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The First 2024 GOP Presidential Debate (!)

🕑 Added 2023-08-24 23:30:10 +0000 UTC

Comments

Eric Ackermann

Obviously time for a pundry episode. Growth in self-identifying Independents, rise of major third party challenges to the Duopoly (Green Party, Libertarian Party, No Lables), Cornel West candidacy, Democratic Party panic, Biden and McConnell senility, defection of black voters to Trump, Trump's popularity moving from strength to strength. And its still only 14 months to the election! Are we seeing the much anticipated realignment catching up with the Dems? Or will they evade/forstall it?

Bill Spater

Short note: Gerald Ford prospectively pardoned Richard Nixon. It is possible for a Republican president to pardon Trump before he is convicted of any federal crimes or impeached by the House.

Jacob Hollnagel

Rank punditry? What is this, Christmas?

erik w bjorke

Two things: Ramaswamy’s Hinduism has got to catch up with him at some point, at least with evangelicals. And, as a lifelong North Dakotan thank you for getting Burgum’s state right. I really appreciate that. I don’t know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. It is surreal.

J P 3

The 2008 GOP primary is really instructive in a lot of ways about how things have changed in the GOP. e.g. in that race it was a bunch of establishment candidates trading places in the early polls with McCain. McCain was the quasi-heir apparent as the 2nd place finisher in the last competitive GOP primary in 2000. After things stabilized in the 2008 race, Huckabee took over the evangelical lane. Mitt Romney landed in the second place spot as the next in the line of succession. Keyes never really made it above 4%. Obama's candidacy and the huge crowds and hysteria around him really broke things for the GOP. I see the selection of Sarah Palin as the harbinger with the Tea Party craziness after 2009 really setting the stage for the current iteration of the GOP.

Gene Gualtieri

Josh Barro had a similar take on Vivek. https://open.substack.com/pub/joshbarro/p/section-guy-runs-for-president?r=9ds48&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Thomas Arnold

Chris Christie should have been given the Alan Keyes Award, given for the most inappropriate and gruesome remarks a GOP candidate makes— in honor of Keyes asking a classroom of elementary school students to imagine one of them being killed by having their head dashed against the wall.

Adam Lewis

Who weeps for Alan Keyes, forgotten and scorned?

J P 3

My sense is that Vivek is more Ben Carson 2016 and Herman Cain 2012 than Pete 2020 -- especially true in Iowa where evangelicals have an outsized influence on the caucus. Note the rise of those two prior candidate as well in election polls in Sept-Nov 2011, and Sept-Nov 2015, respectively. At one point Cain was tied with Romney; Ben Carson rose to a clear second place against Trump briefly in 2015. It didn't last for either of those candidates.