Outsiders Donald Trump and Ben Carson defended the seriousness of their White House bids in the third Republican presidential debate.
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Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and son and brother of former presidents, attacked Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio, who has had a close relationship with Bush, responded sharply: “Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you”.
Voters will also be closely watching to see as Trump continues to attack Carson, if the soft spoken retired neurosurgeon takes the bait.
Experts say Colorado is an important swing state to win over.
It was a lively night for the Republican presidential hopefuls in the left-leaning Republic of Boulder Wednesday night.
Mr Bush hit fellow Floridian Rubio early with a jab at Sen Rubio’s attendance record for votes on the Senate floor.
“Marco”, Bush said, “when you signed up for this, this is a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work”. “Is it a French work week?”.
Fiorina added she could get the tax plan down to three pages.
But Rubio was ready with his reply, citing the percentage of votes missed by previous senators who ran for president, including President Barack Obama. “Do you want me to answer or do you want to answer?” he said.
The candidates were joined afterward by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who told reporters he felt the debate had included too many “gotcha” questions.
From the very first question, they let the candidates steamroll them.
“I will not make the pledge at this time”, Trump said. And while a few candidates did well — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. “He is a good man. I’m wearing a Trump tie tonight – get over that one!”
Cruz was a champion college debater and those skills were on display Wednesday. Zoomph, an analytics platform that tracks real-time data on social media, said Mr Cruz scored the highest activity level.
He said: “This is not a cage match”.
“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media”, he said.
Mr Rubio also took a poke at Hillary Clinton, and the USA media.
He bristled when asked by a debate moderator if his policy proposals, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting everyone who is in the US illegally, amounted to a “comic book” campaign.
Cruz wasn’t the only one with harsh words tonight, Sen.
CNN’s debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, had the same 10 candidates as the first debate plus one. “It was the week she got exposed as a liar… but she has her super-PAC helping her out – the American mainstream media”.
After the crowd booed a question the moderator posed that Ben Carson’s involvement in a pharmaceutical company under scrutiny might speak to his judgment. The moderators didn’t treat him with kid gloves.
Carson smiled – spotting his chance to pile-on the media as other candidates had done.
Asked about whether fantasy football gambling should be regulated, Bush admitted he has a team of his own. Trump said he could fix the USA government’s $19 trillion debt. “We can not elect somebody that doesn’t know how to do the job”, Kasich said.
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Rubio stands third in the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls, at 9%, well behind Trump (26.8%) and Carson (22.0%) but ahead of Bush (7.0%) and Cruz (6.6%). “And then he got nasty”.
