Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter Hamby. Tonight, how Vivek Ramaswamy squandered his political capital after a brief “surge” in polling and barrage of media attention in July and August. Sure, Ramaswamy seemed to tap into something with his far-right chatterbox schtick, but as his numbers continue to slink back down, it’s clear he never figured out how to capitalize.

But first, a Capitol Hill update from Abby Livingston…

• Who to watch: As of this writing, Jordan was continuing to accumulate momentum as the numbers moved his way. Three holdouts from last week, Ann Wagner and Michael McCaul and Mike Rogers, fell in line on Monday. Other Republicans did the same, but these three members were most consequential because Wagner is a respected senior Republican member and will probably bring followers; and because McCaul and Rogers (who had to be physically restrained on the House floor while yelling at Matt Gaetz during the January speaker vote) are chairmen, respectively of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committee.

• What comes next: Of course, it will be as difficult for Jordan as for any Republican to secure the votes needed to capture the gavel: So long as no Democrats cross the aisle, Jordan can be blocked by around four colleagues—the same unforgiving margin that bedeviled Scalise and Kevin McCarthy before him. But Jordan is leading the heaviest-handed public whipping campaign ever seen in a speaker’s race and most of the Republican profiles in courage left the building years ago.

  The key question now is whether the remaining holdouts can withstand the political pressure of Tuesday’s floor vote, which is designed to put recalcitrant members on the record and in the media crosshairs. The Jordan whip operation truly is a thing to behold—even Sean Hannity is getting in on the game, which is a fresh ethical line to be crossed at Fox News. This is on track to be the most white-hot floor vote ever.

• Give in or get out: More retirements are coming, as McCarthy recently predicted, and not just because the G.O.P. civil war has made the business of politics impossible, and sometimes intolerable. For one, any House Republican who votes against Jordan now will likely be signing his or her political death warrant live on cable news. The ongoing defections away from the Never Jordan movement on Monday leaves no critical mass left to challenge him, and it’s now much easier to single out the remainder, which will make their lives miserable in both the immediate and long term.

  Alas, the party’s right wing is already positioned to exact revenge in the upcoming House G.O.P. primaries, and that no matter how moderate a district is, the primary base is potent everywhere. Voting against Jordan seems like a first step toward retirement, whether members realize it yet or not.

  Yes, everyone in the Republican political class knew this fall was going to be difficult. But nobody had any idea it would be this miserable, and one has to wonder what’s left for the institutionalists to fight for after this experience. Look for “a waterfall of retirements,” as a Republican lobbyist put it to me, to begin once this drama settles down, as state filing deadlines approach, or over the coming holidays.

• Here comes the backlash…: Meanwhile, Democrats are already preparing to exact a political price for the House G.O.P.’s self-inflicted chaos. After speaking with a handful of Democratic members and people in their orbits, it is clear that party leadership has zero regret that helping oust McCarthy could result in empowering Jordan. The Democratic mantra continues to be that “this is Republicans’ own mess,” a paraphrase of multiple conversations I’ve had in recent days. Democrats are completely comfortable watching the G.O.P. conference wrestle itself into a Jordan speakership.

  Indeed, no one should underestimate the ferocity with which the Democrats will leverage all of Jordan’s baggage—the Ohio State wrestling scandal, dozens of controversial votes, a decade of shit-talking on Fox News—to make him the face of the House G.O.P. Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney wrote last week that a Jordan speakership would cost Republicans the majority next year. Democrats are counting on it.

  Former D.C.C.C. Chairwoman Cheri Bustos told me Monday that Democrats have an opportunity to make Jordan famous in the same way as Republicans did so effectively in 2010 with Nancy Pelosi: “For good or bad, candidates running in tough Congressional Districts will be tied to their leadership,” she said. “If Jim Jordan becomes Speaker, there is a lot to work with to tie vulnerable Republican incumbents to him. And the political arm of House Democrats will hit hard.”

Hannity asked Ramaswamy about comments he had made, in a separate interview with Tucker Carlson, suggesting that his Republican rival Nikki Haley’s support for Israel was driven by financial motives. Ramaswamy, in his usual way, tried to dodge, talking a mile a minute and claiming that Hannity was mischaracterizing his words. That set the host off.

“Vivek, stop right now; you do this in every single interview,” Hannity shot back. “You say stuff and then you deny it. You deny your own words. So, you know, why don’t you just own what you say and stand by it and stop playing these games… You go on these shows, people quote your exact words, and you deny your own words. I am saying if you are going to be your presidential candidate, and I give you your exact words, either own it, or give it back.” Hannity ended the interview shortly thereafter.

You have to be a special kind of person to make Sean Hannity look like Edward R. Murrow, but congrats to Vivek Ramaswamy for somehow achieving that feat. He smiled his way through the tense exchange, much like he did during the last two G.O.P. primary debates as his fed-up opponents were unloading similar contempt on the sanctimonious upstart. But despite his always-on grin, it had to cut deep that Ramaswamy was being knifed in primetime on Fox News, by one of the patron saints of right-wing media. The interview was a pretty good indicator that most people in the upper echelons of conservative politics are, at long last, finally over Ramaswamy’s schtick.

Ramaswamy has refused, of course, to directly attack Trump, the pied piper of the Republican base. When federal and state indictments began raining down on Trump, the other candidates generally avoided the subject or, when asked, said the prosecutions were unfair. Ramaswamy, though, saw it as an opportunity to steal headlines, loudly defending Trump against his prosecutors, at one point even traveling to Florida to hold a pro-Trump press conference outside the Miami courthouse where the former president was being charged for mishandling classified documents.

By July and August, when he went viral for karaoke-rapping Eminem at the Iowa State Fair, Ramaswamy was basking in the glow of newfound political fame, creeping up in the polls and surely loving mainstream media headlines like this one from New York magazine: “What If Vivek Ramaswamy Is the Future of Politics?” The political press, which has pretended all year that the G.O.P. primary is more competitive than it actually is, gave Ramaswamy undue hype for only the slightest gains in the polls. In July, when he raised a very gentle contrast with Trump on the topic of electability, NBC News wrote breathlessly that “the change in Ramaswamy’s tone comes amid a recent surge in polling. Ramaswamy is right in the middle of the race for third place in national polling of the G.O.P. primary, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. He’s sitting at 6.8 percent in the latest average, up more than 4 points in the last month.”

That’s right: Ramaswamy had “surged” 4 points in one month and was sitting in a gentleman’s third place, a cool 48 points behind Trump. Clearly, Ramaswamy was capitalizing on the boredom of the campaign press corps. But to his credit, he proved to be a heat-seeking missile for maybe the most precious commodity in modern politics: attention. His “go everywhere” media strategy was reminiscent, some observers said, of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 primary playbook, when the Democrat went from an unknown small-town mayor to the winner of the Iowa caucuses by saying yes to every booking request, from podcasts to cable news to Snapchat shows.

Over the summer, McClatchy, citing data from the earned media tracker Cision, found that among the G.O.P. candidates, Ramaswamy was second in media mentions only to Trump. He logged 58,918 media hits compared to Trump’s 100,577. Ron DeSantis, with a more traditional media strategy, was in a distant third. But with summer in the rearview, it’s worth examining why Ramaswamy has failed to capitalize on all that attention, shrinking in the polls instead of growing. Because even in the chaotic universe of Republican politics, with its shameless demands and perverse incentives, certain rules still apply. Among them: People have to like you.

But even if Trump were not in the race, I’d still bet that Ramaswamy wouldn’t reach the finish line, much like other gadfly candidates in past primaries who couldn’t go the distance. The reason is that Ramaswamy is good at getting attention, but getting attention is not the same thing as having political talent.

I would challenge any reporter passing through Iowa or New Hampshire to ask voters to name one thing—just one thing—that Ramaswamy stands for. I assume the most common answer would be his young age. Maybe his Indian heritage. Maybe that they saw him on a show they liked. None of those things actually count. Sure, those things get you into the conversation. But to win a nomination, you need to give voters something to hang onto, something that resonates emotionally or culturally that helps the campaign grow and move the ball down the field. It’s always been easy to dismiss Trump as a blowhard who doesn’t believe in anything, and he veers off script to the point of self-immolation. But in 2016, at least, Trump had several clear messages that helped him run up the score as the primary unfolded, even if they were controversial. Make America Great Again. That’s a message. Ban Muslims. That’s a message. Build The Wall. That’s a message. Lock Her Up. It might be ugly, but yeah, that’s a message.

Obviously, none of the G.O.P. candidates running in 2024 have developed messages powerful enough to overtake Trump. But with a good many of them, they at least have the whiff of a brand. DeSantis is the anti-woke crusader who stood against Covid lockdowns. Haley is the foreign policy hawk. Scott is the friendly Christian fella who came from nothing. Christie is the anti-Trump guy. And Ramaswamy? He’s unleashed thousands of words during the campaign while also saying nothing at all.

If anything, Ramaswamy has made a name for himself by raging against wokeness and supposed left-wing orthodoxies like corporate D.E.I. and E.S.G. initiatives, a jumble of words and letters that have little meaning to everyday voters. Whatever is percolating in the news cycle that day, Vivek will take a swing. But news cycles disappear like an anti-woke fart in the Iowa wind. Ramaswamy has given voters nothing to remember him by, other than his incoherence. The very thing that lent him early hype—his willingness to say anything at Volume 11, in any given moment—is the same thing that’s hurting him the most in the end.

That’s just a sample of Ramaswamy’s shifting views on pretty much everything, and his refusal to own up any of it is precisely what made Hannity want to shove him in a locker. After a while, the bit gets old. The same contempt flared in the G.O.P. debates, too, when other candidates could barely conceal their scorn for the Harvard know-it-all. “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Haley memorably told him during the second debate at The Reagan Library. After the candidates spent the evening calling him out on his myriad contradictions and lack of any coherent worldview, a post-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that Ramswamy lost support, grew his negatives, and was seen by viewers as the most polarizing Republican on stage. It’s only been downhill from there.

When I saw that poll, and read the new Iowa poll last week, I was reminded of the Buttigieg comparison. Ramaswamy may have copied Mayor Pete’s media strategy, but it turns out that only got him so far. Buttigieg charmed Democratic primary voters not just because he was willing to do interviews with anyone who asked, but because he answered questions with knowledge, not just words. Yes, Buttigieg shifted his politics to the moderate middle throughout that campaign, but he offered Democrats a consistent promise of generational change and pragmatic, consensus-seeking government. By late October in his primary campaign, Buttigieg was growing his coalition past 20 percent in Iowa polls, on his way to winning the caucuses a few months later. These days, Ramaswamy is only trending downward.

Even if Ramaswamy won’t be the Republican nominee, maybe he is the future of Republican politics, something my colleague Tina Nguyen wrote about over the summer. He is usually more in touch with the burn-it-all-down impulses of today’s Republican base than his opponents. If Trump wins the White House, maybe he’ll get a job in administration. Maybe he’ll run for governor in his home state of Ohio. Maybe he’ll get into podcasting. Maybe, like a lot of presidential dropouts, he’ll parlay his newfound fame into a TV gig. But right now, in the presidential race, Ramaswamy has fully taken on the energy of the kid in class who reminds the teacher at the end of the day that she forgot to assign their homework. And absolutely no one wants to hang out with that kid.