It’s only been a few days since the first GOP debate, but already the kettle of journalist-vultures have gorged themselves on the carrion, their frenzied wake having picked the corpses bare. Alas, this feeding famishes the craving it seeks to satisfy, so we are left with sticky piles of bones, gobbets of contradictory opinion, and precious little enlightenment. We all know that when it comes to the so-called “rule of law” in this country, “the process is the punishment.” When it comes to spectacles like the Fox News-sponsored GOP debate, the process seems to be the point.
It is, I am sure you will agree, rather a pointless point, but the very pointlessness of the exercise was clearly the cherished goal. Why else would all those producers and technicians and lovingly coiffed and pressed interlocutors Bret Baier and whatever the bleached-blonde Fox mannequin who sat next to him was called: why serve up all that fatuousness just to hear them hector the candidates with a smorgasbord of silly questions followed by the admonition: “You have 30 seconds” or “You have one minute” to answer?
I happen to have Harry Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided on my desk at the moment. It is an account of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Each of the seven debates lasted about three hours. One candidate would open with a 60 minute statement, to which the other would answer with a 90-minute response. The first speaker ended with a 30-minute rejoinder. I am trying to picture what Abraham Lincoln’s response to the instruction “You have 30 seconds to reply” would be. I can’t really do it, but I suspect it would be unprintable.
As I have said elsewhere, I suspect that future historians will draw a line under this snazzy pseudo-debate, marking it down as the beginning of the end of the entire genre. Given the changes in how people get their news today—not from television, mostly—this terminus a quo was probably foreordained anyway. But it was confirmed by the simultaneous broadcast of Tucker Carlson’s interview with the only serious Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump.
The bean counters tell us that about 12.4 million people watched the FoxNews debated; that’s down from about 25 million back when Trump participated in 2020 and 2016. It took only a few hours before Tucker’s interview with Trump had racked up more than 220 million views.
I am not quite sure what that number means, other than many more people tuned into Tucker than digested what Asa Hutchinson or Chris Christie or Tim Scott or Doug what’s-his-name from North (or was it South?) Dakota had to say.
Opinions vary about the performances of the A-list participants in this B-list event. I thought the brightest, if also the glibbest, light was shone by Vivek Ramaswamy, who was eager, articulate, passionate, and well-informed on the issues. One might agree or disagree with the particulars of his remarks, but that comes with the territory.
Nikki Haley took pointed issue with some of Ramaswamy’s points, especially on the war in Ukraine, and in general she gave a strong performance. So did Ron DeSantis, who as front-runner among the also ran, probably had the most to lose that night. He made no gaffes, but neither did he pull ahead of the pack. Those vultures I opened with have pretty much picked him and his campaign clean.
Melissa Mackenzie said that former Vice President Mike Pence “came off as a constipated church lady” and a “raging hypocritical one, at that.” That’s about right, even if it is unfair to constipated church ladies and raging hypocrites, some of whom can be quite amusing. Has anyone anywhere ever accused Mike Pence of having a sense of humor? He is too busy engaged in what T. S. Eliot described as “the endless struggle to think well of [him]self” to stoop to anything like humor.
At some point early on in the faux-debate—it was more like a square dance, really—the geniuses at Fox played a snippet of Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” the plaintive song that took the internet by storm a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, Anthony was not pleased by this effort to co-opt his pointed working-class lament (though apparently he gave permission for Fox to use the clip). “I wrote that song about those people,” he said.
His larger objection was to the “weaponization” of the song in the interests of a political agenda—“conservative” or “liberal,” “Republican” or “Democrat,” it didn’t matter. It’s the same establishment, the same Leviathan, that is supporting the agenda of dependency enforced by the Washington Welfare Conglomerate whose rhetoric is all about helping the disadvantaged but whose real aim is to keep the disadvantaged disadvantaged while simultaneously increasing their number.
And this brings me to the positive or pragmatic part of my column. Several pundits have suggested that the GOP debate was at least in part a talent scouting exhibition for people who say they are running for president but who are in fact running for vice president or a cabinet post or some other preferment.
This isn’t true of the virulent anti-Trumpers on the stage—Asa Hutchinson, for example, or Chris Christie, or even Mike Pence. It probably isn’t true of Ron DeSantis, either, though it might have been had he managed his campaign differently. I think it may be true, though, for some of the others: for Tim Scott, for example, possibly Nikki Haley, and possibly Vivek Ramaswamy.
It is Vivek, I think, who has the most promise. But what would he do in a second Trump administration? He is too independent, too effervescent, to waste on a traditional cabinet post. It would be pointless, for example, to make him Secretary of Commerce, not withstanding his entrepreneurial talent.
No, I think Trump should think big when it comes to Ramaswamy. A new post should be created for him, a sort of super-sanitary enterprise charged with world’s biggest drainage project: siphoning off the huge and mephitic reservoirs that constitute the Washington swamp. It is a a gargantuan project, akin as I have said, to the Herculean task of cleansing the Augean stables.
Part of being president is being an effective talent scout. Trump made plenty of mistakes on that score the first time around. If he has another bite at the apple, he needs to think creatively and pick the very best people for the very hard job that saving the Republic will entail. Making Vivek Ramaswamy Czar in charge of swamp drainage and bureaucracy busting would be an extraordinary bold and energizing start.
I offer the idea free and for nothing.
I suggest leaving the draining of the swamp to someone like a Gen. Mike Flynn. I’m sure he knows where many of the bodies are. We need people that have been immersed in the swamp and survived so we can go for the biggest offenders first.
I would also suggest vetting people a bit more before you get on a bandwagon for them. Many people have stated that Vivek reminds them of Obama. Very slick. Here some interesting info.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Voting Record Shows He is Not a Registered Republican, and Donated to Anti-Trump Democrat Candidate in 2016 | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft
Donald Trump was a registered Democrat for most of his life. Does that automatically exclude him as a Republican candidate? I like the fact that Ramaswamy is and was disgusted and disaffected by both Democrats and Republicans. The Office of the President of the United States governs Americans, not political party affiliations. As I recall, many people liked and supported Trump in 2016 because he did not represent Republican majority positions? That’s why I voted for him.
Nikki Haley is correct about one thing: it’s time for a changing of the guard, and Ramaswamy represents that change. He is young. He is brilliant. He loves what’s best about America. As far as I can tell, his character is far superior to Trump’s. Why would he settle for second, third or tenth fiddle to a guy who throws everyone under the bus? Donald Trump reminds me of the adolescent rich kid who is never guilty of anything. It’s always someone else’s fault. That’s not to say that anything Democrats claim about him or his presidency is true. They are staging a witch hunt, and IMHO it’s for our benefit. They want to ensure that Trump is the nominee and goes down in the general election using the same cheating tactics, but with the added bonus of ensuring the electorate is less likely to question results given Trump’s current legal woes. It won’t work.
Ramaswamy is a next generation Republican. Whatever people think of him, if the Republican Party does not defend itself and its candidates more aggressively, and find some way to reach the next generation of voters, it will rightly go extinct just as the Whigs did.
Oh, where to start…
Ok, assuming Trump wins (he won’t, the Ruling Class won’t permit it), Trump would have to move with industrial-grade alacrity in order to prevent the leviathan administrative state from using its power to stall, resist and otherwise stop Trump and whoever was tasked with draining the swamp. Perhaps Vivek is the guy, but whoever it was, here is my suggestion on what, where and how to go about it.
First, again assuming Trump won (see Michael Anton’s article in Compact Magazine), getting control of the FBI, DOJ and the military would be priority one. Now, in which order I could not say because all three require Senate approval for the top jobs and there is no way on earth the Senate would grant Trump approval. But securing senior leadership of those three would of paramount importance.
Although Trump could make his appointments pending Senate approval by way of a recess appointment, that would assume the Senate was in recess at time of appointment. However, its doubtful wily Mitch McConnel would make such a blunder. Therefore, Trump would have to find some way to get around the Senate’s advise and consent duty if the Senate was not in recess. A workaround that would be hyper scrutinized by a terrified Senate with SCOTUS on speed dial in the event Trump tried to install any non-Swamp approved nominee.
But assuming Trump was able to clear this hurdle and get his nominee thru a hostile Senate, and assuming the House had not already begun impeachment proceedings, Trump and his de-Swampification czar would have to multi-task their buns off because securing control all three departments–DOD, DOJ and FBI–would be crucial for maintaining fending off SWAMP efforts at removing Trump from office.
The new FBI director would need to fire pretty much the entire executive staff of the FBI, and then begin an investigation into all agency personnel that participated in any of the schemes against Trump, the J6 political prisoners, Pro-Life demonstrators, Catholics, parents who objected to neo-Marxist school boards, and all the other anti-Constitutional activities the FBI has been involved in. Any FBI personnel who participated in the above would be summarily terminated.
The FBI National Security Division (the department used to develop the FISAs used in Operation Crossfire Hurricane) would need to shut down, or pared back significantly and staffed ONLY with Trump loyalists. And this would go double for every department in the FBI. Of course, such staffing would assume the Senate approved the FBI Director–again a pipe dream.
The DOJ would likewise need to be staffed from top to bottom with Trump loyalists, and DOJ departments swept of Obama and Democrat supporters. The Civil Rights Division would need to be all but shut down, and other departments would need to be eliminated or combined. At the same time as the personnel blood-letting was going on, Trump would need to appoint no less than a dozen Special Counsels to look into the stolen elections of 2020 and 2022, the Biden crime family activities, the Clinton crime family activities, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s criminal activities, and, of course, the government’s conspiratorial activities against Trump and protesters on January 6th.
Again, as all this was going on, Trump would need to decimate the Pentagon by firing most–if not all–of the 43 or 44 four-star generals and admirals. (Note: during WWII there were only seven four-star generals and admirals commanding 12.1 million men and women in uniform).
Trump and his czar would need to drill down into the service ranks–if necessary, going as far as O-7, or even O-6 (Colonels) to find qualified, dedicated, non-woke, non-political, no BS officers to lead the services and rehabilitate them from the years of imposed sloth and neo-Marxist indoctrination.
All the service academies leadership would be fired and staffed with no-nonsense warriors dedicated to reversing years of institutional rot. The whole culture of the Department of Defense would have to be changed, and that would require not only years of effort. but wholesale retirements within the officer corps. It would indeed be a task of Herculean proportions.
But for the immediate needs of Trump and his czars, the top leadership of the DOD would have to be loyal to the Constitution (the country) and Trump–in that order. And it wouldn’t hurt if those newly minted flag officers had a real contempt for those they replaced, and the SWAMP now opposed to them.
Of course, all this is just fantasy because Trump will not win, Vivek will not be the VP, a cabinet officer or even in a Republican administration because a Republican is not going to win in November 2024. The people who stole the 2020 and 2022 elections are not going to stop because no one is going to stop them. We are in a post-Constitutional period where power begets more power, and that power is not shared or leveraged through quaint electoral niceties.
I understand people are hanging on to hope, or in denial, or engaging in normalcy bias–but these are NOT normal times.
People need to begin thinking in terms of surviving, existing and resisting. The unthinkable must become reality, and reality must not be ignored. We ARE there, and in the next few months more–many more–will come to accept this.
I have misgivings regarding Vivek based on his position regarding the election which he clearly stated in his book.
This is what he said in his book:
Top election officials in virtually every state, regardless of party, said they’d found no evidence of any significant level of fraud.? The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history… There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The president fired the agency’s director a few days later.2 In a call with Georgia’s secretary of state, the president implausibly claimed to have won every single state something unprecedented in the nation’s history, and a sign that his claims weren’t grounded in fact. 10 Mike Pence, a man I have great respect for, decided it was his constitutional duty to resist the president’s attempts to get him to unilaterally overturn the results of the election, even in the face of the January 6 Capitol riot. 11 Our institutions did hold, in the end. But they shouldn’t have been tested.
I won’t go into the details at length. The fact that all of our governmental institutions so unanimously found no evidence of significant fraud is telling. Furthermore, I’ve talked to many Republicans at all levels of government, and not one has ever presented convincing evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump; very few have seriously tried. I don’t believe that most Republican politicians actually think the election was stolen. Lately, more of them have started admitting that in public. 12
I recognize that this is not a typical conservative talking point. I’m committed to following the evidence, not blindly rooting for any one person or party. The pursuit of excellence requires that beliefs be determined strictly by evidence, not loyalty to one group or animosity for another. I’m simply not convinced the election was stolen.