For two hours on Wednesday evening, eight Republican candidates not named Donald Trump did their best to convince GOP voters that — well, it’s really not quite clear what they were trying to do.
GOP
공화당 Grand Old Party (republican Party)
If one thing was clear at the end of an often explosive first Republican primary debate for 2024, it’s that Trump has little to fear from anyone who actually attended the debate. In fact, we may be looking at one of the weakest Republican primary fields in a generation, united only in their near-universal commitment to support Trump even if the former president is running for office from prison.
Wednesday’s exercise in frustration at the Fiserv Forum revealed a GOP that is only a shadow of its pre-Trump self. Americans would be hard pressed to find a single serious policy mind in the bunch, save perhaps former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who seemed completely out of place amid her colleagues’ incoherent pledges to invade Mexico (Gov. Ron DeSantis), end foreign aid to Israel (Vivek Ramaswamy) and fire between 10 and 75 percent of non-defense federal workers (DeSantis, Ramaswamy, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence).
incoherent
앞뒤가 맞지 않는 말을 하는
In place of any meaningful policy discussion stood the Republican Party’s new export commodity: cultural grievance.
The candidates made political hay out of pledges to ban transgender athletes from competing in womens’ sports and fighting the bogeyman of liberal “wokeness.” DeSantis earned one of his only big cheers of the night after recounting how Florida “eliminated Critical Race Theory […] and gender ideology from K-12 schools.”
wokeness
사회적 정의와 같은 이슈에 대해 민감한 정도
K-12
(미국의) 유치원에서 12학년까지[유·초등] 교육
The presidential hopefuls weren’t so eager to talk about abortion, perhaps because a majority of Americans — and nearly a third of Republicans — believe abortion should remain legal. Fox News even acknowledged the dire situation GOP lawmakers face, conceding that Republicans have lost every single effort to restrict abortion by ballot measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Far from the fire-and-brimstone abortion language that was so common at Republican debates past, the candidates ducked and dodged direct questions about whether they would support a federal ban on abortion at just six weeks. At one point, Haley even chastised her fellow Republicans for vilifying women who seek abortions. The debate audience met Haley’s attempt at balanced statesmanship with icy silence — a sign that, whatever Republicans might have said in the past, abortion access is now a millstone weighing down the party’s political hopes.
Only three of the party’s presidential hopefuls managed to make any impression at all on the rambunctious audience of rank-and-file Republican voters: Haley, Pence and billionaire investment bro Ramaswamy. It’s hard to imagine any political oddsmaker would have marked those three out for success ahead of the evening, and each managed to appeal to a different element of the Republican psyche. Unfortunately, none of those three have a meaningful chance at dethroning Trump unless the field narrows quickly and sharply.
rambunctious
떠들썩한, 활기가 넘치는
oddsmaker
오즈 메이커 (내기·선거·경기 등에서 승산의 비율을 측정하는 사람)
Ramaswamy clearly owned the evening, drawing consistent cheers — except when Haley cornered him on his unpopular plan to end foreign aid to Israel. Ramaswamy came prepared with all of the polish of a guy whose job involves selling you investment packages, and he even felt confident enough to compare himself to former President Barack Obama during his opening remarks.
But if Ramaswamy oozed charm when delivering his canned lines, he proved easily derailed when Pence and Haley peppered him with specific, policy-related follow-up questions. Pence latched onto that weakness early on, repeatedly interrupting Ramaswamy and drawing out the political neophyte’s nasty side. Pence, usually mocked for being phlegmatic, seemed to relish finding a rival he could really slap around.
If Ramaswamy won the Milwaukee audience, Haley positioned herself to steal the thunder once reserved for DeSantis — along with the megadonors who have until now mostly stayed out of the race. Haley was the clear adult in the room, owning the foreign policy section of the debate and providing some of the only coherent analysis of Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine. She also pulled off an almost unheard-of feat in the modern GOP: criticizing the Republican Party’s high-spending Trump years without catching a single boo from the MAGA-sympathetic audience.
megadonor
메가도너(기부를 많이 하는 사람)
devastating
파괴적인, 엄청난 손상을 입히는
MAGA
(Make America Great Again) 도날드 트럼프 대통령의 슬로건 "미국을 다시 위대하게 만들자"