Well, according to highlights and conventional wisdom, the two winners of last night’s debate were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Rubio because he bested Bush in a scuffle, and Cruz because he bashed the media.
As for Rubio, he clearly saw the Bush attack coming and was prepared for it. Bush should have known better. It’s not like the comedy circuit where you try out your material in smaller venues and then use it “for the first time” on national TV. Bush had been attacking Rubio for days on the campaign trail — of course Rubio is going to have a comeback up his sleeve.
Which brings me (and everybody else) to Bush. This guy was supposed to be the clear nominee, and he just is not cutting it. It’s one thing to be upstaged by showboating outsiders like Trump, but Bush can’t even shine among insiders. He had one brief good moment in one debate (when he said, incorrectly, that his brother “kept us safe”) and that was it. He’s not the grown-up and he has the deer-in-the-headlights look that his brother had on morning of 9/11 while kids are reading to him. How long can he stay in with such bad debate performances and terrible poll numbers? Probably a while — he has tons of money — but that would be torture.
Cruz whined about the media. That’s red meat. I think the criticism of the debate moderators was somewhat warranted — they asked about the horserace and not about the candidates’ positions way too much — but when Republican candidates whine about the media, it makes them look weak. Someday, they hope to deal with Putin and ISIS. And they can’t handle CNBC correspondents? Puh-lease.
Trump and Carson seem to have hold their own — they have a hardcore group of followers who will never leave them.
Christie and Kusich did some Hillary-bashing, but didn’t do much to improve themselves. Fiorina was shrill (I think she’s had her 15 minutes). And Rand Paul was there. And Huckabee barely was there.
But honestly, GOP candidates, you can’t criticize the moderators for asking stupid non-substance questions (“is yours the comic book candidacy?”) and then whine that the media is so unfair and went so easy on the Democrats.
Meanwhile, these just get better and better….
P.S. An article by Brian Beutler about The GOP’s Grotesque Festival of Lies.
The night continued like this. Ben Carson denied his involvement with a nutritional supplement scam company that has been well substantiated. When a moderator pointed out that the $1.1 trillion hole in his tax plan would require cutting government by about 40 percent, he said, “that’s not true.”
At one point, a moderator apologized to Donald Trump for misquoting him, because he insisted, “I never said that,” with persuasive adamence. But he did say that. She’d quoted him correctly, to the word.
After the candidates abused the truth for 10 hours, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus attacked the moderators, and conservatives delighted in the knowledge that the base would chalk up the whole mess to media bias, damning GOP primary voters by assuming their oafishness.