“You’ve got Jeb, you’ve got Marco, you’ve got Cruz”, he said.
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Bush, who has been among the most aggressive Republican candidates in taking on Trump, said that while he didn’t mind the businessman criticizing him – “It’s blood sport for him” – he was “sick and exhausted of him going after my family”.
Bush provoked another outburst from Trump by saying the Republican nominee should be someone “who doesn’t brag, for example, that he has been bankrupt four times”. It was an accusation that made some in the crowd boo in disbelief.
See how the rest of the debate unfolded here.
“You are the single biggest liar”, Trump said.
The New York billionaire received 42 percent support in a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, his high-water mark among likely Republican primary voters in the Palmetto State.
Before entering politics, George W. Bush was part-owner of the Texas Rangers, and their home city of Arlington, Texas, used eminent domain to take private land and build a stadium for the team. Next up: Trump v. Cruz. Cruz then challenged Rubio in Spanish to comment on President Obama’s executive orders in the language as well.
“I think we’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this”, Kasich said.
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. Many GOP leaders believe both would be unelectable in November. Kasich argued that his decision was a good deal for the state in the long run.
But the exchange also highlighted the former Florida governor’s embrace of his family name and history as he jockeys with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor John Kasich of OH to emerge from SC as the clear challenger to Trump, who won the New Hampshire primary, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the victor in Iowa’s caucuses.
Carson, who has struggled with foreign affairs, stressed that he had exhibited sound judgment in the operating room.
When he was asked about whether he was capable of handling “2 a.m. phone calls” in the White House – he instead rewound back to further expound on his answer about the Scalia vacancy and the need to end lifetime appointments.
From the beginning, the Kasich camp has worked to lower expectations, saying he won’t win SC but hopes to peel away a few delegates, especially in a congressional district with a majority of African-Americans.
Just six contenders took the debate stage, far from the long line of candidates who participated in earlier GOP events.
If Cruz “doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen”, Trump wrote.
Trump is known for telling it like it is on the campaign trail, but also for letting loose in the profanity department. “And not only did he keep us safe, but no matter what you want to say about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was in violation of United Nations resolutions, in open violation, and the world wouldn’t do anything about it”, he added. He attributed the lack of votes to a poor debate performance leading up to the primary.
Former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath, a key Kasich supporter in New Hampshire, said the campaign will rely on the fact that the states voting award delegates on a proportional basis.
As he has been in almost every recent debate, the retired neurosurgeon was a non-factor.
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Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace and Will Weissert of The Associated Press; by Sean Sullivan, Jenna Johnson, Philip Rucker, Ed O’Keefe and Jose A. DelReal of The Washington Post; and by John McCormick, James Nash and Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News.
