As Republican candidates take the main presidential debate stage, concerns over terrorism and how to respond to threats at home and overseas will weigh heavily over the CNN face-off in Las Vegas.
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Retired tech executive Carly Fiorina, who was the breakout star of the first GOP debates, has faded since then, hurt by a scanty campaign organization.
After his relegation to the undercard debate last time out, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie sought to make the most of his return trip to the main event stage. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Graham focused on his foreign policy experience, noting he just returned from his 36th trip to Iraq and Afghanistan within the last decade.
Like Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio too declined to attack Trump outright and said: “We must deal with this threat of radical Islamists, especially from ISIS”.
Bush interrupted Trump at one point, leading Trump to angrily ask “Are you talking or am I talking?” “I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet”.
“I think he probably did what he needed to do”, Axelrod said, adding that it didn’t hurt that few of the candidates to Trump’s right and left were “eager to tangle” with the front-runner. I understand why Donald made that proposal. “He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe”, he declared. He says America’s enemies will “take advantage of our PC attitude and get us”.
Trump didn’t back down from his earlier statements, saying, “We have to be much tougher and much stronger than we’ve been”. “We are not talking about isolation – we’re talking about security”. We’re not talking about religion.
Other candidates, including Sen. Cruz denied this and criticized Rubio’s support for a plan he said does not mandate background checks on immigrants.
Christie also complained about the change, urging the restoration of those “tools to the NSA and to our entire surveillance and law enforcement community”. “What he knows is that the old program covered 20% to 30% of phone numbers to search for terrorists”. “The new program covers almost 100 percent. That gives us greater ability to stop acts of terrorism and he knows that’s the case”. Rand Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich also participated in the debate.
“I think it’s very sad that CNN leads Jeb Bush by starting all the questions with ‘Mr”. He also dinged Rubio over his support in drafting a 2013 comprehensive immigration-reform bill along with Sen. Under questioning, he said he was still open to a path to citizenship for those here illegally, “down the road”.
With less than two months until voting begins, Cruz is trying to pitch himself as a more electable alternative to Trump.
“But he’s a chaos candidate”.
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“You’re never going to be president of the United States by insulting your way to the presidency”, said Bush, who was once seen as a frontrunner, but whose campaign has struggled to gain momentum.
