Yes, DeSantis Won the Debate

But Vivek Ramaswamy Moves the Needle

A quick take: Last night, the fourth debate was held in Alabama by News Nation. This time, it was hosted by Megyn Kelly, who is by far the best debate moderator in journalism. Elizabeth Vargas and Eliana Johnson joined her.

In case you missed it, here is the whole debate:

Nearly every pundit and news channel has covered the debate, so I won’t summarize it or analyze it in depth. It’s only been a day and I’m already tired of talking about it. I’ll give my personal thoughts about the night, should you be interested.

Who won? Ron DeSantis won by standing out as the calmest, rationalest, and most prepared of the bunch. He came out on top if there could be such a thing as a winner in a debate. He wasn’t embroiled in the drama brought by the other three, especially the man sandwich between Vivek Ramaswamy going on the attack and Chris Christie rushing to defend the female in the middle, Nikki Haley.

DeSantis also had the chance to smack down Christie and Haley for hedging on the crucial issue of “gender-affirming care.” That answer won many of us over because it’s just not something they ever discuss at these debates.

Credit to the moderators who planned out the most interesting questions to ask them, questions Republican voters would want to know instead of helping MSNBC and CNN fill their content churn. At the top of that list, as Megyn Kelly well knows, was the controversial issue of transgender rights.

As Megyn Kelly points out:

This moment by DeSantis showed he could potentially be a strong candidate. He would definitely be a much stronger candidate if he wasn’t competing against Trump.

But did it matter that Ron DeSantis won? It did for his diehard supporters, like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Jenna Ellis, and others. They now have something to work with as they head into Iowa. His biggest problem is Nikki Haley, who has the backing of big money donors and is polling higher against Biden than even Trump.

Unless DeSantis can knock Haley out, he can’t make enough ground to defeat Trump.

The thing that stood out for me was Vivek Ramaswamy once again. Yes, I know people are annoyed by him, and I know everyone wants him to go away. But I like him. I appreciate his willingness to go places no one else will, like January 6th.

He’s been hit on this by Ben Shapiro and others who have accused him of leaning into “conspiracy theories.” When he called January 6th an “inside job,” that seemed to especially annoy people, with many of them diving back into one of his books to pull out his comments about that day, which said nothing about the government’s possible involvement.

You wouldn’t know just how out of character January 6th was for MAGA and for the Stop the Steal movement unless you were there or you followed it closely as I was. I will be writing more about this in an upcoming piece, so I won’t go into it too much except to say that I was curious about a movement fighting back against what I also believed was a “rigged” election.

Once again, Ramaswamy brings up an issue no one will address or talk about but one a large portion of Americans care about. We’re all expected to go along with the media narrative about what happened that day. It isn’t true. Listen to Dana Bash parrot the talking points of the state like an obedient robot:

January 6th is still verboten to discuss in any major way because they played nothing but the most violent footage for months, which helped build the case that the greatest threat facing America was “ultra MAGA extremism.”

Just as they all refuse to talk about the damage done to businesses and to people during the Summer of 2020, they refuse to talk about what really happened that day, how many FBI informants were embedded in the operation, and how much the FBI knew before that day. They won’t talk about the lives ruined, the suicides, and they certainly won’t talk about what the government knew and when they knew it.

Even if people keep saying Ramaswamy should not be on the debate stage, I find his willingness to speak truth to power refreshing and honest. True, he was criticized for buying into the “replacement theory,” with Ben Shapiro saying it fed into the delusions of actual white supremacists. But I don’t think he meant it that way. Surely, he, as a family of immigrants, would never have suggested that America is meant to be a white nationalist nation.

I remain a fan, even if he’ll never get the nomination. I like his fire. I like his fearlessness. I like how tough he is. That is exactly the kind of person we need to take us through this Fourth Turning.

They’re gearing up to crush him, that much is clear. But I think he’s tough enough to take it.