s late summer, five months before the first votes are cast; precedent calls for a lineup of haircuts on a stage. And for the most part, the qualifiers will oblige, except for the main haircut—former President Donald Trump, barring some last-minute fit of FOMO that lands him in Milwaukee en route to his surrender to authorities in Georgia. So why should the rest of us bother? Would anyone watch a Mike Tyson fight if Iron Mike wasn’t actually fighting? Or The Sopranos, if Tony skipped the show for a therapy session (with Tucker Carlson)? Poor Milwaukee, by the way, which already suffered desertion three summers ago when it was selected to host the Democratic National Convention only to have COVID keep everyone home. Joe Biden blew off his own convention and didn’t bother to send an emissary (no Jill, Kamala, or even Doug). …