As Joe Biden’s police state locks up conservatives for the crime of fearing God (and/or mounting one teensy insurrection) while drag-queen librarians try to burn effigies of Dr. Seuss, seven of the GOP’s top presidential contenders gathered at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, to debate the most urgent questions facing our sorrowful republic. But the only question that really matters is this: Which candidates derived the most political benefit from Wednesday night’s earned-media opportunity and which the least, as measured by the subjective impressions of one millennial pinko in New York City?
Happily, I am well-positioned to answer this question. Here’s who won and lost the first round of the GOP’s battle for second place.
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Winner: Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy came across as a slick sociopath, the kind of cartoon con man who’d sell defective wheelchairs to a children’s cancer ward. The entrepreneur laced his every utterance with industrial-grade self-regard, beaming as he called for the deportation of every U.S. citizen born to an undocumented immigrant, the prohibition of trans health care, and the need for striking UAW members to reject the culture of “victimhood.”
Pressed on how he reconciles his hardline anti-China message with his recent business dealings in that country, the entrepreneur declared that, while his firm did open a subsidiary in China like every other company, “you know what I did that was different then every other company? We got the hell out of there!”
It is unclear whether Ramaswamy meant to suggest that he only opened a subsidiary in China so that he could later spite the CCP by closing it (the way that a bully playing keep-away might dangle a notebook above a nerd’s head) or else, that he could not possibly have known five years ago that China would one day be run by a communist party hostile to the United States. Regardless, the businessman made clear that he’s an unprincipled phony who’s willing to cozy up to authoritarian regimes to make a profit and punch down at marginalized constituencies to win applause. In other words, he demonstrated that he has all the makings of a successful Republican presidential candidate.
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Winner: Chris Christie.
Going into Wednesday night, the probability of Chris Christie winning the GOP primary was about as high as that of Mike Pence launching an OnlyFans. But the former New Jersey governor changed all that in Simi Valley.
The turning point in the Republican presidential race — if not, in 21st-century U.S. history — came when Christie addressed the elephant not in the room. Turning to the camera, Christie said, “Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself … You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here’s gonna keep calling you Donald Trump anymore, we’re gonna call you Donald DUCK.”
The ensuing laughter was so cacophonous that it shattered the vast window panes separating Reagan’s presidential library from the idyllic California landscape that surrounds it. Shards of glass rained down on the audience, slicing their scalps and spitting blood on their garments. Yet Christie’s witticism was even more cutting, and so on they cackled, some slapping knees littered with with jagged window fragments.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the airspace between Michigan and Mar-a-Lago, Trump watched as his lackeys bit their tongues, vibrating from suppressed chortles. Then, the ex-president stormed off to the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face, stared long at his reflection, whispered, “I’ve wasted my life,” and promptly died.
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Losers: All of them.
In seriousness, there were no winners in Simi Valley. Not Ron DeSantis, whose incessant nodding made him look like a bobblehead, and whose polished yet monotonous line deliveries made him sound like a try-hard student-council candidate. Not Nikki Haley, who’s pre-canned dig at Ramaswamy (“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber”) only served to underscore her own lack of discernment, as the former South Carolina governor had praised the entrepreneur’s “combination of honesty, intellect, and foresight” only months earlier.
Not Mike Pence, whose only memorable line was the bizarre (and somewhat dubious) assurance that he sleeps with his wife.
Not Doug Burgum, who looks and sounds like the president in a 1990s movie about a doomsday volcano. Not the moderators who routinely failed to prevent four different candidates from simultaneously jabbering for what seemed like minutes at a time, as though the Fox Business Channel were staging some tedious avant-garde play. And certainly not any of the people whose poor career choices or personality disorders led them to watch the whole hideous spectacle.
The reason why every candidate lost is simple: Shortly before the debate began, Donald Trump announced that he would not be considering any of his primary rivals as a running mate. Given that every GOP candidate onstage Wednesday trails Trump by about as much as RFK Jr. trails Biden in the Democratic primary, the ex-president’s declaration closed off every other Republican also-ran’s most plausible path to the White House.
But everyone lost in another, more profound sense. On Wednesday night, the Republican field collectively demonstrated (in case it wasn’t already clear) that conservative politics in the United States has reached new heights of moral degeneracy and intellectual bankruptcy. The race’s putative “moderates” — Nikki Haley and Tim Scott — respectively floated an invasion of Mexico and end to birthright citizenship. North Dakota’s governor explained that the reason why health-care costs are unusually high in the United States is that our government got involved in the health-care sector (it is unclear whether Mr. Burgum is unaware that public-sector involvement in health care is ubiquitous across developed countries or whether he is merely contemptuous of the GOP electorate’s intelligence).
It is possible (perhaps even probable) that Joe Biden will win reelection next year. But America has a two-party system. Eventually, the GOP is going to come back to power. And no matter who has won red America’s internecine struggle by that point, it is now clear that the party will be led by a vicious reactionary of one stripe or another. And when they inevitably reclaim the White House, the entire world will lose, as well.
