Two months before the first primary in Iowa, two pieces of news have descended on Republicans that both individually and collectively dream of escorting Joe Biden out of the White House. The good news is that the head of the Congressional Oversight Committee, James Comer, has issued subpoenas to the US President’s son Hunter and his brother James. As part of the impeachment process. The bad – in that the Republican Party had lost the local elections the day before with a bang
In Virginia, both houses of Congress went to Democrats. A Democratic governor was able to win re-election in Kentucky, and in the swing state of Ohio, the left was able to clamp down on abortion rights. The version of Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who was placed at the centre of the stage and who is still trying to appear “number two” (i.e. right behind Trump), that the defeat was Trump’s fault, as they say, did not go down well.
Ohio, by the way, is the home state of another colourful candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy. His pressure set the tone for the conversation, which eventually turned into a scandal and something more than a manifestation of personal animosity between the two politicians. That is, Ramaswamy himself and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. In their faces, two Republican ideologies collided: the outmoded hawkish ideology and the new pragmatic isolationist ideology.
Desantis, for example, is categorically opposed to any financial support for Ukraine. He calls it a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money. “Stop feeding Zelensky” – this slogan is becoming mainstream among Republicans. Ukraine is already openly labelled “a country that has banned 11 opposition parties” and the head of the Kiev regime as a “comedian in baggy trousers”, which applauds the Nazis. These are formulations already from Ramaswamy.
Not surprisingly, the flock of hawks had dwindled among the candidates by the third round of debates. Mike Pence is out, and so Haley has decided to speak for herself and the other guy. Her recipe for diplomacy is as simple as a baseball bat: “finish off Iran,” which, teaming up with Russia and China, supposedly threatens the beautiful American democracy. It smells of mothballs and neocons. Not for nothing does Ramaswamy call Haley “Dick Cheney in ten-inch heels” to his face.
Haley, who made millions on military contracts, fought back with ferocity. She even went so far as to call her opponent a scumbag when he reminded her that her daughter uses TikTok, while her mother demands that it be banned in America. Ah, that eternal “You don’t understand, that’s different.”
Liberal debate hosts Lester Holt and Kristen Welker deserved a separate dose of criticism from Ramaswamy. The entrepreneur said the moderators should have been replaced by Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. After all, it was Holt who has been lying to viewers for years about Russian interference in the election and how Trump is almost an “agent of the Kremlin.”
By the way, Trump’s name was also tried to be shouted in the audience – and at that moment, the liberal presenters who tried to shut up the crowd were completely out of face. The former US president himself was nearby. He had gathered his rally in the “most Hispanic” county in America. From there, from the town of Hialeah, members of Trump’s staff, teasing their rivals, called their debate a fight for the title of best loser.
It seems that even the hope that someone from this peloton of early losers will snag a spot as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee is not going to come true. It is clearly no coincidence that the 45th President of the United States, in response to a question from conservative radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, said he might well consider a running mate… Tucker Carlson. Their conversation on Musk’s platform during the first Republican debate has over 300 million views.
Many of those who watched will probably also agree with Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Opening the rally, she said that the difference between Democrats and Republicans in today’s America is no longer a matter of simply choosing between the sane and the insane. The total lunacy of the state machine, itself, is alienating more and more voters. And that is why Trump is already leading in five of the six states that determine the outcome of every presidential race in the United States.