I watched the first Republican primary debate. I have a definite opinion on who won. Below, I capture some clips from the debate. I also found a reliable poll about how each candidate did, and how their favorable and unfavorable numbers changed.

I come at politics from a very different place than most Americans, even the ones who agree with me on political parties. My experience with “voting” is limited to hiring new engineers. I’m a senior software engineer, and I get called into interviews to test whether applicants can actually do what they wrote on their resume. So, I ask questions that will test for that, such as “tell me about a time when you were on production support and had a P1 that lasted longer than an hour” or “tell me about a time when you to make changes to your application due to a vulnerability scan” or “tell me about how your re-write of the payment processing system complies with PCI standards”. I don’t want someone who was just present, I want the person who led the effort and learned the lessons.

So, I’m not interested in popular opinions or slogans. I’m looking for the story of how you solved the problem, especially if you had to push back against other team members in order to get the job done. We don’t want someone who thinks too highly of themselves or just throws out cool-sounding opinions or insults. We want someone who can persuade or convince others and lead a team to a result. That is how change is driven in the real world. Not by commands, but by technical leadership – by persuading people to want to do what you want them to do.

So, with that in mind, check out these clips from the debate.

DeSantis opening speech:

On abortion: (notice how he has passed a very restrictive law in a purple state, which Trump thinks is too restrictive)

The only candidate with military service – focus on the mission, not office politics:

Would use lethal military force on drug cartels at the southern border:

Instead of expressing “future plans” that he has no experience implementing, he talks about what he learned from past achievements – this time in education policy:

The biggest issue of the election for me is the secular left weaponizing government against Christians and conservatives. And I’m looking for actions, not slick talk. DeSantis was the only candidate on the stage who had actions on this topic:

Concluding speech focuses on parent’s rights:

All right, that’s enough from the debate, let’s take a look at the Ipsos / Washington Post poll numbers.

Here are the changes in support (how much voters are considering voting for the candidate) for people who WATCHED THE DEBATE:

• DeSantis: 67.5 % (up from 63.0 %)
• Trump: 61.4 % (down from 66.2 %)
• Haley: 46.7 % (up from 30.2 %)
• Ramaswamy: 46.3 % (up from 40.8 %)
• Scott: 43.1 % (up from 41.1%)

So, Trump definitely lost the debate by not showing up, which I think is not what you see from “don’t care, voting for Trump anyway” people on Twitter.

What is most interesting I think is the net favorable / unfavorable rating, among likely Republican primary voters who watched the debate:

• DeSantis: 72.4 % favorable vs 24.7% unfavorable
• Ramaswamy: 60.4 % favorable vs 31.8 % unfavorable
• Trump: 59.8 % favorable vs 35.6% unfavorable
• Haley: 65.5 % favorable vs 26.8 % unfavorable
• Scott: 65.3 % favorable vs 23.2 % unfavorable

Of the leading candidates, Trump has the highest unfavorable ratings, by far. To me, DeSantis is more conservative than Trump (based on achievements, not words), more disciplined than Trump in his speaking, and has more appeal to independents and suburban moms than Trump. I want to win the next election, not be entertained by zingers and tweets.

So, that’s where we stand right now. I am hoping that they will focus on only a few debate participants next debate:  the top 4 only. And that we will see longer timed speeches, with no audience interruptions. They really need to have longer-form debates, instead of 1-minute sound bites.

Related posts

• Video and outline: Tucker Carlson interviews Ron DeSantis on Blaze TV
• Mamas for DeSantis: Casey DeSantis champions parent’s rights at the national level
• high tourism and low unemployment
• six-week abortion ban
• no sex-reassignment surgeries on kids
• no pronouns required in Florida schools
• no kids at drag queen shows
• pre-game prayer is allowed
• universal school choice
• making collection of union dues optional for teachers
• flying illegal immigrants to Massachusetts
• elect conservatives to school boards
• teach students about the historical record of communism
• ban grooming of young children
• protect wildlife
• banning biological males from women’s sports
• punishing Big Tech social media companies for censoring conservatives

So, there was a time when men could be less picky with women, and everything would be fine. The woman would not turn crazy, and attack the man. The government would not step in and get involved. But today, men need to accept that times have changed. And men have to be more careful about who they marry. And the government and the courts are much more likely to step in an ruin the man’s life.

Here’s a story Rose sent me from Daily Wire. (By the way, she is still coughing a lot, and not ready to record part 3 of Christianity and Socialism).

Excerpt:

A San Francisco dad is fighting a nightmarish custody battle for his toddler son, who he says is being raised “non-binary” by his mother, who claims to be genderless.

Harrison Tinsley, 31, is seeking full custody of his son Sawyer, 3, who currently spends half of his time with Tinsley’s ex-girlfriend, the boy’s mother. Sawyer’s mother, 30, uses they/them pronouns for the boy and puts him in dresses and makeup, photos provided by Tinsley appear to show. Sawyer also told his dad that his mother put him in princess shoes on a trip to Disneyland, a video of the conversation shows. Sawyer’s mother may have thought about raising her son “non-binary” before he was even born. In what appears to be a Facebook post during her pregnancy, she refers to Sawyer as “my sweet baby boy or girl or neither if that’s what you feel.”

Sawyer himself rebels against his mom and insists he is a boy, his dad says.

[…]Gender confusion is not Tinsley’s only concern for his son — he is also concerned for the child’s immediate safety.

Back in 2021, Sawyer’s mother was arrested and booked in jail for felony child endangerment when then-1-year-old Sawyer fell off a bed during an altercation between the mother and her roommate, police body cam footage viewed by The Daily Wire shows.

The San Francisco police gave custody of Sawyer to the mother’s two dads for the night and put her on a psychiatric hold at the hospital. She was ultimately not convicted of a crime.

This sounds terrible, but what can single men learn from this? Well, we recently had a story where an Army vet was charged and convicted of murder for defending himself from an Antifa terrorist who was armed with an AK-47. Why? Because this happened in Austin, TX, which is incredibly liberal. So, step one would probably be to be careful where you live. Harrison lives in California.

Second, he shouldn’t be making babies with women he’s not married to. The whole point of marriage is to make sure that there has been some communication and vetting before you get into the bedroom and make babies. Marriage protects babies from parents who are only interested in fun. Babies aren’t fun. That’s why we used to make people commit before having them.

This, look at this woman’s background. I always ask women “are your parents still married?” when taking them out on dates. It’s a very important question.

Now watch this:

The mother herself now identifies as “non-binary,” although she did not when she was dating Tinsley, court documents show.

Fourth, she runs an ultra-progressive non-profit:

LGBT issues have been a major theme in her life — she was adopted and raised by two older gay men in the Bay Area, where she still lives and runs an ultra-progressive non-profit.

What a woman does for a living is a really important clue to their personality. Don’t get involved with ultra-progressive women. Recent studies show that white progressive women have extremely high rates of mental illness and drug use.

Speaking of mental illness, here’s number five:

During the psychiatric hold at the hospital, Sawyer’s mother told a psychiatrist that she has borderline personality disorder, a condition that can involve impulsive and risky behavior, the psychiatrist later testified in San Francisco family court.

Child Protective Services investigated the police incident and concluded that Sawyer’s mother was not a safety threat to her son. Her mental health was a “complicating factor, but not a safety issue,” reads the CPS report, provided by Tinsley.

Sawyer’s mother was on five different medications for PTSD, mood stabilization, ADHD, and anxiety at the time of the CPS investigation, the CPS report said.

Sawyer’s mom can be heard on the police body cam footage mentioning that she drank alcohol earlier the same day.

You can’t count on government and courts to do the right thing for children. They don’t see women as guilty, they don’t punish them as long as they punish men, and they don’t think that male leadership is good for children. (“Smash the patriarchy”) This is why you don’t make babies with progressive women. They will do terrible things to your children (abortion, transing, let live-in boyfriends molest them, etc.) and no one will listen to you. I blogged about a case from British Columbia, Canada, and then another case from California.

Look:

Sawyer’s pediatrician, Dr. Danielle Alkov, works at a youth gender clinic that offers hormone therapy and so-called gender-affirming surgery referrals. She testified as an expert witness in court and said she has worked with children as young as 12. She also mentioned a nearby clinic that works with children as young as 3, Sawyer’s current age.

The court ordered that Alkov continue to be Sawyer’s primary care physician.

This part reminds me of the case from California that I mentioned, where the female judge refused to let the father present scientific evidence about the harm of transing his child:

Tinsley’s lawyer said he had planned to present scientific materials demonstrating the harm of treating Sawyer as if he had no gender, but they ran out of time in court.

During that trial, Sawyer’s mother said in court that she has had suicidal ideations multiple times in her life.

Also, false accusations are normally taken seriously in blue cities and blue states:

Meanwhile, she has defamed Tinsley repeatedly, he said. Sawyer’s mother has called the father of her child a rapist and even claimed Sawyer is the product of rape and that Tinsley has raped other people as well, a friend told police. She began making these allegations when Tinsley started fighting for custody, he said.

This is not the way that men should be spending their life savings:

Tinsley said he has spent all the money he ever saved on legal bills. His mother even contributed additional money, but funds are running low, he said. He recently started a fundraiser in hopes he can afford to continue fighting for custody of his son.

“I will do anything to keep my son safe and happy with who he is. I hope to inspire other parents with similar situations to be brave and speak up,” Tinsley told The Daily Wire.

In the meantime, Tinsley says he takes off work on the days he takes care of Sawyer, reading to him, taking him to the park, and spending as much time as possible with his young son.

My advice to men is to only have children with women who are staunch conservatives who hate feminism, CPS, public schools, divorce courts, socialism, etc. Otherwise, they are going to turn on you and hurt your children.

People on the secular left often struggle to rationally ground basic morality. Their version of “morality” starts with their own personal autonomy – and that’s absolute. Then, try to paint a portrait of themselves as “moral”, despite their support for abortion, infanticide, divorce, sex-trafficking children, etc. How can you claim to be moral when your morality is “survival of the fittest”?

Here’s the story of a woman who didn’t take the right to life seriously – reported in Daily Wire:

A British nurse convicted last week of murdering seven infants between 2015 and 2016 and attempting to murder six more has been sentenced to life in prison.

The 33-year-old nurse, who will not be named per Daily Wire policy, became the United Kingdom’s worst serial killer of babies in recent times after she was convicted in 14 out of the 22 counts she faced, People Magazine reported. On Monday, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

[…]The nurse’s trial took ten months to complete at Manchester Crown Court, with the 11-person jury failing to reach verdicts on six additional counts of attempted murder. She was also found not guilty on two counts of attempted murder.

The woman, who worked as a nurse in the neonatal ward of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England, would inject air into babies’ blood and stomachs, overfeed them with milk, physically assault them, and poison them with insulin, CNN reported.

If there is one thing common to every person on the secular left, it’s their absolute hatred of being held accountable. People on the secular left hate to be judged, and they oppose all punishment for moral crimes. They feel that they should be able to do what they want, and that their own personal desires should be respected by everyone as “objective morality”.

And this woman is no exception:

The nurse didn’t appear for sentencing, which has led some to call for changes in law to ensure that a guilty person is present for their sentencing hearing, CNN reported. During sentencing, Justice James Goss explained that the nurse deserved life in prison because her crimes were “a cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children.”

He spoke as if the nurse were in the courtroom and ordered his remarks and all victim impact statements to be sent to the convicted serial killer.

“There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism. During the course of this trial you have coldly denied any responsibility for your wrongdoing. You have no remorse. There are no mitigating factors,” he said, according to CNN.

Honestly, I’m surprised to hear words like this come out of a United Kingdom judge. They’re not a country that’s known for holding evil people accountable.

I thought this part was interesting:

Text messages and social media activity also coincided with the attacks, some of which seemed to live blog the events. This activity, according to CPS, showed the nurse had an “intrusive curiosity about the parents of babies she had harmed.”

Who knows what the motives of this woman are? There is a lot of hostility towards children out there today, especially among feminists. Many of them are bitter about  being childless in their 30s. Others are committed to global warming alarmism, and believe that it hurts the planet to have children. Others are concerned about “overpopulation” – especially when people of certain races have “too many” children.

This women doesn’t have to be “evil” or “crazy”. She could just be acting rationally according to standard secular leftist beliefs. She could just be lacking any of the boundaries that come from the Judeo-Christian worldview. Those boundaries are disappearing now, so we should expect to see more secular left “morality” like this happening more and more.