“This is new for him“, said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus when peppered after the debate with questions about Trump’s bombastic performance. And the leading establishment candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, answered many doubts about his candidacy with a forceful presentation of his record, his positions on the issues, and the unifying campaign he hopes to run.
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And there were plenty of personality conflicts, too.
Excitement started building on Twitter hours before the debate with the hashtag #GOPdebate starting to trend early Thursday afternoon.
Trump, who was joined by nine other candidates at the debate Thursday evening, faced tough questions about his past disparaging comments about women and being the sole candidate to refuse to pledge his support to the eventual party nominee.
Many Republicans fear that Trump is hurting the party (a 49 percent plurality said so in a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll this week), and the debate showed that the concern is justified. “I wonder what the ratings would have been if I wasn’t in the mix”, he said. Rand Paul: “Hey, look, look! He’s already hedging his bets”.
“Only Rosie O’Donnell”, Trump responded.
With his poll numbers dropping in recent weeks, Rubio came into the debate ranked seventh among the candidates and looking to prove he is still a top-tier contender.
But Trump was far from the only candidate onstage. Gov. Jeb Bush is the only sensible candidate, he didn’t do much to stand out during the event.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about illegal immigration, Chris”, Trump rejoined.
The first real question that Trump faced down Thursday night put him on the receiving end of a lot of estrogen. Gov. Kasich, a late and relatively little known entrant in the presidential contest, repeatedly drove home his record as the budget-balancing chair of the House Budget Committee and as a successful steward of Ohio’s economy.
“I said it as a joke”.
“How are you supposed to know?” “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness”, he said. Kelly had perhaps the most contentious exchange of the night with Trump when she asked him about a slew of past offensive comments toward women. Rubio also earned some of the loudest applause of the night when he offered up one of his well-used zingers to mock Clinton. The two have famously feuded for years, with Trump tweeting last year, “Rosie is crude, rude, obnoxious and dumb – other than that I like her very much!” Some Republicans say it would be the 2016 presidential nominee’s job to forge a consensus. When asked about the Iran deal, she said, “I would hold a Camp David summit with our Arab allies, not to talk them into this lousy deal with Iran, but to say to them, ‘what is it that you need to defeat ISIL?”
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“I governed as a conservative, and I govern effectively”, Bush said at one point. “We don’t do anything right”, in his closing statement. “And, ultimately, that’s what I’m going to try to do. Where I come from, we don’t treat people like that”. And Republican debate about immigration has only intensified in the wake of President Barack Obama’s sweeping executive action shielding from deportation millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was first to mention the Benghazi attacks, during his answer to the next question – but it was only as an aside.
