Each party formally announces their presidential candidate at conventions in July, four months before the presidential election.
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Republican presidential candidate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson speaks during the CBS News Republican presidential debate at the Peace Center, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016, in Greenville, S.C.
The lively audience repeatedly jeered and booed the candidates.
Donald Trump and Sen. Cruz then challenged Rubio to continue the debate in Spanish. An uncompromising conservative, Cruz urged voters to consider who among the GOP candidates would nominate the most ideologically pure justices.
The Republican candidates for president traded sharp blows over foreign policy and the future of the Supreme Court in an often unruly and chaotic debate.
Others said that Obama could go ahead and nominate someone, but that the GOP Senate should refuse to hold a vote, and leave it for the next president – presumably one of them- to nominate someone else.
“Frankly, I could care less about the insults that Donald Trump gives to me”, Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, said.
The son and brother of two former presidents – George and George W Bush – said: “While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe”.
“It’s called delay, delay, delay”, he said.
Trump then turned his fire on Jeb Bush, channeling liberal criticism of George W. Bush as a liar – channeling attacks that normally aren’t heard outside of Democratic fringe meetings. There are eight military bases in SC, so adopting the less hawkish line is risky. Trump said, going on to say “I lost hundreds of friends” in the 9/11 terror attack.
The billionaire businessman accused former President George W. Bush’s administration of having lied to the country about intelligence in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I’m sick and exhausted of him going after my family. He may still be polling higher than Mr. Bush or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, but there’s nowhere for him to go. “I think we’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this”.
The governor’s warnings did little to deter his feisty colleagues.
Cruz and Rubio renewed their battle over who is the toughest on illegal immigration with Cruz insisting that the Florida senator, as part of a Gang of Eight senators who sought a compromise on legislation in 2013, was for “amnesty” but now is against it for political purposes.
As the crowd roared, Mr Rubio said Mr Cruz is “telling lies…”
Rubio shot back: “I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speaking Spanish”.
Rubio appeared more fluid in Saturday’s contest, including during a robust defense of his proposed 25 percent corporate tax rate – which is not as much of a tax cut as many of his rivals are pitching.
The six remaining GOP presidential contenders bickered, blustered and brawled Saturday night in one of the most contentious debates in the campaign season.
Where he excelled: Mr. Rubio came out of the gate strong with a response on the death of Mr. Scalia and the importance of the next president’s ability to nominate the next Supreme Court justice.
Ted Cruz argued that the GOP-controlled Congress should refuse to confirm any nominee put forth by President Obama to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the intellectual leader of the court’s conservative wing.
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If he did, he would “ram down our throat a liberal justice, like the ones Barack Obama has imposed on us already”, he said. As he has in recent face-offs, Ben Carson seemed to fade from notice for much of the night. He was overshadowed in the debate by his more aggressive rivals but lined up with most of the field in saying he agreed Republicans should not allow a Supreme Court justice to be appointed during Obama’s final year in office. Kasich argued that his decision was a good deal for the state in the long run. He continued: “George Bush made a mistake”.
