Don­ald Trump has recast the Repub­li­can Par­ty as an instru­ment of griev­ance, pent up anger which can yield to rage. Trump was not on stage for the par­ty’s first pres­i­den­tial can­di­date debate in Mil­wau­kee, but he didn’t need to be there. The neg­a­tivism of the par­ty he trans­formed was on full display.

Only one Repub­li­can can­di­date – ex-South Car­oli­na Gov­er­nor Nik­ki Haley – showed an abil­i­ty to break out of the pack. She not­ed that $8 tril­lion was added to the nation­al debt dur­ing the Trump regime, and said of the for­mer pres­i­dent: “We have to face the fact that Trump is the most dis­liked politi­cian in America.”

She was the one can­di­date to answer a ques­tion on cli­mate and extreme weath­er, albeit with a deflec­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty. “Is cli­mate change real?” Haley asked. “Yes it is. But if you want to go and real­ly change the envi­ron­ment, then we need to start telling Chi­na and India that they have to low­er their emissions.”

Wealthy investor and polit­i­cal novice Vivek Ramaswamy served as a kind of Trump stand-in, even in his choice of words. He described cli­mate dam­age as “a hoax.” He spurned Rea­gan-style opti­mism, argu­ing that Amer­i­ca is “in a dark moment.” And, with­out nam­ing him, Ramaswamy took a hard shot at Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis: “Do you want a Super PAC pup­pet or a patri­ot who speaks the truth?”

DeSan­tis spent much of his stage time promis­ing to get people.

The Flori­da gov­er­nor is a very grim guy who gives off author­i­tar­i­an vibes.

He took after lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros – as if Fox view­ers uni­ver­sal­ly knew who he was talk­ing about – for financ­ing the cam­paigns of “rad­i­cal dis­trict attor­neys.” DeSan­tis has already removed two DAs in Flori­da and promised: “As pres­i­dent, we are going to go after all of these people.”

DeSan­tis dodged a ques­tion on cli­mate. He pulled the same move, or tried to, when asked if he sup­port­ed ex-Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence in going ahead with the elec­toral vote count on Jan­u­ary 6th. (Pence was­n’t hav­ing it.)

DeSan­tis pledged to fire pres­i­den­tial COVID-19 advis­er Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, although Dr. Fau­ci has already retired. He promised to send U.S. spe­cial forces into Mex­i­co to go after drug traf­fick­ers and tried to deliv­er a John Wayne-style boast: “We’re going to use force and leave them stone cold dead.”

The par­ty remade by Trump has cre­at­ed dev­il fig­ures and straw men.

DeSan­tis promised to “break the back of teach­ers unions,” while Ramaswamy pledged to “end the teach­ers unions at the local level.”

One after anoth­er, can­di­dates on the stage pledged to elim­i­nate the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. DeSan­tis bur­nished his cul­ture war­rior cre­den­tials, say­ing: “In Flori­da, we elim­i­nat­ed crit­i­cal race the­o­ry from our K‑12 schools.”

For­mer New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Chris Christie has been pro­nounced by many com­men­ta­tors to be the rea­son­able Repub­li­can in the race. Asked what he would do with the sev­en mil­lion immi­grants and refugees who have entered the Unit­ed States in the past three years, Christie said he would deport them.

Christie did get boo-birds in the audi­ence going when he said of Trump: “Some­body has got to stop nor­mal­iz­ing his conduct.”

Ex-Arkansas Gov­er­nor Asa Hutchi­son pro­voked a cas­cade of jeers by say­ing Trump “is moral­ly dis­qual­i­fied from being president.”

Trump was coun­ter­pro­gram­ming with a forty-six minute inter­view with ex-Fox host Tuck­er Carl­son. He mixed insults – call­ing Chris Christie a “sav­age mani­ac” – with obser­va­tions on top­ics rang­ing from deceased sex­u­al pedophile Jef­frey Epstein (with whom Trump was for­mer­ly asso­ci­at­ed and pho­tographed with) to the the appear­ance of Pres­i­dent Biden’s legs on the beach.

He is far ahead, and long­time Trump advis­er Kellyanne Con­way went on Fox after the debate to describe the line­up on stage as “the undercard.”

The Biden camp could only be pleased at the neg­a­tivism and feuding.

“No one onstage ‘won’ tonight’s debate,” Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris said in a state­ment cir­cu­lat­ed by the Biden-Har­ris cam­paign. “Instead the Amer­i­can peo­ple heard how much they stand to lose from an extrem­ist agen­da… These extrem­ists focus on unnec­es­sary debates meant to divide our nation in hopes that the Amer­i­can pub­lic will not notice they have no affir­ma­tive agenda.”

Mike Pence was far more ani­mat­ed in tonight’s debate than in his 2020 face-off with Har­ris, notable main­ly for the scene of a fly land­ing on the veep’s head. Ramaswamy set him off by mock­ing recent trips by Pence and Christie to Ukraine. Denounc­ing U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port for Ukraine, he sneered that Haley is angling for posts on the board of Raytheon and Lockheed.

He hint­ed that Christie wants to be a pun­dit on MSNBC.

“Putin is a dic­ta­tor and a mur­der­er and we need to stand against author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” said Pence, who talked about Rus­sians mur­der­ing Ukraini­ans, goug­ing peo­ples’ eyes out, and rap­ing women. Haley described the Russ­ian pres­i­dent as a “mur­der­er,” cit­ing the mys­te­ri­ous plane crash that killed Wag­n­er mer­ce­nary leader Yevge­ny Prigozhin, who led an abort­ed mutiny in June.

Sen­a­tor Tim Scott, R‑South Car­oli­na, has inched up in the polls, with a rumored mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar bankrolling of his cam­paign by bil­lion­aire Lar­ry Ellison.

Scott spout­ed prepack­aged sound bites, some mis­lead­ing, such as this brazen attempt to cozy up to both Trump and the reli­gious right: “We keep see­ing not only the weaponiza­tion of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice against polit­i­cal oppo­nents but also against par­ents who show up at school board meet­ings. They are called, under this DOJ, ‘domes­tic terrorists’.”

Of course, that’s not true, but vic­tim­iza­tion is part of Trump’s new Repub­li­can Par­ty. Can­di­dates chal­leng­ing Trump have nib­bled at edges of his lega­cy, but been forced into the role of pan­der bears for fear of antag­o­niz­ing “the base.”

It caused Fox co-host Bret Baier to announce a com­mer­cial pause with the words: “We are going to take a brief moment and talk about the ele­phant not in the room.” Baier lat­er asked the can­di­dates to raise their hands if they would sup­port Trump if the ex-pres­i­dent wins their party’s nomination.

Only Hutchi­son and Christie indi­cat­ed they would not.

The White House took note of all the pos­i­tive mes­sage ground being left to the Democ­rats. They’ve been hand­ed not just the potent issue of repro­duc­tive rights, but a whole lot more. “One by one, each extrem­ist Repub­li­can can­di­date laid out a vision for an Amer­i­ca that is less fair, less free and less safe,” said Har­ris. “Pres­i­dent Biden and I will con­tin­ue to grow the econ­o­my from the bot­tom up and the mid­dle out and build a nation in which all peo­ple can tru­ly thrive.”