Rich men north of Maui
Last night’s Republican primary debate was, as expected, mostly a colossal waste of time. The eight candidates who showed up spent their time slinging barbs and posturing for an electorate that doesn’t want them. With a combined national support of 40% and 45% in Iowa, even if they could somehow unite and combine into some sort of smarmy American Enterprise Institute-designed Voltron, they will still get pasted by Donald Trump and all 91 counts of his federal and state indictments next year. Comparisons to the Undercard Debate from Veep were inevitable, yet still proved too high a bar for the crew at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum to meet. The clear victors were Trump and Ron DeSantis’ facial muscles, both of which won by not participating.
But there were some insights to be had. The debate’s overarching message was one of inexorable national decline. The moderators set the tone with a song: “Rich Men North of Richmond,” the bare-bones country ballad by Oliver Anthony, a previously unknown artist from a small Virginia town. The song evokes white country nostalgia for an unspecified past, blending standard right-wing populism against taxes and big government with Confederate allusions1 and QAnon-adjacent conspiracism (in the form of a not-so-veiled reference to politicians hanging out on Jeffrey Epstein’s island). “His lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country,” moderator Martha MacCallum said. She then pivoted to a softball opening question about why the song is “striking such a nerve in this country right now.” (DeSantis didn’t even need the bait, he was already prepared with his pre-announced opening line: “Our country is in decline!”)
To some extent this is all to be expected; “this country has serious problems and you need us to solve them” is a universal opposition party gambit. But the aching sorrow in Anthony’s song is matched by an apocalyptic urgency. The “rich men” of his song want “total control” and complete surveillance over “what you think” and “what you do.” His follow-up single, “I Want to Go Home” ups the ante: “Son, we’re on the brink of the next world war / And I don’t think nobody’s prayin’ no more.”
The candidates—at least one of whom, like the party’s frontrunner, is in fact a billionaire who’s spent most of his life north of Richmond—couldn’t match Anthony’s level of pathos, and none even tried. What they want is the support of Anthony’s disquieted fans, even if they can’t say exactly what’s got them so upset. The only answer the candidates seemed to be able to muster was inflation; DeSantis took a brief, half-hearted swipe at Trump’s oversight of the COVID “lockdowns,” but never returned to the topic. But it wasn’t long before, despite themselves, the Fox News moderators offered an actual, if partial, answer to that question.
About twenty minutes into the debate,