Bonus Trump! For everybody who thought we didn’t get enough.
This big question is: Has this debate hurt Trump?
Unfortunately, I think it helped Rubio.
I was half-expecting him to say he’d jail Apple’s executives, and then proceed to make a “back door” joke.
Well CNN did their darndest to make it work for Trump, what with the 10 minute post-debate interview PLUS the freebie panel discussion after that.
My guess is no, the debate didn’t hurt Trump. Given the large body of evidence that Trump is immune from damage in debates I wouldn’t predict otherwise at this juncture. it could happen, but the past evidence suggests it won’t.
The Cruz-Trump bromance now seems like a dream.
Plus, if Trump could be taken down with all the attacks about his many, many, many failings that should’ve happened months ago in the first debate. By treating him like he wasn’t a serious candidate and just kind of eye rolling him at most of the prior debates I believe the other candidates have at least helped allow the Trump machine to get where it is today. And the problem with the long series of debates (as we’ve seen in the last two GOP Presidential primaries) is I think they have less ability to impact the race as they go on. The kind of attacks Rubio was making tonight, maybe could’ve derailed Trumps campaign way back when before any votes had been cast. But now I think his supporters are way too dug in, and will just see it as another example of the establishment going after their guy.
Now, it’s possible they could’ve attacked Trump from day one and still ended up where they are today, but it’s shocking to me he’s been allowed to get to this point with so little directed attacks being focused on him.
Plus, Trump hasn’t received a sustained ad-bomb yet. Our conservative billionaires truly don’t care.
Weirdly Trump presents a target-rich environment, something which will become all too clear in Aug-Nov. Trump will whine about being subjected to the dirtiest attacks ever; I base this prediction upon his evident narcissism and ignorance.
In post debate interview, Kasich just admitted he thinks Trump is going win everything except maybe Texas on Tuesday.
Nice showing from Rubio and Cruz. I’d been wondering what it would look like if they ganged up on Trump. I hope it’s not too little too late but they really flustered him tonight.
I dunno. In retrospect they obviously should’ve played it differently. But I don’t think they were crazy to figure they were best off just ignoring him. Other wierdo candidates had attracted a large number of supporters that had abandoned them when it came time to vote. And Trump is the kind of figure that feeds of being the center of attention, even negative attention, so I can see the logic in just leaving him alone.
Now they’re at least attacking him. Which on the one hand obviously knocked him on his heels a bit. But on the other hand, he was also almost the sole focus of the debate. The questions, responses, and chatter afterwards centred around him. I can see that backfiring.
But I’ve certainly been disabused of any notion of being able to see how the GOP primary voters see the world this election, so I’m certainly not going to guess how this will affect the race. It was certainly time to try something different, anyways.
Ezra Klein: We’ve lost sight of how wildly irresponsible the Republican tax plans are. [INDENT][INDENT]Rubio has promised tax cuts amounting to $6.8 trillion, Cruz $8.6 trillion, and Trump a whopping $9.5 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center (and that’s not including interest on the debt they would rack up!).
To put that in perspective, the tax cuts George W. Bush proposed during the 2000 campaign were $1.32 trillion — which would be $1.82 trillion in today’s dollars. And taxes were higher in 2000 than they are today, and the country was running surpluses rather than deficits.
It gets worse. Rubio and Cruz both support a Balanced Budget Amendment, so they can’t just add their tax cuts to the national debt. They also support spending more on the military — up to $1 trillion for Rubio, about $2.4 trillion for Cruz. Trump supports more military spending and has also promised to avoid cuts to Social Security and Medicare. [/INDENT][/INDENT] Math is hard!
Not a good night for Trump. I know he doesn’t rehearse or speak from a script, but he really needs to do some preparation at least for his opening remarks at these debates. The way he rambled through his opening tonight doesn’t convey strength. But it’s Trump, so I doubt his supporters will care.
Much better night for Rubio, but will it make enough of a difference to get him a win in any state on Tuesday?
Cruz makes me nervous–he’s slick and is good at deflecting criticism and attacking his opponents. I think he could be formidable in a general election.
I am stealing this. Thank you.
I only saw the highlights (lowlights?) afterwards, but what a crazy slugfest. Trump saying the wall just got 10 feet higher had me in stitches. Trump got trounced, but I don’t see it making any difference. I never thought I’d say this, but he probably is going to win the nomination.
Embarrassing isn’t it? Riffing off of Nate Silver, I put his odds at something like 4% last August. I was wrong, howlingly wrong. I thought he would peak. I thought he would be ad-bombed by now. I underestimated the Republican professional’s tendency towards wishful thinking: the idea that Trump could be at 40% in national polling and automatically lose as the field gets whittled down is highly dubious. In my defense, the Outsider metric I designed picked up on the underlying situation somewhat.
I missed the fact that two unacceptable candidates (Trump and Cruz) are harder to hit than one. I knew that Cruz was toxic, but I didn’t appreciate that he would draw establishment attacks that otherwise would be directed at Trump.
Tonight was the first time Trump University was even mentioned. Sheesh. Newt Gingrich could have creamed this guy. Republican election consultants need to be sued for malpractice.
Me too. I was betting Tumpy Wumpy would be voted out by now. However, I think I made the same mistake the GOP did-- he’s so damned embarrassing no one could really support him.
Here’s what I will never understand: His life and “experience” is outlined in everything from the tabloids to NYT, to Time magazine, to everything. Out of all the candidates, he’s the easiest to poke fun at because 1) He’s not a politician and 2) he’ a spoiled rich kid. Yet, I’ve never heard anything coming out of the mouths of the fellow candidates. It’s as if no one ever asked anyone in their campaign to do some research. This is the easiest candidate on a major party ticket to make fun of, dispute his so-called successful business record, or even to ask him HOW any of his proposals are at least legitimate. No one has even tried to question him on his rascist/bigoted claims, and this would inevitably help support the candidate who DOES call him out on any of these campaign strategies or at least pull support away from him.
Is it because they want him to interrupt? They expect to him destroy himself? They must at least realize how uneducated his supporters are and if he’s really “away from the regular candidates” as he claims he is, so why not attack him on it?
There is absolutely NO FREAKING WAY I will ever believe the GOP supports this so-called candidate. Can anyone imagine him giving a Sate Of the Union address? Speaking at a civil rights program? Without flip-flopping on any previous statements in this silly campaign?
I won’t bat an eye if he drops out due to something lame like media-pressure-- even though he seems to control that-- and then endorses Hillary and writes a new book.
What an embarrassment. Rubio and especially Cruz made fools of themselves pretty much continuously, Trump was the normal asshole. The way those three went at it constantly made me cringe to be an American.
Still, any one of the three of them would be a far better president than Hillary or Bernie.
Go Trump. (awaits name calling)
Yes, this, all of it.
It’s another good indication of why he will make an ideal Republican nominee from the Democratic POV. (As I’ve said before, I plan to cross over and vote for Trump on March 15, unless Hillary actually needs my vote at that point.) It appears that his supporters may after all be enough to get him the nomination, and as you said: they don’t care. But that schtick is not going to fly with the general electorate. Take all the people who voted for Obama in 2012, add a few million more Latinos compared to four years ago, subtract from the GOP ledger a few million old white people who died in the past four years, and serve up Trump mumbling his generalities, and try to flip a bunch of Obama’s voters to the Republican side? LMAO, good luck!
I know I’m not the target audience, but I thought Mr. Rubio looked every bit as scripted and pre-programmed as before. He didn’t seem to respond to Mr. Trump’s ongoing remarks so much as run his attack routine.