By: Noah Rothman – nationalreview.com – August 24, 2023

It was Vivek Ramaswamy’s night in Milwaukee, but not necessarily in a way that advances his presidential ambitions. Not in the long term, anyway. The upstart Millennial candidate picked every fight he could with his fellow Republican aspirants. He struck out a number of untenable policy positions, all of which he justified by claiming that he alone had the “courage” to court such risks. He swung for the fences in pursuit of as many viral moments as possible, often eagerly stepping on his own message by muddying them up with gratuitous insults. All the while, he absorbed blow after blow that would have otherwise been directed at Ron DeSantis. By contrast, the Florida governor emerged relatively unscathed from the first GOP presidential debate.

The two candidates rarely distinguished themselves from each other on policy — with the possible exception of abortion, but just because Ramaswamy was the only candidate on that stage who ducked the one question dedicated to the issue of life. Only Ramaswamy and DeSantis raised their hands when the field was asked if its members wouldn’t support additional tranches of aide to Ukraine. Both took the hardest line against the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under Joe Biden in the effort to pivot away from a question designed to pin the field down on whether the criminal allegations against Donald Trump were disqualifying. Rhetorically, they both devoted themselves to the ceaseless pursuit of the killer soundbite. But it was Ramaswamy who drew the most fire from his opponents, in part, because he was so desperate for it.

Ramaswamy’s execution was frequently maladroit. He wanted Republicans to remember that only he had the “courage” to say “the climate change agenda is a hoax,” but he prefaced it in the same breath with the claim that all his GOP opponents were “bought and paid for.” The insult activated Chris Christie, who went for the jugular by calling Ramaswamy the GOP equivalent of Barack Obama — a preprogrammed whiz kid who speaks in “ChatGPT” soundbites.

Likewise, Ramaswamy did his best to win tomorrow morning’s news cycle by wrapping his Rube Goldberg foreign-policy plan to decouple Moscow from Beijing by giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants up in a tidy, five-second bow. “Ukraine is not a priority for the United States of America,” he insisted, adding that Americans cannot again empower figures who would get the country into “another no-win war.” How that diagnosis applies to Russia’s war of choice in Ukraine, he left to our imaginations. But by mucking up his soundbite by pairing it with an attack on Republicans who make a “pilgrimage” to Ukraine to visit their “pope, [Volodymyr] Zelensky,” Ramaswamy invited pushback and Nikki Haley. She made the most of it.

Ramaswamy “wants to hand Ukraine to Russia,” she marveled. “He wants to let China eat Taiwan. He wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to friends.”

“Nikki, I wish you well on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon,” Ramaswamy petulantly replied.

“You know you’ve put down everyone on this stage,” Haley continued. “He will make America less safe,” she informed the audience to the sound of sustained applause. “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows!”

With the notable exception of Ramaswamy’s answer on education, which was relatively thoughtful and soundbite-free, the pharmaceutical-industry billionaire consciously sought to corner the votes of catastrophist cable-news addicts. Where the field was sunny and optimistic, he was morose.

“It is not morning in America,” Ramaswamy informed his fellow Republicans. “We live in a dark moment.” Indeed, America is in the midst of a “cold cultural civil war,” he declared amid a discussion of the nation’s mental-health crisis. Indeed, Ramaswamy cast himself in the role of national healer — America’s life coach who can help America’s disaggregated and aimless masses (“listless vessels,” if you will) find “purpose and meaning” in their lives. The very premise suggests Christie’s attack on Ramaswamy as the Republican iteration of Obama could have legs. But it all combined to make Ramaswamy into the night’s star, for good or ill.

And for a while, it will be good. At least, from Ramaswamy’s perspective. The debate will boost his name recognition and fundraising, and it will probably contribute to a brief boost in the polls. But by inviting the criticism he took, Ramaswamy provided Ron DeSantis with cover. There is a notion abroad — one that seems to have been internalized by the GOP field — that DeSantis is no longer Donald Trump’s most viable challenger in the race. But DeSantis polls strongest among Republicans, particularly in the early states. He is the best-funded candidate in the race, and his operation’s organizational strength is formidable.

DeSantis turned in a passable performance, batting single after single for two hours relatively unmolested. All the while, no one so much as laid a glove on him. The closest DeSantis came to taking direct fire involved Christie obliquely criticizing him, and not by name, for delivering a “pre-canned speech” rather than directly and unequivocally praising Mike Pence for the role he played on January 6. If the DeSantis campaign is not already condemned to ignominy and humiliation, his opponents will regret passing on the opportunity to take the fight to the Florida governor.

The rest of the field was impressive, and all had their moments. Pence was combative but not aggressive, and he gave far better than he got. Senator Tim Scott leaned heavily into the Mr. Nice Guy act, which might have sacrificed the opportunity for a breakout moment. Christie and Haley held their own and were admirably willing to communicate hard truths to Republican voters — Christie on Trump’s unfitness for the presidency and Haley on the limits of executive power and the bully pulpit to muscle a pro-life agenda into federal law. Refreshingly, Governor Doug Burgum eschewed soundbites altogether, preferring instead to convey his knowledgeability and dispassion on the issues that have genuine policy salience. Asa Hutchinson . . . well, Asa Hutchinson was there.

But that’s more than you can say for Trump. The former president did not take up much of the field’s attention on the debate stage — outside the segment focused exclusively on Trump’s legal peril, he felt like an afterthought. That unfamiliar condition will be shattered by tomorrow afternoon when Trump will surrender to authorities in Georgia to be arraigned. Twenty-four hours from now, the most famous mug shot in American criminal history will already be finding its way onto t-shirts and social-media profiles, and this brief window into an alternative universe in which Trump is no longer the dominant force in American political life will feel like a distant memory.

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Source: Republican Debate: It Was Ramaswamy’s Night, but Not in a Good Way | National Review