Tuesday night’s early “undercard” Republican presidential debate is set to begin at 7 p.m. ET.
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“Are we willing to cut the government economy so we can grow the American economy?” asked Jindal, who painted a harsh picture of the country’s possible future path under Hillary Clinton.
At multiple junctures, Christie ripped into Clinton: she is “coming for your wallet;” she is for, along with President Barack Obama a “feckless foreign policy; as far as health insurance is concerned, will “move us towards a single payer system” and disrespects veterans”.
Mr Christie came into the debate with a few forceful attacks on Hillary Clinton up his sleeve, but he saved his fiercest rhetoric for the Chinese government. The strategy appears to be that it’s better to use the airtime he gets to boost his standing in the state that Christie has made a must-win. “Give me a podium, give me a stage, put the camera on, we’ll be just fine”.
While Christie has told the story dozens of times at town hall events, the video went viral and had been viewed more than 7.6 million times as of Sunday evening. Christie said that the first thing he would do as president would be to fly Air Force One over disputed Pacific territories where China claims to own the airspace and the surrounding waters. “He’s done a nice job in Louisiana, and I don’t have any problem with the job he’s done”, Christie said. He said he was appalled when Clinton said during the Democratic presidential debate that Republicans were her enemy and accused President Obama of failing to support police officers.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal tried to bait Christie by challenging his conservative credentials.
But while Fiorina, Kasich and Paul received roughly equal time with their higher-tier challengers on the main debate stage, Huckabee and Christie were left speaking to a much smaller audience in the undercard. Let’s cut government spending. “And, she was stopped then by a strong group of republicans, and an American public that said, ‘No, thank you, ‘” said Mr. Christie, who is the Governor of New Jersey that has a significant Indian-American population.
Huckabee said that since Jindal did not respond, he would not answer the question.
In the next round, looking straight at the camera, he asked viewers whether the federal government is doing such a great job as to warrant ceding more power to it. Christie got another round of cheers by pointing to Hillary Clinton as the real threat to fiscal discipline.
“She is the real adversary tonight and we better stay focused, as Republicans, on her”. The numbers caused a shuffle: Huckabee and Christie were relegated to the undercard, which will no longer include former NY Gov. George Pataki and SC Sen.
The Republican candidate told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on New Day that Carson’s complaints about the media questioning his biography – a central feature of his presidential campaign – are misplaced. Rand Paul have waged, he says, quite vividly, that as soon as they walk off the Senate floor after hours to relieve themselves in the bathroom, “their cause and the toilets get flushed at the same time”.
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Huckabee objected and said that he in fact lowered spending.
