Yesterday I had expected to be home in time to watch the GOP debate live because thanks to BidenomicsTM there has not been enough work at work for full 8 hour days but as two people were on vacation and two more had left finding other jobs I ended up working a full shift and getting home at 1:00 am after dropping off my car at the garage for a pre-inspection checkup didn’t get to see the GOP debate till 1:05 which meant a long night and given the repairs and inspection this morning for my 1999 LeSabre (it passed) I’ve not had time to comment till now.
The first thing that jumped out at me was Nikki Haley who much to my surprise sounded like the credible presidential candidate and make several excellent points, particularly on the fact that there was absolutely no chance of passing a national abortion ban. She seemed ready to showcase herself as a credible alternative to Donald Trump and without a question accomplished that mission. The proof will be if Trump comes after her.
There was a lot of speculation that everyone would be targeting Ron DeSantis but that wasn’t the case. DeSantis made his points very well and seemed to spend his time focusing on the failures of the Biden administration (something that it seemed to me the moderators were doing all they could to avoid dealing with that subject). While Haley was the star there is no question DeSantis did what he wanted to do which was make the case that he had produced and would continue to do so. Ed Morrissey put it best:
In terms of entertainment Chris Christie was the primary source of it spending all his time throwing punches at Ramaswamy as there was no Trump to attack while occasionally touting his record as a conservative governing a deep blue state (a record that wasn’t as bad as people remember it to be) Ramaswamy handled it well and make me smile by forthrightly calling climate change BS and speaking truths concerning Ukraine and other subjects that were being dodged. I thought he acquitted himself well.
Most of the rest of the field was invisible, Tim Scott particularly, although he did better than Hutchinson & Bergum who showed they didn’t belong on that stage. As for Mike Pence he kept talking about the achievements of the Trump/Pence admin which is a legit move and was rather adamant that despite the Biden admin making a point to pass a law preventing a VP to reject electors after the fact (a point he never mentioned btw) he in his opinion had no authority to reject the electors in 2020. I think he’s dead wrong but I also think he actually believes he believes that
Finally several quick thoughts:
- I think the debate moderation demonstrated little difference between Fox & the rest of the MSM
- It’s apparently still possible to have an actual debate about substance, at least without Trump
- The whole Trump “counter programing” plan really doesn’t work when in a streaming era
- It seemed to me Youtube did all it could to steer people to the spin rather than the debate
- When the first round of debate cuts come half of those candidates should be gone
- I’ve yet to watch the Trump interview I’ll do so tonight when I get home from work
- I suspect Trump will reverse his no debate position once the field is down to 3 or 4 but we’ll see


