Everyone came out swinging in Tuesday night’s GOP presidential debate. Marco Rubio kept up the heat on Sen.
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“How are you going to make the sands of the Middle East glow if you don’t have the Air Force to do it with”, Rubio said. “It’s easy”, Rubio said.
He said, “We are not talking about isolation, we’re talking about security. We have a President who is unwilling to utter its name”, Mr. Cruz said. “You need the capability to do it with, and we’re losing that capability”.
“To suggest our record’s the same is like suggesting the fireman and the arsonist have the same record because they are both at the scene of the fire”, Cruz responded. The claim comes from a proposal Mr. Cruz offered during the debate to strip out citizenship rights, but to leave intact the ability for illegal immigrants to obtain some legal status. Rubio and Trump had the second and third highest total times, at 13 minutes and 33 seconds and 13 minutes and 25 seconds, respectively.
Trump continued, “They’re not coming to this country if I’m president. I was fighting to secure the border”. On Tuesday, Rubio attacked Cruz on national security, particularly his decision to not support legislation that would provide more military funding.
“I don’t think he’s a serious candidate”.
Former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush tried to dismiss Trump-as he had in previous debates-as lacking seriousness as a candidate, but the audience in GOP pollster Frank Luntz’s focus group gave him very low marks for the attempt. “I don’t wake up each day and say, ‘Now I can have a zinger and attack somebody, ‘” he added. “They’re going. They’re gone”.
Smith predicts Tennesseans will eventually tire of Trump, and that will open the door for a Republican as well organized as Cruz.
“I think he stands up there and you realize he doesn’t know as much as every other person on that stage, that he doesn’t have the substance, and so he has to use smoke and mirrors to get through questions”, said Mackowiak. The Texas senator is on the rise, particularly in Iowa’s lead-off caucuses, where he is challenging Mr Trump’s months-long lead.
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The most emphatic consistency between the polls, though, is how El Paso County Republicans rate Jeb Bush’s debate performances. Trump, the tycoon and onetime reality television star who has been the surprise leader of the Republican presidential race, has only gained in popularity since making his abrasive anti-Muslim comments, even as rivals accused him of playing into jihadist hands.
