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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Very Annoying. It’s Why He’s Surging in the Polls.

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      Of all the descriptors attached to Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old political tyro enjoying a bizarre surge in the Republican primary race for second place, the most common one seems to be “annoying.” After the Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, a Politico headline quoted a party strategist about Ramaswamy’s performance: “It just got to be annoying.” In a widely shared essay, the writer Josh Barro, a Harvard contemporary of Ramaswamy, probed the quality that “makes Vivek so annoying.” CNN’s S.E. Cupp called him, in a column: “Obnoxious. Annoying. Disrespectful. Inexperienced. Conspiratorial.”Matt Lewis, an anti-Trump conservative writer for The Daily Beast, marveled that there are some who actually like Ramaswamy’s cocky, know-it-all persona: “As Seinfeld might say, ‘Who are these people?’”The answer, of course, is much of the Republican Party. The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos polled likely Republican primary voters before and after last week’s debate. Following his performance, Ramaswamy’s favorability rating rose from 50 percent to 60 percent, even though his unfavorability rating rose even more, from 13 percent to 32 percent. Participants in a CNN focus group of Iowa Republicans declared him the debate’s winner, as did a poll released on Thursday from JL Partners. The day after the debate, his campaign reportedly raised more than $1 million.The question is what Ramaswamy’s supporters see in this irksome figure. Some Republicans, clearly, appreciate the way he sucks up to Donald Trump, whom Ramaswamy has called “the best president of the 21st century.” But that doesn’t explain the roughly 10 percent of Republicans who tell pollsters they’re planning to vote for Ramaswamy instead of Trump. It can’t only be his shtick as Fox News’s “woke and cancel-culture guru,” as one anchor called him, since at this point even the Florida governor Ron DeSantis has learned that railing against wokeness is a losing message. Nor is Ramaswamy’s appeal tailored to the downwardly mobile Trump voters who appreciated the former president’s pledges to protect their entitlements, since Ramaswamy’s promise to “dismantle Lyndon Johnson’s failed ‘Great Society’” makes Paul Ryan look like a social democrat.Instead, I suspect that Ramaswamy’s fans are drawn to him for all the reasons his critics find him insufferable. Conservatives love being championed by representatives of groups that they think disdain them. Despite the right’s deep resentment of the entertainment industry, Republicans tend to adore celebrity candidates, from Ronald Reagan to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump. Think of the infamous tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” (They deleted it once the rapper Kanye West’s right turn veered into outright Hitler fandom.) At Democratic conventions I’ve seen famous actors walk around either unrecognized or ignored, while at Republican conventions C-listers are feted like superstars.Ramaswamy, too, is a performer, but what he’s performing is a parody of meritocratic excellence. If you’ve spent time around entitled Ivy League grads, you likely recognize him as an exaggerated version of a familiar type: the callow and condescending nerd who assumes that skill in one field translates to aptitude in all others. But to his fans, the very fact that he’s such a pure product of elite institutions — in addition to Harvard, he went to Yale Law and made his fortune with a biotech start-up he ran from Manhattan — likely gives him extra oomph as a class traitor.People who care about the basic workings of government are gobsmacked by Ramaswamy’s apparent ignorance — on Sunday, for example, he said that if he’d been in Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have pushed through election reform “in my capacity as president of the Senate.” But he’s good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about. Sarah Longwell, a political strategist who has conducted extensive focus groups with Republican primary voters, said that people who like Ramaswamy inevitably say, “I think he’s really smart.”That’s why Chris Christie’s comparison of Ramaswamy to Barack Obama, whom conservatives saw as a smug, smooth-talking foreign interloper, fell flat. Ramaswamy’s very superficial similarities to Obama work for him, giving conservative audiences the satisfaction of hearing their resentments affirmed by a defector from the culture of the coastal gentry. At the debate, Ramaswamy encouraged the analogy when he ripped off an old Obama line to introduce himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name.” Longwell doesn’t think Ramaswamy has a shot at beating Trump for the nomination, but, she said, “I think that Republicans want their own Obama.”Many older white conservatives, after all, feel threatened by multiethnic younger generations that largely reject their most fundamental values about faith, gender and patriotism. Ramaswamy is part of this menacing cohort, and he’s telling Republicans that their suspicions about it are correct. “More than anything, he has portrayed his generation and younger ones as empty souls living meaningless lives,” Jonathan Weisman wrote in The Times. He’s a young man running an anti-youth campaign; a centerpiece of Ramaswamy’s platform is a call to strip the franchise from most people under 25 unless they pass a civics test. And he’s a person of color who argues, even in the wake of another white supremacist mass shooting, that most American racism comes from the left. If he annoys those who find him most familiar, that’s surely part of the point.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      DeSantis Confronts Jacksonville Shooting and Storm Idalia in Florida

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      A racially motivated shooting and an impending storm provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May.For the first time since declaring his bid for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is facing a crisis in his home state.Well, not one crisis, but two.On Saturday, a gunman motivated by racial hatred killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville. All the victims were Black. The shooter was white. And on Wednesday, a major storm is projected to strike somewhere along Florida’s Gulf coast, the first to hit the state during the 2023 hurricane season.After the shooting, Mr. DeSantis flew back to Tallahassee from a campaign trip to Iowa. He then canceled a visit to South Carolina scheduled for Monday, citing the storm and sending his wife, Casey DeSantis, in his place. He has said he will stay in Florida for the storm’s duration and aftermath.“This is going to be our sole focus,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday at a news conference at the state’s emergency operation center in Tallahassee.The twin crises provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May. On the stump, he often cites his track record as governor as his biggest advantage over his rivals, almost none of whom hold executive office. He has also criticized President Biden for his response to the wildfires that devastated Maui.But the emergencies have pulled Mr. DeSantis off the trail at a time when his campaign had seemed to stabilize after weeks of layoffs and upheaval among his staff, as well as a debate performance that drew strong reviews from many Republican voters.Both the shooting and the storm could further spotlight criticisms that rival candidates have made of Mr. DeSantis’s stewardship of Florida since being elected as governor in 2018. After clashes on a number of race-related issues, including the way African American history is taught in schools, his relationship with Florida’s Black community is so strained that he was loudly booed when he appeared at a vigil for the shooting victims in Jacksonville on Sunday.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was booed and heckled when he spoke at a vigil for three people killed in an attack where officials say a white gunman targeted Black people inside a Jacksonville, Fla., store.John Raoux/Associated PressMr. DeSantis has also struggled with the state’s property insurance market, a long-running problem that the governor has repeatedly tried to address with legislation. The market has been so battered by high costs that Mr. DeSantis said in July that he would “knock on wood” for no big storm to hit Florida this year.Mr. DeSantis’s opponents, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have used the issues to criticize him.A spokesman for the DeSantis campaign said the governor’s response to the shooting and the storm demonstrated “the strong leadership in times of crisis that Americans can expect from a President DeSantis.”“In the face of the tragedy in Jacksonville and the impending major hurricane, Ron DeSantis is focused on leading his state through these challenging moments,” Bryan Griffin, the campaign’s press secretary, said in a statement. “He’s now at the helm of Florida’s hurricane response and is working with local officials across the state to do everything necessary to ensure Florida is fully prepared.”Mr. DeSantis said in an afternoon news conference that he had spoken to Mr. Biden and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Partly because of extreme weather, Florida homeowners have seen their property insurance costs rise more than those in any other state since 2015. Some major insurers have pulled out of the market, although smaller ones have entered. Last year, Mr. DeSantis called a special legislative session to address property insurance. But he has warned that fixing the troubled market will take time.Last month, Mr. Trump urged the governor to leave the campaign trail and “get home and take care of insurance.”Hurricanes traditionally provide an opportunity for Florida governors to demonstrate their strength and leadership. Mr. DeSantis has faced several major storms, as well as the fatal collapse of a condominium in Surfside, since taking office.Last year, Hurricane Ian killed 150 people in Florida, making it the state’s most deadly hurricane in decades and raising questions about why local officials had not issued evacuation orders earlier. On the trail, Mr. DeSantis frequently talks about his efforts to rebuild the state after the storm, including quickly repairing bridges and causeways to islands that had been cut off.On Sunday, Mr. DeSantis received a starkly negative reception when he attended a vigil for the victims of the shooting in Jacksonville, which has a large African American population.His administration has come under repeated fire for rejecting the curriculum of an Advanced Placement African American studies class and rewriting African American history courses, something that Mr. Scott, who is Black, has criticized.After the crowd in Jacksonville booed Mr. DeSantis when he tried to speak, a city councilwoman stepped in and asked people to listen. He was booed again when he finished.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis announced that he would award $1 million through the Volunteer Florida Foundation to bolster campus security at Edward Waters University, the historically Black university near the Dollar General store that the gunman attacked. He also said that the foundation, a tax-exempt state commission focused on community service projects, would donate $100,000 to the families of the victims.State Representative Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville, called the shooting “a stark reminder of the dangerous consequences of unchecked racism” and criticized Mr. DeSantis for “empty gestures” and “publicity stunts.”“Our historically Black institutions have faced an uphill battle for decades, and I invite DeSantis to go back through unfilled budget requests and line-item vetoes to begin to provide the funding they’ve needed for years. For it to take murder for him to dig in his overflowing coffers for support is appalling,” she said.In April, Mr. DeSantis was faulted for not visiting Fort Lauderdale, which strongly leans Democratic, after damaging flooding there. Since officially announcing his 2024 bid in May, Mr. DeSantis has spent several days per week out of Florida, usually meeting voters in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, or attending closed-door fund-raisers with donors.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has seemed to steady in recent days thanks in part to his performance in the first Republican primary debate last week in Milwaukee that Mr. Trump, the front-runner who is leading Mr. DeSantis by double digits, did not attend. The DeSantis campaign said it raised more than $1 million the next day and a snap poll of Republican voters by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos declared him the winner.On his weekend bus tour through northwest Iowa, many Republican voters said they had been impressed, particularly by how Mr. DeSantis talked about his record as governor.“DeSantis was the one who broke through,” said Cody Hoefert, a former co-chair of the Republican Party of Iowa who endorsed the governor immediately after the debate. “I want somebody who is going to lead and deliver results.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Suddenly Part of Our Political Life

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      Gail Collins: Bret, we haven’t talked since the Republican debate. Can’t say I fell in love with any of the contenders, but your fave Nikki Haley was certainly the most moderate voice onstage.Bret Stephens: Moderate and sane, but also cutting and sharp, particularly when it came to her vivisection of Vivek Ramaswamy’s neo-isolationist, Putin-kowtowing foreign policy.Gail: But she did promise to continue supporting Donald Trump for president, even if he’s convicted in any of the multitudinous, frequently anti-American charges against him.Bret: She shouldn’t have raised her hand, but I don’t think it was a fair question. All the candidates, including Chris Christie, pledged to support the party’s eventual nominee as a condition of being onstage. The important thing to me was that Haley was prepared to criticize Trump’s record and not just as a matter of character and ethics.The other candidate who seems to have everyone’s attention is Ramaswamy. Your thoughts?Gail: Wow, is he irritating. Not many people I can think of who I’d rather have over for dinner less than Donald Trump, but this guy’s one of them.Bret: I mentioned last week that he came to my house two summers ago for a pleasant lunch. That was before he got into politics.Gail: He’s very young and rich and I assume he’s figuring on making a name for himself with the right while Trump finishes out his career, in order to turn himself into the neo-Don of the late 2020s.Bret: Remember the John Cusack romantic comedy from the 1980s, “Say Anything”? It could become the slogan for a cohort of ambitious young conservatives whose views are endlessly malleable because their only goal is to advance their personal brand. Ramaswamy, for instance, would probably prefer not to be reminded that in his book he called the Jan. 6 riots “a disgrace” and a “stain on our history” that made him “ashamed of our nation.”Switching from the understudy to the master, what was your reaction to the Trump mug shot?Gail: Sigh. So deeply the story of our era that a former president charged, in effect, with attempting to overthrow our democratic form of government, would respond by selling a mug shot T-shirt.How about you?Bret: What ought to be a sad moment for the United States — when a former president who abused his power and disgraced his office faces legal consequences — has become a terrifying one, when that same former president treats the law with so much contempt that it becomes the springboard for his re-election campaign, to the applause of tens of millions of Americans.Ron DeSantis was right when he said at the debate that America is a nation in decline and that decline is a choice. He just wasn’t right in the way he meant it. We’re in decline because a spirit of lawlessness, shamelessness and brainlessness have become leading features of a conservative movement that was supposed to be a bulwark against all three.Gail: Now a lot of the debaters seem to think we’re headed toward national disaster because of government overspending. You’re kinda with them on that one, right?Bret: Kinda.My bottom line on government spending, both state and federal, is that what matters isn’t the amount, it’s the return on investment. We spent a lot on World War II, but it was worth it to defeat fascism. I’d argue the same about Eisenhower’s interstate highways or Reagan’s arms buildup. My quarrel with some of my liberal friends is that funding for, say, California’s $113 billion high-speed rail project from nowhere to nowhere is a colossal waste of money, as is every cent we spend subsidizing ethanol.Now I’m sure you’re going to say the same thing about my beloved F-35s, B-21s, SSN-774s and so on.Gail: Well, the big difference is that cutting back on global warming is approximately a billion percent more important than keeping weapons suppliers happy. That high-speed rail project has indeed been hell to complete — you’re talking about clearing the way through 171 miles in the middle of California. But eventually, it’ll get done and when it does there’ll be a dramatic reduction in motor vehicle emissions at a time when Americans are realizing that global warming can ruin the future for their children and grandchildren.Bret: Hmm. When Californians approved it, they thought they’d spend around $30 billion. It’s now costing almost four times as much and it’s not clear why people will prefer to go by train instead of just hopping a quick flight from San Francisco or San Jose to L.A. or Burbank. Plus, the inputs of concrete, steel and electricity all put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, too.Gail: That reminds me — during the Republican debate, when the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed human activity causes climate change, nobody was brave enough to do it. Although Haley did at least seem to admit it had a role.I know you don’t agree with our friend Ramaswamy, who called the climate change agenda “a hoax.” But do you feel yourself moving toward our oh-lord-this-is-a-world-crisis side?Bret: I feel myself moving toward the we-need-two-real-sides-in-this-debate side. Conservatives could have something meaningful to contribute if they acknowledged that climate change was real and that big-government solutions aren’t the way to go. We could do a lot to facilitate the permitting and construction of smaller, safer, next-generation nuclear reactors. We could welcome mining for rare-earths and other critical minerals in the United States. We could fight to end the environmentally destructive subsidies for biodiesels and the morally hazardous subsidies for flood insurance. We could take a Teddy Roosevelt-inspired conservationist approach to our shorelines to discourage beachfront development. We could support more investment in basic science, particularly for carbon capture and battery storage. We could support a carbon tax and offset it with a reduction in income tax. And we could agree to outlaw cryptocurrencies on purely environmental grounds, never mind that they’re mostly Ponzi schemes.What am I missing?Gail: Hey, we can go right back to our California discussion — whether it’s easy or not, the nation — and the world — has to encourage mass transit as opposed to carbon-spewing cars. Push solar and wind power as opposed to coal and oil and gas.Bret: All of the above. Plus hydrogen, tidal and did I mention nuclear?Gail: I rally behind your mention of flood insurance subsidies. We must, must stop developers from throwing up waterside housing complexes that are just invitations for the next disaster.Let’s go … less intense for a minute. Seen any good movies lately?Bret: I have, though it’s neither “Barbie” nor “Oppenheimer.” It’s “Golda,” which stars Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. It’s a smart and haunting film about a pioneering woman caught in a moment of national and personal crisis. But the movie has itself been caught in an idiotic controversy because Mirren — who knows how to play an anxious Jewish mother even better than my own anxious Jewish mother — isn’t herself Jewish. I don’t know when it became a thing, culturally speaking, that only members of a given ethnicity could represent characters from the same ethnicity. But it’s the antithesis of what acting and art ought to be about.Also, I’ll definitely see “Equalizer 3” when it comes out later this week because who doesn’t love watching Denzel Washington kill lots of people? What about you?Gail: We’ve been to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” The nice part was just going out to actual movie theaters and seeing shows that everybody’s talking about. These days almost every movie seems like it’s made to go right to TV. It’s convenient, but the communal experience is lost.Can’t say “Barbie” is great art, but it was nice to go to listen to the audience — or at least the part of the audience composed of young women — cheering for a plot that doesn’t involve blowing things up.Bret: My daughters loved it. You’d have to drag me to it kicking and screaming.Gail: On the other hand, “Oppenheimer” is most definitely about blowing things up — I’m amazed by how many folks decided to go out and spend three hours watching the history of the atomic bomb.Bret: I’ll be sure to watch it on a big screen. Now, as soon as the writers strike is over, I’m hoping that someone produces a series about all of the atomic spies: Klaus Fuchs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Ted Hall, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell. Many of them brilliant scientists and starry-eyed idealists who, in their political naïveté, put themselves in the service of a dreadful cause. I love stories about deception that are really stories about self-deception.Gail: Wow, as if the poor Hollywood writers don’t have enough dark clouds in their lives right now.Bret: Speaking of the “misguided but interesting” category, readers shouldn’t miss our colleague Clay Risen’s terrific obituary for Isabel Crook, an anthropologist who spent most of her life in China and died this month at 107. Crook was an ardent Communist and remained one even when her husband was imprisoned for six years during the Cultural Revolution. Can’t say I admire her politics, but it’s hard not to be awed by the sweep and romance of a long and storied life.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ramaswamy-Pence Debate Clash Exposes Divide in Republican Party

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      Vivek Ramaswamy invoked Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” theme to mock a generation of Republicans he views as out of touch.Disbelief flashed across Vivek Ramaswamy’s face. The Republican presidential candidates, minus the front-runner, were 42 minutes into their first debate when former Vice President Mike Pence took issue with the young businessman’s claim that America was gripped by a national identity crisis.“We’re not looking for a new national identity,” said Mr. Pence, 64. “The American people are the most faith-filled, freedom-loving, idealistic, hard-working people the world has ever known.”“It is not morning in America,” Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, shot back in his rapid-fire Harvard debating style. “We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war.”Extolling Ronald Reagan used to be the safest of safe spaces for an ambitious Republican. Yet here was an upstart candidate, with no record of public service, standing at center stage in a G.O.P. debate and invoking Mr. Reagan’s famous 1984 “morning in America” theme not as an applause line, but to mock one of the party’s staunchest conservatives — an original product of the Reagan revolution — as out of touch with America’s true condition.The moment captured a rhetorical and substantive shift inside the G.O.P. that accelerated during the Trump era and is now being fed to the base in a purer form by Mr. Ramaswamy, who in late July overtook the former vice president in national polling averages. It is a shift to the so-called new right — often younger, often very online — that rejects the sunny optimism of Mr. Reagan’s acolytes as the delusional mutterings of “boomers.”In the new right’s overheated vernacular, these older, more established Republicans — a group that includes Mr. Pence but also most of the Republican conference in the United States Senate — have no idea “what time it is.” They don’t understand that the Republic is on its last legs.In the new right’s telling, conservatives like Mr. Pence are hopelessly naïve, and must stop fetishizing civility, decency and the self-defeating ideal of “limited government.” Republicans aligned with the new right, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, argue that conservatives should instead use every lever of governmental power available to them to defeat the “woke” left.Donald J. Trump established this theme in his 2016 campaign for president. He reinforced it in his inaugural address in 2017, in which he offered a dark vision of “American carnage.” And he continued the apocalyptic and vengeful rhetoric throughout his presidency. But the four criminal indictments of Mr. Trump have only intensified this retributive mood.Shortly before Mr. Trump surrendered on Thursday at the Fulton County jail, Taylor Budowich, the chief executive of the main pro-Trump super PAC, pointed to the Pence-Ramaswamy exchange in the debate as emblematic of a larger battle inside the party.“Last night Vivek Ramaswamy challenged Vice President Mike Pence’s strikingly naïve characterization of what ails America with, ‘It is not morning in America! We live in a dark moment’,” Mr. Budowich wrote in a statement he blasted out to the PAC’s email list. “The existential crisis facing the G.O.P. today is understanding the moment we live in.”Saurabh Sharma, the 25 year-old founder of American Moment, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to staffing the next Republican administration with “America First” conservatives, saw the interaction between Mr. Pence and Mr. Ramaswamy as one that “laid bare a core divide in the conservative movement.”“Older, well-meaning conservatives believe that the cultural and economic divide in America can be solved with modest policy changes,” Mr. Sharma said. “Generational change in the conservative movement and Republican Party will be the process by which quiet reformers give way to energetic young revolutionaries.”During Wednesday night’s debate, the repeated clashes between Mr. Pence and Mr. Ramaswamy dramatized this generational and ideological rift. On issue after issue, they seemed to be inhabiting different planets and speaking in different languages.Mr. Pence reminded the audience of the value of experience. In a shot at Mr. Ramaswamy, he said now was not the time for on-the-job training, not the time to risk a “rookie” in the White House. He talked about the need for America to show leadership in the world, about “peace through strength,” and he framed Ukraine’s fight against Russia as a fight for freedom that America must not shirk.Mr. Pence reminded the audience that he was a House conservative leader “before it was cool.” He quoted from Scripture to explain his opposition to abortion rights. He talked up the budgets he balanced in Indiana and said Republicans needed to confront the problem of the national debt. He promised more tax cuts and emphasized the need to reform entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — a statement that used to be Republican orthodoxy but is now almost taboo after Mr. Trump jettisoned traditional fiscal conservatism.Mr. Pence left the impression that America would be fine if only it could be returned to the way things were. “We just need government as good as our people again,” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy, listening, frowned contemptuously. “I don’t know what that slogan means,” he replied. “We need to shut down the administrative state.”In breaking with Mr. Pence and his Reagan-inspired rhetoric, Mr. Ramaswamy has sought to cast himself as this era’s transformational figure — ready to deliver a 1980-style “Reagan Revolution.” Mr. Ramaswamy has praised Mr. Reagan as someone who did what was appropriate for his era, though he has argued that “Reaganite solutions” don’t meet the current moment.Ken Khachigian, a former Reagan speechwriter, found himself agreeing with much of what Mr. Pence was saying and criticized Mr. Ramaswamy for “using exaggerated phrases like ‘a dark moment’” that he said did not provide “a good snapshot of what America is today.”“I think if there’s no message of hope, or vision that America shares some of what Reagan’s sense of vision was, then you draw the curtain against what drove America to make it different — that we’re still a good people, and there’s still a lot of optimism in America,” he said in an interview.Mr. Ramaswamy took every opportunity during the debate to mock the incrementalism and governing records of his opponents.He instead promised “revolution.” He doubled down on his outlandish promises to shut down a host of government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Education Department. He deployed Trumpian personal insults against his opponents — accusing all of his opponents of being “bought and paid for,” claiming Nikki Haley was chasing lucrative jobs with defense contractors, and suggesting Chris Christie was angling for a job on the liberal cable news network MSNBC.And, in a moment that visibly enraged several of his opponents, Mr. Ramaswamy, in full Tucker Carlson mode, ridiculed the idea that Republicans should support Ukraine.“I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to their Pope, Zelensky, without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the South Side of Chicago,” he said.The audience in Milwaukee cheered as Mr. Pence and Ms. Haley attacked Mr. Ramaswamy for caving in to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But outside the arena, the party is shifting away from the old guard. The top two candidates in the race, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, are skeptical of support for Ukraine. And Mr. Trump, the overwhelming front-runner, has floated handing off chunks of Ukraine to Mr. Putin.This fight over foreign policy reveals the most radical difference between the Republican Party that Mr. Pence is belatedly trying to preserve and the one that Mr. Trump ushered in.Mr. Ramaswamy said that if elected he would stop all U.S. funding to help Ukraine fight back against Russia. “I have a news flash,” he told Mr. Pence. “The U.S.S.R. does not exist anymore. It fell back in 1990.”The last time a presidential candidate delivered a line like that on a debate stage was in 2012, when then-President Obama mocked his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, for naming Russia as America’s greatest geopolitical threat. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Mr. Obama said.While Mr. Pence recoiled from Mr. Ramaswamy’s line, leaders of the increasingly emboldened anti-interventionist wing of the party rejoiced.“The divide in the G.O.P. on foreign policy isn’t between so-called isolationists or interventionists — it’s between people who still want to pretend it’s 1983 and those who recognize America exists in a much different world than 40 years ago,” said Dan Caldwell, who runs the foreign policy program at the Center for Renewing America, a think tank with close ties to Mr. Trump.“It is heartening,” he added, “that the three candidates polling the highest in the Republican presidential primary largely recognize the U.S. simply doesn’t have the financial, military or industrial capacity to do everything the neoconservative dead-enders want us to do globally.”Mr. Caldwell has another reason to feel heartened: It is his wing of the party that will probably take charge of the national security apparatus if Mr. Trump gets back into office in 2025. 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      The Republican Debate Proved That Trump Has What It Takes

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      Like far too many of you, I watched the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, during which all of the most popular contenders in the field tried to stand out and establish themselves as a serious alternative for the Republican presidential nomination.An alternative to whom? Donald Trump, who wasn’t on stage for the debate. And yet, despite his absence, there was no way that any of the candidates could escape his presence. The former president loomed over the proceedings, not the least because he is, so far, the uncontested leader in the race for the nomination. His nearest competitor, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, still trails him by nearly 40 points.There’s also the fact that the candidates had no choice but to answer questions about Trump, who has been indicted on state and federal charges related to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The pretense of the debate was that the candidates could talk about themselves and the future of the Republican Party without the former president, but that was simply impossible.But the issue wasn’t just that Trump was unavoidable; it was that none of the other candidates had much to say for themselves. Even the most dynamic of the contenders, Vivek Ramaswamy, was doing little more than his own spin on Trump’s persona. As I argued in our post-debate recap, none of the candidates had any of the charisma or presence or vision that might mark them as something more than just another governor or legislator.Far from giving the other Republicans a chance to shine, Trump’s absence underscored the extent to which he is the only Republican of national stature with the political chops to appeal to Republican voters as well as a considerable chunk of the American electorate.It is obviously true that a major reason for Trump’s dominance in the Republican primaries is the fact that at no point since the 2020 election have Republican officeholders and other figures tried to set him aside as the leader of the party. But we can’t underestimate the extent to which Trump has it what it takes — and most of his competitors simply don’t.Now ReadingRuqaiyah Zarook on the network of lawyers, accountants and other fixers who shield the wealth of the super-rich from taxation, for Dissent magazine.Ratik Asokan on the long struggle of India’s sanitation workers for The New York Review of Books.Clare Malone on David Zaslav for The New Yorker.Ellen Meiksins Wood on capitalism and human emancipation for New Left Review.Marcia Chatelain on the persistence of American poverty for The Nation.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI was up in the Adirondacks for the first time this summer and obviously spent a lot of time walking around and photographing lakes. This is a picture of Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, which was very picturesque.Now Eating: Masala Black-Eyed PeasAmong the things I hope to accomplish with this newsletter is getting people to eat more beans and field peas, both of which are versatile and affordable staple foods. This recipe, from NYT Cooking, for black-eyed peas in an Indian style, is very easy and very filling. I would serve with flatbreads, a green vegetable and a carrot raita. But by itself with steamed rice would be just as good and just as filling.Ingredients3 tablespoons ghee or neutral oil1 medium yellow or red onion, finely chopped1 ½ teaspoons ginger paste or freshly grated ginger1 ½ teaspoons garlic paste or freshly grated garlic1 teaspoon cumin seeds¾ teaspoon Kashmiri or other mild red chile powder¼ teaspoon ground turmeric3 Roma tomatoes, finely chopped or 1 (15-ounce) can crushed tomatoes1 teaspoon fine sea salt3 cups of cooked black-eyed peas, frozen or from dried3 fresh green Thai or serrano chiles, chopped2 tablespoons lemon juice (from about half a lemon)½ teaspoon garam masala2 tablespoons chopped cilantroDirectionsHeat ghee or oil in a medium-sized pot for 30 seconds on medium-low. Add onion, ginger and garlic, and cook on high heat, stirring frequently, until onions are transparent, 5 to 7 minutes.Stir in cumin seeds, chile powder and turmeric. Add tomatoes and salt. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the oil separates, 5 to 7 minutes. (If you want your finished dish to be less saucy, cook the tomatoes a little longer.)Stir in black-eyed peas and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer 5 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Top with green chiles, lemon juice, garam masala and cilantro, if you like. More

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      For Tim Scott, the Debate Was the Moment That Wasn’t

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      At the G.O.P. debate, the senator often faded into the background. “He was one that I wanted to hear more from,” one voter said as he sought to regain momentum in New Hampshire.Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, arrived in New Hampshire on Friday for the start of a six-day, three-state blitz — the most extensive campaign swing since announcing his run for the White House.But any momentum Mr. Scott had hoped to bring was as missing as he was during long stretches of the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.During the two-hour debate in Milwaukee, Mr. Scott spoke for only 8 minutes 15 seconds, according to The New York Times’s time tracker — a full four minutes less than the leading talker, former Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Scott flashed moments of humor but often faded entirely into the background. And he wasn’t targeted by his rivals, nor did he target them.In the race to be the leading Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Scott had entered Wednesday’s debate seemingly primed for the first real moment of consequence for his campaign. He and his allies had flooded the airwaves in Iowa with the most advertising of any Republican. He had inched upward in the polls. The candidate he was most closely chasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, had slipped. And major donors were giving him fresh consideration.But voters on Friday at three New Hampshire events in the capital city of Concord and the town of Hooksett said he had not yet set himself apart from the pack, even as they praised the senator’s positive message and likability. Several Republicans and independents open to supporting him expressed disappointment that Mr. Scott was not even visible enough to render a judgment.“He was one that I wanted to hear more from,” said Allyson Vaschon, 57, who was at a diner in Concord where Mr. Scott shook hands and met voters on Friday afternoon. “I did like some of his answers but they were brief, and again, time just wasn’t allotted.”During the two-hour debate in Milwaukee, Mr. Scott spoke for only eight minutes and 15 seconds, according to The New York Times’s time tracker — a full four minutes less than the leading talker, former Vice President Mike Pence.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMs. Vaschon blamed the format more than Mr. Scott, who has defended his debate performance by saying it was a “food fight” rather than a substantive conversation. He told reporters in Hooksett on Friday that his closing statement at the debate, which touched on his rise from poverty to the presidential campaign, was the most effective message of the night.The back-and-forth among his opponents on the stage “does not necessarily help anyone except for the media and Joe Biden,” Mr. Scott said.Early indicators have pointed to lagging enthusiasm for his debate performance.A Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos survey of Republicans after the debate showed that only 4 percent believed Mr. Scott had won, placing him toward the back of the pack. And of the eight candidates onstage, along with Mr. Trump, Mr. Scott’s name was tied for last for the share of Google searches in the week leading up to and after the debate, according to the company’s search trend data. The day after the debate, he garnered only 3 percent of the candidate searches, which can be a metric of voter interest. Atop the search list on Thursday morning was Vivek Ramaswamy, the former biotechnology executive and political newcomer who was the debate’s dominant character.Eric Levine, a New York lawyer and Republican donor who attended the debate as a guest of Mr. Scott’s campaign, said he believed the senator had won by staying above the fray. But he acknowledged that “perhaps he could have been a little more aggressive,” and said that he had heard the same from other donors.“I guess he made a little bit of a mistake in believing that rules matter,” Mr. Levine said of Mr. Scott’s decision to often wait until called upon rather than insert himself into the fracas.Mr. Scott struck a similar note at a “Politics and Pies” event in Concord on Friday evening, telling a group of more than 50 New Hampshire Republicans that he recognized that “following the rules does not give you more time.” He added, “So, lesson learned. Now, the next debate, I’m going to remember that lesson, but I’m also going to comport myself in the same fashion.” Gail Gitcho, a Republican strategist who has worked on past presidential campaigns and is unaligned in the 2024 race, said Mr. Scott’s showing amounted to a missed opportunity for a candidate whose super PAC has already reserved $40 million in advertising, the most of anyone in the primary.“Tim Scott is built for this race,” Ms. Gitcho said. “He has the resources to go the distance. He has a life story unlike anybody else. But he didn’t break through.”As Mr. DeSantis has dipped, the search for other possible Trump alternatives has intensified. In the area where Republican National Committee members were meeting in Milwaukee, one person named a wireless hot spot “Glenn Youngkin Needs to Run,” a reference to the Republican governor of Virginia.Mr. Scott had prepared for the debate, his first ever on the national stage, by bringing on one of his party’s more noted debate coaches, Mari Will, as a senior adviser. Yet with his limited time, Mr. Scott did not find the opportunity to dive fully into the personal history that has undergirded his candidacy, especially how his family went “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” as he put it in his 2020 convention speech.Mr. Scott was the sole Black candidate on the stage in a party where a Black Republican presidential contender has surged, at least briefly, to the top of the polls in the last two open presidential primaries. In 2012, it was the pizza magnate Herman Cain. In 2016, it was the brain surgeon Ben Carson.Both quickly faded. But Mr. Scott has a far more formidable political résumé.Ahead of the debate, Mr. Scott’s allies and aides had said his message would remain positive while being direct enough to separate himself from the crowded primary field. Days before, Mr. Scott had traded much of his upbeat stump speech for a more forceful, policy-focused address at a conservative gathering in Georgia.For months, Mr. Scott, who favors contrasting alliterations like “victory and victimhood” and “grievance and greatness,” has tried to beat back questions about his toughness. When asked about his messaging strategy at a donor retreat this spring, Mr. Scott assured supporters that he would be able to push back if challenged.Toward the end of Wednesday’s debate, moderators asked Mr. Scott a question — about a president’s role in restoring religious faith in the country — that seemed aligned with his campaign message. Yet Mr. Scott’s response was surprisingly brief. The country, he said, “was founded on the Judeo-Christian values,” and then he quoted Scripture.“Our responsibility should be to model the behavior we want others to follow,” he said. He then quickly added a point about education reform, vowing to “break the backs of the teachers’ unions.”His answer, which came during the lightning round of questions, lasted roughly 37 seconds. At other points in the debate, he often fell short of using his allotted time for answers — a contrast with many of his opponents, who at one point had to be reminded that the closing bell signified their need to stop talking. At the Concord diner on Friday, David Coffey, 79, an independent voter and a former schoolteacher, challenged Mr. Scott about his reluctance to directly criticize Mr. Trump after the senator had introduced himself. That prompted Mr. Scott to join him at his table.“You’re avoiding standing up for his past,” Mr. Coffey told Mr. Scott as a waitress set down plates of bacon, eggs and pancakes. “You don’t want to lose all his votes — I get you. But when you go to Russia, when you go to China, how are you going to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I can’t do that’?”“It’s very easy,” Mr. Scott responded, saying it would require the president to “stand toe-to-toe” with adversaries.“You’re not standing toe-to-toe with somebody who you don’t accept as president,” Mr. Coffey replied.“Do you want to have a conversation, or do you want to have a dialogue?” Mr. Scott asked Mr. Coffey. “If you want to have a dialogue, I’d love to have it.”Mr. Scott described moments when he had challenged Mr. Trump during his presidency, and explained his belief that the Department of Justice was “broken.” After Mr. Scott left the table, Mr. Coffey told reporters that he was leaning toward supporting former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in the Republican primary — someone whose fire against Mr. Trump he admired.“Scott is a politician — not that Christie isn’t,” Mr. Coffey said, adding of Mr. Scott: “He avoided what I wanted to hear him say. But he’s got a nice presence to him.” More

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      Candidates Look to Cash In on First G.O.P. Debate — Especially Haley and Pence

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      Campaigns saw the nationally televised event, the first of the 2024 campaign, not just as a way to reach voters, but also as an appeal to donors big and small.Eric J. Tanenblatt, a top fund-raiser for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, woke up Thursday morning in his Milwaukee hotel room to dozens of enthusiastic text messages and emails from donors expressing admiration for Ms. Haley’s performance, particularly her command of foreign policy and handling of questions about abortion.“Donors who have been sitting on the sidelines are now taking another look,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, an Atlanta businessman who has known Ms. Haley since she was a state legislator and attended the debate Wednesday night. “Obviously I am somewhat biased, but I think last night was a really good night for Nikki Haley.”Mr. Tanenblatt was not alone in his assessment. In conversations with more than a dozen Republican donors — including undecided backers and some who support other candidates — Ms. Haley was singled out as the night’s standout. The question now becomes whether her debate performance will translate into dollars.For years, the Republican money class has been seeking an alternative — any alternative — to former President Donald J. Trump. In some ways, donors were the most consequential audience for Wednesday night’s debate, and many of them, including those who have not yet backed a candidate this cycle, were in Milwaukee.While the official fund-raising totals won’t be known until October, when campaign quarterly filings are due, there were signs within hours of the debate — flurries of text messages, requests for introductions to campaigns and reports of fresh contributions — that the candidates’ performances, even if they might not change hearts and minds, could move piles of cash.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley declined to release detailed numbers, but said the campaign had raised more money online in the 24 hours after the debate than it had on any day since the campaign started. “The response to Nikki’s debate performance has been overwhelming,” said the spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik.Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom the donors also identified as having a good night onstage, also saw an uptick, according to his campaign. Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence, said it had taken in at least 1,000 new contributions overnight. While most were smaller donors — valuable because they can sustain a campaign in the long term — “the bigger breakthrough last night was the major donors,” he said, including some who had funded other candidates but held back on Mr. Pence.“I think there’s been a large number of supporters who have been on the sidelines but have been looking for some of that spark,” Mr. Short said. “I think many of them saw that last night.”The immediate feedback reflected the traditional sympathies of major Republican donors. They favored candidates who they felt came off as authoritative but not obnoxious, with established résumés and hawkish foreign policy views. They also, naturally, tended to see their preferred candidates’ performances through hopeful eyes.These tendencies have proved to be blind spots before, especially in the face of the unwavering support of the small donor base that remains fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump. Several major donors downplayed the significance of the immediate returns, saying that no debate-dollar bump could surmount Mr. Trump’s popularity. Some who attended the debate described it as something of a social occasion or a sideshow.Unsurprisingly, the candidate who most defended — and sounded like — Mr. Trump on Wednesday night, Vivek Ramaswamy, was also the candidate who most rankled the high-dollar donors. Several of them said they thought Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author, had overplayed his hand, citing his bombast and confrontational style.“Vivek made a complete jackass out of himself,” said Andy Sabin, a major donor to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. “He is so clueless about what’s going on in this country.”But his performance appeared to have appeal for some small-dollar donors. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, said the campaign raised $625,000 in the 24 hours after the start of the debate — the biggest single fund-raising day of the campaign, with an average donation size of $38.“Unlike some donor-favorite candidates onstage,” Ms. McLaughlin said, “Vivek is not worried about what the donor class has to say about his politics and performance, which is why he is unconstrained in speaking the truth.”Mr. Sabin said he thought Mr. Scott had “done what he was supposed to do,” but the crowded, fast-paced format, in which candidates frequently talked over the moderators, made it hard for Mr. Scott to stand out. Money is less of a concern for Mr. Scott than for Mr. Pence or Ms. Haley: His campaign had $21 million on hand at the end of June, and groups supporting him have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising in the early states.“Tim stayed out of trouble and out of the fray, had good answers,” Mr. Sabin said. “He probably should have been more involved in this, but I don’t think that had anything to do with him.”A major donor to Senator Tim Scott said the debate’s crowded, fast-paced format made it hard for the candidate to stand out.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who went into the debate with the highest poll numbers of any candidate on the stage, was also quieter than many had expected.Some unaffiliated donors said it was a missed opportunity for Mr. DeSantis. Among the backers of other candidates, Bill Bean, an Indiana businessman and longtime supporter of Mr. Pence, said Mr. DeSantis “did not have that moment where he just separated himself from the whole field that I think some people were looking for.”The days after the debate kicked off a major slate of campaign travel and new ads for Mr. DeSantis, according to Jay Zeidman, a major DeSantis fund-raiser. “We view this as the turn of a new chapter,” he said — a reference, in part, to the turbulence of the governor’s campaign in recent months, as his poll numbers have lagged. Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, confirmed that it would spend $25 million on ads in Iowa and New Hampshire in the next two months, a buy that was first reported by The Washington Post.Mr. Pence, who has struggled to gain traction in the race and still lags far behind his rivals in fund-raising, spoke the most of any candidate on the stage last night, and many donors took notice.“There was a lot of energy there,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, the Haley donor. “I think that surprised people.”Several bundlers and donors — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still plan to support Mr. Trump — suggested that Mr. Pence’s performance and steadfast appeal to evangelicals were likely to help him in Iowa, which is crucial to his campaign.Before Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Bean, who has given $100,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Pence, hoped that Mr. Pence would have the opportunity to “show the American people who he really is.”That objective was largely met, Mr. Bean said, although he felt the debate format was too fast-paced and chaotic to give any candidate enough time to cover significant topics.“The biggest thing that was accomplished last night,” Mr. Bean said, was that Mr. Pence “moved past the Jan. 6 issue, which I thought was probably the biggest single thing out there that he had to do.” More

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      Raising a Hand for Donald Trump, the Man in the Mug Shot

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      One by one, some with a little hesitation, six hands went up on the debate stage Wednesday night when the eight Republican candidates answered whether they would support Donald Trump for president if he were a convicted criminal. Hand-raising is a juvenile and reductive exercise in any political debate, but it’s worth unpacking this moment, which provides clarity into the damage that Mr. Trump has inflicted on his own party.Six people who themselves want to lead their country think it would be fine to have a convicted felon as the nation’s chief executive. Six candidates apparently would not be bothered to see Mr. Trump stand on the Capitol steps in 2025 and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, no matter if he had been convicted by a jury of violating that same Constitution by (take your choice) conspiracy to obstruct justice, lying to the U.S. government, racketeering and conspiracy to commit forgery, or conspiracy to defraud the United States. (The Fox News hosts, trying to race through the evening’s brief Trump section so they could move on to more important questions about invading Mexico, didn’t dwell on which charges qualified for a hand-raise. So any of them would do.)There was never any question that Vivek Ramaswamy’s hand would shoot up first. But even Nikki Haley, though she generally tried to position herself as a reasonable alternative to Mr. Ramaswamy’s earsplitting drivel, raised her hand. So did Ron DeSantis, after peeking around to see what the other kids were doing. And Mike Pence’s decision to join this group, while proudly boasting of his constitutional bona fides for simply doing his job on Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated the cognitive dissonance at the heart of his candidacy.Only Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson demonstrated some respect for the rule of law by opposing the election of a criminal. Mr. Hutchinson said Mr. Trump was “morally disqualified” from being president because of what happened on Jan. 6, and made the interesting argument that he may also be legally disqualified under the 14th Amendment for inciting an insurrection. Mr. Christie said the country had to stop “normalizing” Mr. Trump’s conduct, which he said was beneath the office of president. Though he was accused by Mr. Ramaswamy of the base crime of trying to become an MSNBC contributor, Mr. Christie managed to say something that sounded somewhat forthright: “I am not going to bow to anyone when we have a president of the United States who disrespects the Constitution.” For this Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson were both roundly booed.It’s important to understand the implications of what those six candidates were saying, particularly after watching Mr. Trump turn himself in on Thursday at the Fulton County Jail to be booked on the racketeering charge and 12 other counts of breaking Georgia law. Only Mr. Ramaswamy was willing to utter the words, amid his talk about shutting down the F.B.I. and instantly pardoning Mr. Trump, saying Mr. Trump was charged with “politicized indictments” and calling the justice system “corrupt.”“We cannot set a precedent where the party in power uses police force to indict its political opponents,” he said. “It is wrong. We have to end the weaponization of justice in this country.”This is the argument that Mr. Trump has been making for months, of course, but when more than three-fourths of the main players in the Republican field supports it, it essentially means that a major political party has given up on the nation’s criminal justice system. The party thinks indictments are weapons and prosecutors are purely political agents. The rule of law hardly has a perfect record in this country and its inequities are many, but when a political party says that the criminal justice system has become politicized, and that the indictments of three prosecutors in separate jurisdictions are meaningless, it begins to dissolve the country’s bedrock.Mr. Pence said he wished that issues surrounding the 2020 election had not risen to criminal proceedings, but they did, because two prosecutors chose to do their jobs faithfully, just as the former vice president did on Jan. 6. He piously told the audience that his oath of office in 2017 was made not just to the American people, but “to my heavenly father.” But any religious moralizing about that oath was debased when he said he was willing to support as president a man whose mug shot was taken Thursday at a squalid jail in Atlanta, who was fingerprinted and had his body dimensions listed and released on bond like one of the shoplifters and car burglars who were also processed in the jail the same day.Apparently Thursday’s proceedings were a meaningless farce to Mr. Pence, Ms. Haley and the other four. But most Americans still have enough respect for the legal system that they don’t consider being booked a particularly frivolous or rebellious act. The charges against Mr. Trump are not for civil disobedience or crimes of conscience; they accuse him of grave felonies committed entirely for the corrupt purpose of holding onto power.Being booked and mug-shotted for these kinds of crimes represents degradation to most people, despite the presumption of innocence that still applies at the trial level. How does a parent explain to a child why a man in a mug shot might be the nation’s next leader? That should be a very difficult conversation, unless you happen to be a Republican candidate for president.Source photographs by Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock and Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, via Associated Press.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More