The breakout star of the melee in Milwaukee was the most MAGA candidate on the stage.
The epigraph for the first 2024 Republican presidential debate came from Vivek Ramaswamy. “It is not morning in America. We’re living in a dark moment,” he said, midway through the melee in Milwaukee. He seemed to speak for every candidate on the stage during a dour and punchy evening on Fox News.
Ramaswamy was a fitting messenger for the mantra, because the debate was his coming out party. He was, if not definitively the winner of the debate, clearly the main character. No candidate was so eager to get in the mix on every issue, none so ready with quips, none so eager to land a blow on rivals, and none so likely to be the target of blows himself.
“Who the heck is this skinny with a funny name and what the heck is he doing on this debate stage?” Ramaswamy joked at the outset, borrowing a line from President Barack Obama. It’s a set piece that he’s unlikely to have to use again. Anyone watching the debate knows now.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Ramaswamy’s central role was that anyone other than Trump was able to claim the spotlight. The former president dominates polling in the Republican primary, but he skipped the debate, choosing instead to grant an interview to Tucker Carlson, a meeting of two men united by their grievances against Fox News. Ahead of the event, many pundits expected that Trump would manage to dominate, even in absence. But other than a single question about the former president’s felony indictments, moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were remarkably effective at avoiding Trump’s shadow.
That was perhaps the only thing at which they were effective. The candidates, even mild-mannered ones like Pence, were able to steamroll the moderators, claiming far more time than allotted and dodging almost every question asked of them. The debate nearly featured a fascinating moment early on, when Fox played a video of a Catholic University student asking the candidates to assuage young people’s concerns about climate change.
