More than the previous three debates, last night’s showdown in the Badger State highlighted the very real rifts that exist within the Republican coalition, from foreign policy to fiscal policy. “There were no clear winners, at least not so much as in the earlier debates, in part because there were strong moments for many of the candidates, as one after another grabbed for the spotlight,” the Post’s chief correspondent, Dan Balz, files from Milwaukee. “It’s not likely that what happened will dramatically change the current shape of the race. But in highlighting the deeper differences in the party [especially on immigration], the evening’s discussions provided a helpful roadmap to the issues that will help determine the eventual nominee.”
Here are 10 takeaways, based on a review of the overnight coverage and conversations with plugged-in Republicans:
1. No one attacked Ben Carson, who comes out as the frontrunner. Carson spoke for only 9 minutes and 22 seconds, less than every other candidate during the two-hour debate. He did not attack anyone, and no one attacked him.
The other candidates on stage calculated that going after the soft-spoken neurosurgeon could backfire, especially if it looked they were doing the bidding of the mainstream media. Ted Cruz, who has the most to gain with Carson’s fall, is trying to make a show of abiding by Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment to not speak ill of other Republicans … at least for the time being. And the rest of the social conservatives who see themselves in Carson’s lane were relegated to the undercard debate: Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.
Determined not to face the kind of criticism that CNBC got after the last debate, Fox Business moderator Neil Cavuto gently asked Carson not about the spate of stories that raise questions about his truthfulness. Instead, he asked him whether he thinks that coverage has hurt his campaign and to talk about his belief that there is a “double standard in the media … that seems obsessed with inconsistencies and potential exaggerations in your life story, but then looked the other way when it came to then Senator Barack Obama’s.” Cavuto never specified Carson’s alleged embellishments or asked him to engage with them substantively.
“I have no problem with being vetted,” Carson said. “What I do have a problem with is being lied about.”
Weekly Standard executive editor Bill Kristol called it a “weirdly effective tactic”: “He doesn’t criticize anyone, so no one else gets to comment on him, and what he says seems unproblematic.”
Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt put Carson at the top of his winners list: “He came to the stage with the press and his rivals hot on his heels over alleged fabrications in his biography. His succinct response to that (with an elbow thrown Hillary Clinton’s way over her Benghazi claims) was effective. But it was his new frontrunner status and cloak of favorability that did the trick.”
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight notes that Carson received more Google search traffic than any other candidate during the debate, “a factor which has sometimes been a better leading indicator of polling movement than pundits’ takes on who did well, and his performance was composed after a couple of weeks of intense media scrutiny.”
2. Jeb Bush “applied the tourniquet” and stopped the bleeding. It’s unclear if he’s bottomed out.
Al Cardenas, a longtime Bush friend, provided a blunt assessment to my colleague Ed O’Keefe: “Two things happened: He applied the tourniquet and applied it successfully. And number two, he gave the reassurance to the donors, the activists and all the folks involved in the campaign, reassured them that they made the right choice to begin with and re-energized them. This was, in my opinion, the biggest night of the campaign so far.”
“If this was his biggest night, Bush still needs far bigger ones — and soon,” O’Keefe writes in his analysis. “He’s mired in the single digits in national surveys and in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he will travel again this week. Donors have warned of potential fundraising struggles despite recent decisions to trim his campaign budget.”
“This is the confident Jeb Bush supporters have been waiting for, but how many good answers will it take to break the storm clouds?” wondered CNN’s Jeff Zeleny.
Still, he got awkward at times. Ross Douthat offered up a memorable metaphor:
But Bush manager Danny Diaz noted in the spin room afterward that the performance was good enough to ensure that Bush stays on the main stage for next month’s debate. “We look forward to catching up with all our good friends in Las Vegas,” he said.
3. Marco Rubio got lobbed softballs so soft that he could not help but LAUGH at one of them. Literally! It helped that Jeb chickened out of picking a fight with him after blowing it so badly in Boulder. The critical reviews of the Florida senator’s performance are positive across the board, with some dissenters saying he sounded too canned.
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza: “Rubio knocked it out of the park when debating military spending and the right role for America in the world with Rand Paul. He got a meatball of a question when asked by the moderators about Hillary Clinton’s résumé as compared with his own; he, unsurprisingly, answered it well and easily. Time and time again, he oozed knowledge while appearing entirely relaxed.”
Conservative Post columnist Jennifer Rubin: “Rubio once again had the strongest performance. He shot down Paul’s suggestion that spending on the military makes one ‘liberal’ and repeatedly spoke up in favor of strong U.S. leadership. … Asked about running against an experienced Clinton, he went into his effective riff about representing the future while she represents the past.”
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healy: “Rubio was not only able to avoid being drawn into the contentious immigration debate, but also repeatedly received questions that allowed him to answer with versions of his stump speech. Even he seemed unable to believe his good fortune when he was asked to make his case against Clinton. He chuckled for a moment before unspooling a well-rehearsed argument: why he can prosecute a ‘generational’ case against her.”
Watch a Vine of the moment here:
Rubio adviser Todd Harris tweeted at midnight that a major donor the campaign had been chasing for six weeks had just sent a two-word email: “I’m in.”
4. Ted Cruz, who along with Rubio won the last debate, had another great night. He also foreshadowed the very bitter battle to come.
On crony capitalism, Cruz laid the predicate to go after Rubio more explicitly when the field winnows. The Texas senator decried sugar subsidies, but he did not mention that his opponent backs them. The Floridian’s unabashed support for special government handouts that directly boost the bottom line of his own donors at the expense of the free market could become a problematic data point when Cruz eventually sets out to make the case that his Senate rival is a moderate, as he called him last week, or, more credibly, a conservative of convenience.
Thought leaders noticed. For movement conservatives who see the sugar subsidy as the symbol of a backward agriculture policy, including the top editor at National Review, Cruz’s attack was not subtle.
Lowry wrote a column declaring Cruz the clear winner afterward: “Rubio was very good, as well. But I thought Rubio was slightly better than Cruz last time, and that Cruz was slightly better this time. Rubio just felt a little off.”
Kristol said on his magazine’s podcast, “I though Ted Cruz was very strong. He consistently gave substantive answers that were well delivered. … I don’t think Bush saved his campaign.”
“Cruz is showing why so many insiders think he’ll eventually be in the final two or three when the field winnows,” wrote NBC’s Chuck Todd.
It increasingly seems like this could come down to Rubio vs. Cruz. Glenn Beck wrote onFacebook that Rubio and Cruz were the two winners, but he was “leaning a bit” toward Rubio.
Mark Halperin gave all the candidates B’s on his post-debate report card, but Rubio and Cruz got B-plusses. The Bloomberg anchor says Cruz “continued his practice of addressing the TV camera, not the moderators or other candidates, to strong effect. A style and issue emphasis with the potential to broaden his appeal.”
5. No one is afraid of Donald Trump any more. The billionaire took far more punches than anyone else. There is not a single candidate, except maybe Cruz, afraid of drawing his ire.
Rupert Murdoch, who owns the entities that sponsored the debate, noted that The Donald seemed to recede from view:
6. John Kasich was the biggest loser.
He got more speaking time than any other candidate, which managed to work against him.
Base voters did not like his attempts to cut in, but they liked his message even less. Frank Luntz said that Kasich “scored the lowest ever” in his New Hampshire focus group, and that “his support of bailouts ‘for people who can afford it’ scored an 8″ of 100. As a point of comparison, Rubio got 88 on the dial test when he called for the repeal of Dodd-Frank. Luntz relayed that people in his focus group were yelling at the screen: “They don’t want Kasich to speak. Why Johnny, why?”
National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg–who called Rubio, Cruz and Carly Fiorina the winners–zeroed in on the Ohio governor: “He’s done. He came across angry, condescending and unprincipled. By the end of the debate he came across as the drunk, obnoxious, uncle everyone wishes hadn’t accepted the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.”
7. Chris Christie won the undercard debate.
Outgoing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal came loaded for bear, ready to unspool harsh attacks on Huckabee’s and Christie’s records.
The New Jersey governor excelled by showing that he has the self-discipline to largely ignore attacks on himself and furiously focus on Hillary Clinton instead, the Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last writes.
David A. Fahrenthold highlights
8. Mike Huckabee, the other candidate knocked off the main stage to the undercard, was basically a non-factor. His most memorable moment was a joke that sounded like it belonged in another era. When asked about Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Huckabee responded: “Well, my wife’s name’s Janet. When you say Janet yellin’, I’m very familiar with what you mean.” And Republicans wonder why they lose women by double digits…
9. Rand Paul grabbed for the isolationist mantle, which will probably give him a needed boost with the Ron Paul supporters who have been defecting to Cruz.
According to Facebook, the top social moment of the debate was the Paul exchange with Rubio over defense spending. Twitter said it was the second most talked-about moment. Most Republicans actually agree with the Florida senator’s position, but it nonetheless reminded past supporters of the Kentucky senator why they liked him. Paul has slipped into the single digits, and he’s gotten less and less buzz.
In the past, Paul would vigorously push back on any idea that he’s an isolationist, nervous that it would limit his ability to win over non-libertarian factions of the party. He did not try to do that last night because, right now, he needs his natural base to come home.
“Paul had his best debate tonight,” tweeted The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis: “Settled on a clear libertarian message — instead of trying to be all things to all people.” Former RNC chair Michael Steele agreed.
Chuck Todd thought Paul’s moment on foreign policy made for his best 15 minutes of all four debates. “He was being who he is without coming across angry or annoyed,”tweeted the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Paul easily had his best debate night of campaign.”
10. The moderators did not become the story, which made the RNC very happy, but they also let the candidates off easy at several key junctures.
Fox Business host Neil Cavuto ended the debate by taking a rhetorical victory lap around his competitors at CNBC: “Business issues can be riveting because it wasn’t about us.”
Conservative pundits approved of the moderators, which takes some of the pressure off RNC Chairman Reince Priebus ahead of the next debate, which will be sponsored by CNN:
— What now? Via Dan Balz: “From here forward, the focus of the campaign increasingly will be on the state of play in the early states, particularly Iowa and New Hampshire. Trump and Carson continue to lead in both, but most of the other candidates are picking one of the two states — and their different electorates — to help propel them toward Super Tuesday and beyond. The Wisconsin debate is the last among the Republicans for five weeks. If they hope to move the polls now, the candidates will have to rely on traditional methods: methodical retail campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire with the goal of generating support by sometime in January; and television advertising that breaks through the daily clutter of media coverage.”
| Source: Washington Post / Daily 202 |
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