More and more convinced that it will be Rubio v. Clinton.
**Jeb Bush **probably hastened the end of his campaign tonight.
I think **John Kasich **made some sense, it seems like he should have helped himself.
**Chris Christie **seemed to do well, especially with the twitter feed.
**Donald Trump **didn’t hurt himself but didn’t help himself.
**Ben Carson **is so boring, he is like Kerry. How is he doing so well? Nonsense from his mouth and soporific, what a combo, he’ll probably gain somehow in the polls.
**Marco Rubio **seemed to do well, he seems rational. I think he may have helped himself in the debate.
Ted Cruz I despise to much to give an impartial review. I think he was terrible so he’ll probably be the big winner somehow.
Mike Huckabee, seriously, he is still in this race? His solution to fix Social Security is what? Do nothing?
Rand Paul was underwhelming, he was barely there at all. Can’t have helped himself.
Carly Fiorina did not do to well. That smile bit to open was painful. Her excuses for her HP debacle were pretty bad.
Readily admit I just flipped to it every so often but did catch Trump stating that the moderator was mistaken and that he never called Rubio Zuckerberg’s personal senator. It is in one of his position papers.
Did they ever circle back to call him on that?
They did, he basically ignored it and repeated that he is pro-legal immigration, against illegal immigration.
I think Rubio did best, I think Trump did okay, I think Christie did well, I think Bush, Cruz, Paul, and Huckabee did terribly. Carson didn’t say anything all night except things that show he actually doesn’t understand any of the policy issues whatsoever–likely that plays to his base.
Kasich started strong, but to be honest when he went on his rant blasting the neophytes and “candidates who aren’t serious” Trump came right back and pointed out that Ohio’s success is in part due to getting lucky with fracking and then he pointed out that Kasich spent 7 years as a managing director of Lehman Brothers. Kasich seemingly denied that was true in his rebuttal, even though his employment history and job title at Lehman Brothers is well established (he was a managing director.) I think maybe Kasich tried to say he “wasn’t running Lehman Brothers”, but Donald never said he was–he just stated he was a managing director.
The GOP remains a clown show–but I will say this, the one thing they were all right on is their blasting of the CNBC moderators. If the Republican debates are said to focus less on serious policy issues than the Democratic debates (and they did discuss serious policy for maybe 30-45% of the time, I can’t remember how much but it was a good chunk), a large share of that blame falls on the moderators–who seemed primarily interested in asking the candidates their opinions of one another, or focusing on trivia from their personal histories. Like seriously, hammering Rubio over having to liquidate a retirement account? Who cares. Or Carly being fired from HP or Trump’s four business bankruptcies. Those issues have all been covered repeatedly in prior debates, it makes no sense to keep asking those questions and taking time away from talk on positions and issues.
I agree, these moderators were actually worse then CNN’s and that was a fairly low bar.
Number of new Twitter followers:
Carson +6.2k
Rubio +4.2k
Trump +3.5k
Fiorina +1.5k
Cruz +1.3k
Kasich +.8k
Paul +.7k
Bush +.7k
Huck +.4k
Wow, what a mess. Okay, grading on a curve, I think Florina did pretty well. She was well spoken, and was able to articulate her ideas without tripping over herself. Kasich just sounded more mad than focused on what to do. Rubio did pretty well, by focusing on his personal story and attacking Hillary. Carson is a mumbling fool. Trump was cut down to size, without much to say other than how great he is. Christie, Huckelberry and Pauli were hardly there. Bush was, uhm, what’s the word-- BORING!
And I agree that the moderation was horrendous. The questions were mostly inane and there was no real attempt to keep focus and prevent people from jumping in and hijacking the mike.
It’s just too many people. Pare it down tot he top 5 and fuck the rest.
For what it’s worth predictit upped Rubio’s chances of winning the nomination to 49%. Christie jumped to 14%.
That was interesting. There were several there that were interesting. You brought us the cream off the top, did you?
Has anyone noticed how much effort Trump puts into learning every detail of the other candidates’ records so that he can tear them apart? Imagine if he put that much effort into learning policy.
I’ve never been a fan of Ted Cruz but he said exactly what I was thinking regarding the moderator questions. That was the most poorly moderated debate I’ve seen. Real amateur hour at CNBC and they ought to be embarrassed.
That said, the confrontations were at least entertaining. I think Bush is dead in the water. Carson, I don’t understand how he’s pulling ahead. Rubio was decent. Trump was his typical self. I actually thought Christie had a good showing. Paul was ok. Kasich probably wishes he’d done more, but at least we got a little fire out of him. Huck should also be finished.
By coincidence(?) I just hit Pause at the 31-minute mark and came to this thread to read the Spoilers.
My reaction so far is that the show resembles a professional wrestling show, or perhaps Jerry Springer, more than any political debate. Am I mistaken or do multiple CNBC moderators pile on top of each other during the cacophonies?
There are 3 or 4 of the candidates who act like adults. Could they have negotiated with a news organization to stage an Adult Candidates Debate, where admission was not solely dependent on poll numbers?
The winners of this debate were:
- Ted Cruz: He put himself up there with Trump and Carson as a top tier candidate of the most currently popular wing of the GOP (the non-establishment).
- Marco Rubio: He’s a force to be reckoned with, and may have delivered the final blow to Jeb!
- Donald Trump: Despite Carson’s recent surge, he didn’t get outshone. He also got a lot of popular zingers and lines in, and wasn’t predictable. He continues to make himself look president as the front runner.
- Ben Carson: He avoided misteps and will stay atop the field with Trump. He coulda done better if he gets off the quaaludes and comes alive instead of coming off stoned all the time.
- Chris Christie: He got much more time than usual and may have also sank Jeb about the role of government regarding online fantasy sports.
Losers:
- Jeb Bush: no comeback moment, got schooled by Marco Rubio. His closing statement sounded like he memorized it in his sleep.
- John Kasich: came off rather desperate and basically screamed “I’m dying here, throw me a buoy of attention!”
- Rand Paul: guy’s a loser
- Huckabee: I’m amazed he goes nowhere given how conservative he is on social issues, but thats what happens without money.
- Carly Fiorina: aside from constantly mentioning Hillary Clinton (who she is not on track to face), she is not going to dig herself out of her record at HP, a record that every major business school gives their students negative case studies about.
People keep on criticizing Carson’s style, but Republican voters seem to love it. Shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. What he needs to do is calmly, quietly, say intelligent things on specific issues. He didn’t become a surgeon by speaking in generalities or saying ridiculous things, he won’t be President that way.
Except that he’s not saying intelligent things and he is saying ridiculous things. He only sounds intelligent compared to some of the people he’s standing next to. And he won’t be President.
On another note, there was an interesting recent tweet from 538: whenever they post anything that reflects negatively on one of the GOP candidates, they get a slew of “nastygrams” from supporters…unless it’s Bush. No one leaps to the defense of Bush. No one ON THE INTERNET is bothering to defend Bush. The man is toast.
I think they said in an earlier article that Jeb has gotten less money from small donors than Lawrence Lessig.
My wife and I tuned in a little early to CNBC just to have the channel on and caught some of the pre-debate commentary from the CNBC pundits.
Wow … there was one woman who seemed to know what she was talking about, and the rest of them kept talking on each other. It was like an extremely awkward conference call:
<Everyone talk at once!>
<Everyone realize everyone was talking and you cna’t make out anything and stop talking>
<Silence for 5-6 seconds>
<Everyone talk at once again!>
It was … atrocious.
As for the debate -
Rubio did surprisingly well.
Cruz made a good point about the moderation but that’s about it.
Bush should just give up now.
Fiorina’s answer about her time at HP seems devastatingly poor to me, but dunno how it’s going to play with the primary votes.
Trump’s closing statement is the only thing I really remember of him from the night, he seemed subdued and that rant about the length of time of the debate was pointless.
The only other thing was that Trump seemed to be complementing Carson a lot - like in the time-of-debate rant at the end. Something about that seemed odd to me.
Here’s the question that set of Cruz’s temper tantrum:
I thought the question was fair and rather than answer this substantive question, he chose to go on a tirade about the moderation. Then after his time was up, he whined about not getting a chance to answer it. What an ass.
I didn’t think the moderation was bad at all and the questions were hard but fair. Some of the candidates dislocated joints patting themselves on the back saying that this debate was more substantive than the Democratic one. Perhaps the Colorado marijuana laws had something to do with that observation.
Trump gets caught in a lie about Rubio being Zuckerman’s Senator, a statement on his own website, and guess what? It isn’t going to cost him anything! Facts don’t matter! You can put something on your website, get called out on it, deny it, accuse the questioner of making it up, and your halfwit base swallows it! Remarkable!
The winner last night, as it was in every other debate this year, was Hillary Clinton. She could take any of these yardbirds, chew them up, swallow them, and shit them out without so much as a burp.
Big loser was Bush. His attack on Rubio was like Wile E Coyote going after the Roadrunner. All Rubio had to do is say “beep beep”, take a step, and watch the anvil come crashing down on Bush.
Ben Carson. Wouldn’t one think that as a doctor, he’d have a substantive opinion on drug prices? But here’s the question and answer:
What the fuck? These guys are all the same. Taxes bad. Regulation bad. Grrr.
WEll, if his $34K per employee is right, then we do actually have a bigtime overregulation problem.
I’d like to see his math on that $34K figure. He likely saw it on some right wing web site and accepted it as a matter of faith. Faith matters, facts do not.