Kass crushes again. He found the same exchange between Haley and Ramaswamy about the US fighting endless wars to be the most offensive crap of the night.
No Knockouts in GOP Debate
By John Kass
August 25, 2023
It wasn’t exactly a clash of titans, was it? It wasn’t Lincoln-Douglas, or Socrates trying to reason with the Athenian mob.
It wasn’t Morning in America. It wasn’t even Dempsey Firpo.
The Republican Presidential debate in Milwaukee was more like Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Little Swans, with all the kicking precisely choreographed by political consultants.
Nobody knocked anybody out. But a few revealed themselves with politically fatal self-induced infections, which is worse. And now they’re seeking approval for their disastrous performance having infected themselves like the walking dead, like zombies and those former governors Asa Hutchinson (AR) and Chris Christie (NJ).
Will no-one please ease their passage?
With former President Donald Trump sitting this one out, the Republican Presidential debate in Milwaukee was not a prizefight, not with the heavyweight unavailable.
It was not even one of those minor-league club fights in the greatest boxing movie of all time, John Houston’s “Fat City.”
It was a dance, like the Dance of the Little Swans, with all the kicking precisely choreographed by political consultants. And there was plenty of scratching, in the way of angry cats.
But I suppose you want to know who “won.”
OK.
I guess you can say that Trump “won.”
He sat and interviewed with Tucker Carlson on “X.” When last I checked a few minutes ago on Thursday, some 150 million people had seen some of the interview. Does that mean all of them love Trump? No.
I still wish Trump had participated in the debate. But he’s so far ahead in the polls that hanging around and giving his debate opponents time and opportunity to bloody him would be political malpractice.
“Why would I want to watch that nonsense?” said a confirmed Trump supporter, a former Democrat, told me. “You watch it and tell me who won.”
The winner was not Hutchinson, who should get an award for “most boring” Bush Establishment Cadaver who insists he’s alive despite evidence to the contrary.
And it certainly wasn’t Christie, who should have stayed on that beach on the Jersey shore years ago—the one he hogged during a government shutdown while selfishly keeping New Jersey residents away. Back then he told angry New Jersey voters that if they wanted to sit on the a governor’s beach house, they should run for governor and win and live in the governor’s beach house.
He’s the arrogant, obnoxious fat jock from high school who had gone to seed, and as Christie licked his lips, saying of Ramaswamy that he had “enough of a guy who stands up here who sounds like ChatGPT.”
Is that pithy? Or pathetic?
I couldn’t help but think of Christi practicing the line to himself again and again while shaving, loudly, laughing at his own wit, the mirror fogging up, family members eyeing each other as they pass wordlessly in the hall.
Perhaps the worst exchange. Was one that was loved by Fox News Channel anchors who, the next day, were cheerleading for Nikki Haley.
They were bubbly with excitement for her. It was nauseating. Haley, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations kicked at self-made businessman Ramaswamy for what she said was a lack of foreign policy experience.
She has plenty of foreign policy experience, having supported the endless wars of former President George W. Bush and his neoconservative political wing. Like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R, South Carolina, she never met a war she didn’t like as long as others had to go.
The Republican neoconservatives supported the disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq and kept Americans in Afghanistan far too long. They played chess with the world and left it a smoking ruin. They joined with establishment Democrats. There was no foreign adventure they didn’t like. They’re all about projecting. American boots on the ground as long as those boots didn’t belong to their own kids. And they were discredited by the voters and eclipsed by Trump, but like all elephants who make zillions through defense contracts, they never forget.
And Ramaswamy has this annoying habit of reminding us who they are, and they hate that. But my friend Dan Proft suggested the other morning there is something of the huckster in Ramaswamy, and I agree, but he does get to the point of the thing. The Republican base does not favor endless wars any longer.
Haley was infuriated. But Ramaswamy and, to a lesser extent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said they would cut off funding for the endless war in Ukraine. Ramaswamy mocked Democrats and neo-con Republicans for worrying more about Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s borders than America’s wide-open border with Mexico.
“I find it offensive that we have professional politicians who will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv, to their pope, Zelenskyy, without doing the same for the people in Maui or the south side of Chicago,” he said, referring to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
DeSantis was a bitmore cautious, saying would stop aid to Ukraine unless European governments stepped up to “pull their weight.”
Haley accused Ramaswamy of traitorous thought, wanting to “hand Ukraine to Russia” and wanting to “let China eat Taiwan.”
“You are choosing a murderer” over an ally of the U.S., Haley said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ouch.
They reveal themselves.
“I wish you success on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon,” Ramaswamy shot back, listing two large U.S. weapons manufacturers.
“You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” said Haley.
So there.
Well, you know where she stands now. She’s with the neo-cons and the endless wars that suck American blood and treasure to benefit the rich men North of Richmond, whether they’re pro-war Democrats like Biden or pro-war Republicans like Haley.
Things are so upside down these days.
When I was a boy, many years ago, more than 50 years, back when the American left did not support endless wars, the songwriter Bob Dylan wrote the classic protest song he called “Masters of War.”
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.
So, who “won” the’ debate in Milwaukee?
You didn’t. I didn’t. Neither did Socrates.
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