The big show, Brutality in the Brew City, commences Wednesday evening in Milwaukee, and you will want to make the best of watching the DeSantis and the B Team in action. Here are some of the things to look for as each of them tries to achieve A Moment that will break him or her out of the pack.
Now, we talked about Ron DeSantis’s strategy on Monday. Even with Trump on stage, RDS would have been the target because all the other’s envy his second-place status for themselves, while also being to bereft of the requisite guts to take on the Bad Orange Mad lest they jeopardize their chance for a slot as Veep or maybe as the Secretary of Some Useless Bureaucracy down the road. Someone is going to try to take Ron on. The question is whether he goes all Barbie and soft n’ pink, or full old school Oppenheimer upon the uppity interloper(s).
My money is on the mushroom cloud. DeSantis does not suffer fools gladly, and he has much to be unhappy among with the mediocre crew joining him on stage. In any case, this is a test for Ron – can he regulate? We’ve seen him do it before, but here he’s outnumbered and surrounded. He better tear-up the runners-up, but also chastise President Crusty and make the case that The Donald is The Sure Loser in 2024. That silly alleged strategy memo that circulated is a recipe for total failure, making its origin from a GOP consultant entirely plausible. He better George Costanza it and do exactly the opposite of what it says. We’ll know pretty quick if Ron is going to hold his own, or stand there figuratively holding something else.
Take a drink every time he tells us how awesome Florida is – Florida is awesome, so if you are watching the debate at a bar you’ll need to catch an Uber.
Nikki Haley wants to appeal to suburban women who hate Trump while never saying that since she aches to be Selina Meyer with a drawl. Look for her to talk about girl power, and probably go with the identity nonsense to sway the GOP suburban Chardonnay set who found Trump too butch. At the same time, she’ll front being all strong by talking about how vital Ukraine is – which is totally cool in the establishment circles she travels in. Remember to drink every time she tells us how important it is that we submit to the will of private companies that embrace DEI and other perversions.
Watch for Tim Scott to start every answer with how tough he had it growing up. He won’t mention how he wanted to defund the police, only a little less than the Dems did. He will not dare diss Trump, but you need to drink if he once again takes a hard stand, shoulder-to-shoulder with Kamala Harris, against slavery.
Mike Pence will try to be the calm, wimpy voice of reason from an era of Republicanism that died out, by popular demand, 20 years ago. He might say something slightly negative about Trump, but it will be something mindless like “We need to respect the institutions and trust federal law enforcement and say, what time is it, because I sure as heck don’t know.” Drink if he says “faith,” which he will 30 times. That’s ironic because he doesn’t have a prayer.
They ought to have a kiddie table for Vivek – he’s makes Ben Shapiro look wizened. Ramaswamy is glib and clever, but too glib and clever by half. He has a little knowledge about a lot of things, but he tends to get out of his depth pretty quickly, like when he explained that after 2028 it’s open season for China on Taiwan. He will never criticize Trump, but he will try to step to DeSantis – and he will open himself up to a devastating counterpunch because Vivek, to paraphrase the classic Marion Berry putdown of Jess Jackson, has never “run nothing but his mouth."
Vivek does not have to worry about being attacked by the other candidates, partly for fear of their being accused of child abuse, though Chris Christie may hold his vegetarianism against him since the governor cannot conceive of a life without ham. Drink whenever Vivek presents some loony idea with a straight face, like a Manhattan Project to build flying cars or a replacing our national anthem with a freestyle rap by Drake.
The aforementioned Chris Christie has been promising that he’s going to take on Trump, but don’t believe him. There’s a lot of weirdness and an icky S&M vibe to their romance gone very bad. In the end, he won’t attack his darling. His heart is not in it. But his heart is on taking on DeSantis because DeSantis dared take on the object of his unrequited secret love. And he will be almost as happy trying to take on Ron as he would be spending a day at Golden Corral. Take a drink every time he tries to compare New Jersey to Florida, if you can get your glass to your pie hole through the laughter at that ridiculous comparison.
I have no idea what East Dakota governor Doug Burgum will do because I am not even sure why he is there. Drink if he talks about bison. I think Dakota has buffaloes, right?
Bonus drinks if one of the candidates either tries to employ “DeSanctus” or “Meatball” – which Christie thinks is a compliment – or, worse, tries to invent their own dumb nickname for DeSantis.
Now, Trump is going to join Tucker Carlson for an interview that day in a joint “blank you” to Fox News. A lot of how that will go depends on Tucker’s mood. Trump needs to answer some tough questions, like how can you run for president fighting four bogus frame jobs by corrupt prosecutors, how can you win when you are spending all your donor’s money on legal fees, and how do you expect to win PA, GA, AZ, NV, MI, and WI this time – and that means the kind of winning that involves actually winning instead of the kind where you are not president.
If Tucker is feisty, he will not allow the usual Trump segue from the hard questions into how his polls are the best ever and he how won in 2020 and how his ratings are very high. Drink if Trump calls Ron DeSantis is disloyal. Drink twice if he comes up with a new nickname for him. And prepare drink a lot more if he gets nominated. You’ll need to.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, as well as his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.
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