I like many of those who were on the GOP debate stage last night. I like 98 percent of Trump’s policies very much. (He is weak on the lives of the unborn.) I love the once-in-a-century conservative-yet-populist agenda he implemented successfully. He is the first and only Republican president in a century who consistently and reliably named conservative judges and justices to the courts. Gasoline prices at the pump were under $3 a gallon. America became a net exporter of clean energy. Inflation was so low that younger people had to look up the word in a dictionary to know what it was. Black unemployment was the lowest ever, as was Hispanic unemployment. Under Trump, Putin behaved himself, as did the North Korean Doughboy. NATO — a conglomeration of the cheapest penny-pinchers on earth — started paying their dues. The American embassy in Israel was moved to Jerusalem; we gave formal recognition to the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and stopped calling it the “West Bank.” We threw the PLO office out of Washington, D.C., cut off the “Palestine Authority,” and pulled out of the anti-Semitic U.N. “Human Rights Council.” We got tougher on crime, tougher on illegal immigration, started building the wall. So I liked Trump very much at last night’s GOP debate.

He wasn’t on the stage? Then you missed the debate.

I may have lost half this article’s readers at this point, so let me now lose the other half. I also love Mike Pence.

OK. No one’s reading now, so I can speak freely:

There is not a more honest, deeply conservative, religiously faithful man in the race than he. More: Until the Jan. 6 mess, he was 100 percent loyal to the Trump MAGA program, and he still is. Jan. 6 was unfortunate. He did what he had to do. He was not the Villain of Jan. 6. Rather, all the idiot Republican leaders in Congress and throughout the states who have allowed voting by “no shows” via postal mail and vote harvesting and unattended drop-box voting and two-week and four-week and six-week voting windows instead of a single defined Election Day, and a new failure to carefully match signatures to voting records — those are the criminals of Jan. 6 … and will be next Jan. 6 and the Jan. 6 after that … until we get elections back to the way they always were here — and are all over the rest of the world. You have one day of voting, and it is called “Election Day,” with discrete exceptions made only for diplomats stationed abroad, armed forces stationed away from home, hospitalized patients, and maybe non-felons incarcerated that day.

I like Mike. I like Mike Huckabee. I like Mike Pompeo. And I like Mike Pence. I trust him. He knew the price he would pay politically for taking his Jan. 6 stand. He is true to the Constitution.

The thing is, I know he is not running for president because he knows his brand is so damaged in the GOP right now. So what’s his game? First, to tell his side of Jan. 6. He has no other bullhorn forum because the leftist mainstream media shut out all Republicans. And he hopes to run in 2028, so he is working to burnish his credentials. I am with you, Mike. But I am a polygamist when it comes to GOP presidential candidates. I love many. So, yes, I have said some nice things about you here because, well, that was big-a-my.

Which brings me quickly to Gov. Berkum of one of the Dakotas. Every time I see him, I turn up the sound because, otherwise, it looks to me as though Martin Scorsese is on the stage. Those eyebrows, the whole get-up. The only way I am sure it is not Scorsese is that, wherever Scorsese is, Robert De Niro is right behind. And I know that De Niro, whose acting I always have loved, is a foul-mouthed urchin. So there is that.

As to Nikki and Tim, it is so weird watching the two candidates from South Carolina beating up on each other. First of all, I like them both, and it’s like watching my brothers fight publicly with each other. It pains me. (It would pain me even more if I actually had brothers.) Also, it’s weird because Nikki named Tim to be a United States senator. He never would have had the opportunity to show America how great he can be if she had not given him the chance. Once in, people saw how good he is.

But not good enough to be president of the United States, at least not yet. Maybe in 2032. But he is pretty good.

Nikki is a more interesting bird. What is she thinking — that she is going to be nominated over Trump and DeSantis? Of course not. She is smart as a whip. She is running for vice president — only, that is a secret that only she and I know. She saw how Kamala did it. Kamala, whose rise from obscurity to political name recognition came about because of her escorting the half-century-older Willie Brown, who was married to someone else, has finally gained the opportunity for the public to judge her on her own merits. She is revealed to be a giggling idiot — perfect for a Biden vice president, someone so incompetent and plain stupid as veep to assure he would not get impeached until the end of his only term.

That’s where Nikki is at. She has some good foreign policy experience. Was a good governor. Actually has some excellent qualifications for the job. And, like Kamala, she has roots from India and thus is a Person of Color (sort of like my Uncle Stanley of Brooklyn after he would spend two weeks in Florida every winter). She will have to make up with Trump after he gets nominated, but she was his U.N. ambassador, and he forgives critics who seek atonement. Trump might decide a Woman of Color, from Kamala’s India, might help with women voters. That’s Nikki’s game. In the alternative, she will take secretary of state.

Which brings us to Mr. Ramaswamy. What in the world is he doing there? How do these things happen to our country?

He talks well and is quick on his feet? So am I. So are several million of us. Really. Catch one of my relatively few debates or interviews or speeches on YouTube. I’m incredibly good at public speaking, debating, coining memorable one-liners, and stuff like that. So why don’t I run for president? Because I have a more important role here at The American Spectator, writing to myself since everyone else stopped reading once I said I love both Trump and Pence (i.e., the winning 2016 ticket).

Talking about India, if Nikki Haley is inspired by what Kamala pulled off, then Ramaswamy’s model is Mayor Pete, the South Bender, the incomparably incompetent Secretary Buttigieg. Biden assigned the fool to the Transportation portfolio, and he has turned the expression “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” from a Steve Martin–John Candy comedy to a Freddy Friday the 13th horror story: trains derailed, calamities in the other Palestine (where people celebrate America and not terrorism), insane airport chaos with cancellations all over the place. Pete was on the Democrats’ stage to trumpet Rainbow LMNOPQ and ended up not only outside the closet but inside the Cabinet. That’s Ramaswamy’s strategy, too: show up, talk smooth, slick up the hair, promise a Santa Claus bag of goodies that he has no idea how to deliver, and just be a new face. While everyone else bad-mouths Trump, as though that will help them with the GOP base in an era when even Mormon Mitt Romney dares not seek reelection in Utah, Ramaswamy talks up Trump and praises Trump.

Get it? He is playing three-dimensional chess. He knows it is hopeless to beat Trump, and he knows Trump rewards not only genuine supporters (as he should) but also sycophants. So Mitt Romney does not get named secretary of state, no matter how many dinners he has at Trump restaurants, but Omarosa ends up in the White House. Ramaswamy knows Trump is watching. He is running for vice president as the only Trump sycophant there. And even if he does not get the VP slot ahead of Nikki — the most exciting cage fight between two India-Americans since the National Spelling Bee — he definitely will end up in Trump’s Cabinet, not bad for a guy who sneaked past security and ended up on the stage with pros.

That leaves Christie. He is there for one reason: vendetta. This is not about the presidency; it is about that Trump never named him to a Cabinet spot or, as they say in Joyzee: sump’m. Trump coulda given him sump’m but instead gave him nuttin’. Christie would have been a better attorney general and attack dog than Jeff Sessions, who inadvertently torpedoed Trump’s first term like a guy recovering a fumble and then running 99 yards with it the wrong way. He would have been better as head of the FBI than Trump’s cockamamie appointment of Christopher Wray. But Christie got blacklisted. Why? Because he had fiercely, correctly, and successfully prosecuted and locked up Jared’s father in 2005 as United States attorney in New Jersey. Jared ended up in Trump Family. Trump is loyal to family — not as Biden the Crook is loyal to his Biden Criminal Family, but loyal to kin. Christie did his job, and his mazal was that the guy he busted ended up Trump’s mekhutan (in-law). So it’s purely personal. The debates give Christie a stage to rag on Trump for the next six months. As long as people are willing to donate to his therapy sessions, we get to listen.

That’s about it. It was good talking to me.

Oh, DeSantis? I love him and hate him. It’s personal. Half my synagogue congregation has left Newsom’s California to live in DeSantis’ Florida. My chazan (High Holy Days cantor) moved to live under DeSantis. (Hi, Chazan Erblich! Regards to Leah.) Also, my Assistant Chazan has moved to DeSantis’ Florida. (Hi, Rabbi Mizrachi! Regards to Sheila.) Half my congregation. Warren. Janine. Selwyn. David and Cynthia. I can go on and on.

DeSantis is my No. 1 choice for 2028, assuming the 47th president is barred from seeking a second term as No. 47 on grounds he already had a term as No. 45. (That’s going to be a doozie of a Supreme Court case.) DeSantis is my top choice because he actually has done stuff: changed Florida’s public school textbooks to take out the LMNOPQ garbage and teach kids real American history. He has stood up to the Disney leftists. He ships illegals to Eric Adams, since New York City has announced it warmly welcomes undocumented immigrants in the Sanctuary City, where they are greeted with a smile and afforded a choice of street corners to sleep every night. DeSantis turned Florida from blue to red by knowing how to pick fights, when to hold, when to attack. He is great. This run is his sneak preview. My ticket for 2028 is DeSantis–Pompeo. (Pompeo is running for 2028. Watch the movie Route 60: The Biblical Highway. He is in the ring.)

Bottom line: As of now, I predict a Trump–Haley ticket. Ramaswamy as secretary of Transportation. Pence on a successful book tour. Christie defending Giuliani in court for the next four years. Tim Scott a notch higher in the Senate. DeSantis in Florida stealing more of my minyan (quorum of worshippers). And Berkum starring in a biography of Martin Scorsese.