This Campaign Is a Bataan Death March

JVL gives you the debate in GIFs.

Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy gestures as he arrives to take part in the first Republican Presidential primary debate at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 23, 2023. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Had a great live show night with Tim, Tom Nichols, and Semafor’s Ben Smith. Tonight I’ll carry on the conversation here with Mona Charen and Bill Kristol at 8pm in the East.

Warning: I’m going full-Eeyore today.

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1. About Last Night

I’m going to summarize the entire debate via gif in a minute, so you’ll have something to look forward to. But first some serious thoughts:

Three minutes into the debate I was already exhausted by this campaign. Fox actually opened by asking Ron DeSantis to expound on the deep truths of “Rich Men North of Richmond” and then challenged Tim Scott to prove how he had supported Oliver Anthony’s noble and wise policy agenda.¹

We’ve got 15 months of playing make-believe about the need to return to small-government conservatism from a group of people pretending that their voters are something other than what they are.

But we have to bite down on a stick and do it, I guess. So let me explain to you why Vivek Ramaswamy won the night. (And it wasn’t close.)