I wish the OP had included a public poll.
With this many people on the stage, it will likely just be a hand-raising contest:
Who’s against abortion? ::all raise hands::
Who’s against gun control? ::all raise hands::
Who wants to send all the Messicans home? ::all raise hands::
If they let people speak, it’s going to have to be in very short soundbites so that everyone can make a comment. In other words, totally meaningless and with no winners. As mentioned, there may be a loser if somebody doesn’t listen to his handlers and says something even more stupid than usual. Trump will save his vitriol for after the debate for maximum press coverage, rather than risk being embarrassed in person by somebody smarter than he is.
Hard to improve on that analysis. Everyone will be watching Trump, and I agree that he will comport himself better than expected. He’s not stupid (but he DOES play stupid on TV).
I agree he’s not stupid. But he’s Dunning-Kruger’s poster boy.
And not stupid doesn’t mean smart. Smart people don’t think they can get Mexico to build a border wall for us.
I think Trump is genuinely not that bright. Ted Cruz plays stupid. Trump just really is of average intelligence, which comes across as stupid in a national-level politician.
It’s hard to substantiate such an opinion, but he just ticks a lot of the little heuristic boxes you develop in life. He’s obsessed with educational pedigree. He selects stupid people to serve him (his lawyer and closest advisor thinks spousal rape isn’t a thing). His bombast isn’t politically calculated, which means he probably believes some of it. It just doesn’t add up to a smart guy playing stupid to me.
I do think, however, that he has the sense that god gave a bright third-grader, and as a consequence he’s going to ratchet it back a bit for this debate. We’ll see.
Like a 5 year-old bully in a “no I’m not, you are” sort of way.
His retaliations are predictable and lame. Closes his eyes, raises his nose, and makes ridiculous as-a-matter-of-fact statements about whoever just made fun of him.
“Frankly (insert opponent here) is a really poor, poor (insert opponents job here). Nobody likes them and their ratings are poor. They won’t be around soon.”
OUCH!
He’s a Birther. All by itself, that disqualifies him for a spot on the Honor Society.
Christie probably can’t out-bully Trump, but Christie is smart enough and mean enough to make Trump flip his wig in national television.
There were almost more warm bodies on the stage for the kiddie-table debate than were in the audience.
This is kind of neat - Google has a page showing realtime searches for the people in the first debate. It shows that Fiorina received the most interest from people searching the internet as the debate went on.
This link also has info about the searches people have been doing on the candidates and the sort of questions they were asked. Fascinating stuff, (for certain values of “fascinating”, obviously). Man, I wish we could have had data like this for previous elections.
AND THEY’RE OFF!
Trump gets the first headline of the evening.
I do think Trump is a doofus, but that was pretty ballsy.
The game seems to be:
Moderator asks each candidate a highly personalized and surprisingly hard hitting question and candidate dodges it and launches into a stump speech.
But the 5 minutes or so before 9 was absolutely delicious. They marched the candidates out on the stage and then and only then realized they had 5 minutes to kill - so the candidates just stood there while the moderators bantered about how awkward it was.
And Trump is very entertaining.
Trump sure hates Rosie.
Trump’s going to Godzilla all over this debate, it’s glorious.
Very surprised at how hard-hitting the first round of questions were.
I should have been more optimistic about Kasich. Good start for him.
Cruz is too stupid to understand how complex war is.
I don’t think he understands the complexity of a piece of wood.
“It’s complex” is the standard excuse for failure. Smart leaders embrace complexity and succeed anyway. Weak ones complain about how complicated things are as an excuse for failure.
Democrats should show a little maturity and take their lumps on Obama’s ISIS policy like grownups. He’s got a bad policy, you all know he has a bad policy. You may think Republican ideas are worse,and they may very well be worse, but so far your ideas aren’t doing any good either, so cut them some slack.
Looks like Christie went after Paul instead of Trump. Good exchange, I’d call it a draw, despite my thinking that Paul is right on this one.