The Day After the Debate

Editor's Note: We are likely to feel some impact from Tropical Storm Idalia, which is currently tipped to hit the other side of Florida as a major hurricane and be at or near hurricane strength as it goes through or near our area the day after. Posting may be interrupted for some time afterwards.

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Despite arguably winning the GOP presidential debate last week, Vivek Ramaswamy has not, according to the Wall Street Journal, lived up to whatever elevated expectations that might have led to:

[M]uch of [Ramaswamy's] usual sunniness disappeared on Wednesday, replaced by snarky interjections. For all his complaints about "professional politicians," he rivaled the best of them with an evening of canned sound bites -- contrasting his "bought and paid for" "Super PAC puppet" opponents with his "patriot" self.

This came after the Journal panned him for what it deemed unserious remarks during the debate itself.

Nikki Haley comes off best in the column, and we can add her position on Ukraine to her "least bad" one on abortion and her lambasting of Trump's economic policy to the list of reasons to consider her:

Image by Nikki Haley, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

While the press is predictably highlighting Ms. Haley's smackdown of Vivek Ramaswamy's foreign-policy confusion, her more consequential moment was her persuasive argument that supporting Ukraine is entirely in America's self-interest. She noted that only a small fraction of the U.S. defense budget has gone to Ukraine and that the country has become a "first line of defense" against both Russia and its partner China. This is the speech Joe Biden should have given more than a year ago. [bold added, link omitted]

Nikki Haley is far from my dream candidate for President, but it beggars belief that we are wasting our time instead discussing losers like Donald Trump and Joe Biden at all, and may well end up with one of them as President again.

-- CAV