From Ramaswamy bashing to UFOs, the unhinged GOP debate was great TV, but scary politics

“I think we need to reestablish some ground rules here, folks,” Martha MacCallum, who co-moderated the first Republican presidential debate on Fox News Wednesday, told the eight candidates on stage.

This was about 75 minutes in.

Too little, too late as it turned out, but what did anyone expect? Much of the debate devolved into a free-for-all, which is not necessarily the fault of MacCallum or Bret Baier, the other moderator. The early Democratic debates in 2019 also suffered from too many candidates and not enough reining in. This was as bad or worse.

“You have to get control of this debate,” Nikki Haley said late in the game, shouting above the fray. But that ship had sailed.

MacCallum and Baier were often overrun by the candidates

This is not to say MacCallum and Baier were strong moderators. The first question of the night was to ask why the song “Rich Men North of Richmond” is striking such a nerve. Although that was better than the “lightning round,” in which Chris Christie was asked a question concerning alien life.

“I get the UFO question?” Christie said, perplexed. “Come on, man.”

As TV, it was pretty entertaining. As a look at people who want to run the country, it was wild and at times alarming.

And it probably doesn’t matter. This is like when Larry Bird strutted into the locker room before the 3-point shootout at the 1988 NBA All-Star game and asked, “Which one of you mother (expletive) is playing for second?”

Why was Trump not at the Republican debate?

Donald Trump, the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination, didn’t show up, instead taking part in a pretaped pity party on X (formerly Twitter) with Tucker Carlson — who was dumped by Fox News earlier this year — at the same time. Why aren’t you there, Carlson asked the former president? Trump said it was because of his commanding lead in polls, “and the network isn’t particularly friendly to me.”

Um, has he never watched the prime-time programming on Fox News, where Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity in particular trip all over themselves nearly every night to praise Trump? It’s sycophants on parade.

You’d think Trump might have been more of a hot topic during the debate. “We are going to take a brief moment to talk about the elephant not in the room,” Baier said, finally bringing Trump up after more than half an hour.

Haley was the most willing to take on Trump directly. “We have to face the fact that Trump is the most-disliked politician in America, and we can’t win an election that way,” she said at one point, to a chorus of boos.

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Who won the GOP debate? Who knows?

As far as politics goes, who knows? I’ll leave that to greater minds. But as TV, there were some surprises — namely that Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence, of all people, made strong showings. Everyone ganged up on Vivek Ramaswamy, which isn’t surprising, given that he started things off by saying he was the only candidate on stage “not bought and paid for.”

But the biggest shock was how little of an impact Ron DeSantis made. Going in, conventional wisdom said the other candidates would attack him. But mostly they ignored him — and often, so did the moderators. Every time he answered there was a moment of, “Oh yeah, him.”

Then again, when he did answer, he didn’t — at least not what was asked, anyway. “That’s not the question,” MacCallum said at one point after he wandered way off-topic.

“I know,” he said, “but here’s the thing. …”

Mostly, it went like this:

Moderator: “Mr. DeSantis, what color is your tie?”

DeSantis: “Seven.”

Stunningly, the word “woke” was never uttered, not even by DeSantis, though he did manage to work in a George Soros mention. Christie probably had the line of the night, saying of Ramaswamy, “I’ve had enough of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”

So many insults, so little time.

Sean Hannity reminded viewers this was, indeed, Fox News

Each candidate gave a closing statement, which was the usual pablum you always hear at these things. But just in case you think Fox News forgot how to be Fox News, there was Sean Hannity hosting the post-game show, with these words of wisdom:

“Without a doubt, every single Republican running, guess what, they are far more articulate and ethical than your current president. You know, the compromised, cognitive mess that is Joe Biden.”

Some things never change.