Rand Paul and Chris Christie will resume their ongoing quarrel, which might be most succinctly summed up as a dispute over just how much the government ought to “get tough” – whether it pertains to domestic surveillance, drug policy, or military action overseas – pitting Paul’s libertarian, non-interventionist streak against Christie’s I-was-there-on-9/11-so-I-don’t-want-to-hear-about-the-Fourth-Amendment-and-also-I’m-coming-for-your-legal-marijuana platform. “I think we’re all in the dark as to why there were so few available”.
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Mrs. Fiorina had been at +14 before the first debate – where she had been part of the “undercard” forum – before improving to +32 before the second debate and +33 now.
Only in the past week or two has Trump shown signs of vulnerability, but the showman is the ultimate wild card on the debate stage. And Ben Carson overtaking Trump nationally in a new CBS News/New York Times poll means the Howard Stern ratings rule is now in full effect as it pertains to the billionaire in this sentence. Carson can’t surgically alter the minds of members of Congress who disagree with him; Trump can’t fire whomever he wants whenever he wants; Fiorina can’t create a merger between competing interests.
The retired neurosurgeon is this month’s one to watch.
Polis said, by contrast, the Democratic debate in Las Vegas two weeks ago was “a real robust discussion about issues that matter to American families, like raising wages, equal pay for women and many other bread-and-butter issues that I hear about from our constituents every day”. He said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he won’t “get in the mud pit” and retaliate.
What are the candidates going to get asked?
As for Christie? He took to Twitter on Tuesday to remind voters of his plan to reform Social Security, which includes raising the retirement age from 65 to 69. To appear in the later event, candidates must have an average of 3 percent in six “methodologically sound” national polls released between September 17 and October 21. “He’ll talk a lot about that”.
While Trump and Carson are battling at the top of the polls, many experts say U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida still has a strong chance of being the GOP’s candidate in the general election. He could strengthen that idea with another solid debate performance.
But he needs to find a way to sidestep one of the most damaging comparisons that his onetime ally-turned-enemy Jeb Bush has been leveling on him – that he bears a striking resemblance to another first-term senator who took the White House too soon and sunk the economy.
Even if he doesn’t win the primary, Trump at the very least might be able to say he torpedoed Bush’s shot at the nomination. Another said Bush “has to have a moment out there” to save his campaign.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania expert on political communication, notes that debate viewership traditionally rises in economically anxious times such as these, especially when a race is perceived to be as competitive as the wide-open 2016 contest.
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Former Hewlett-Packard exec Carly Fiorina, a native Austinite, is expected to jostle for attention to provide a new spark for her campaign that has fallen in polls since it briefly surged after the last debates. But neither is in the pole position yet, and both have to assert themselves if they want to continue to build a foundation capable of propelling them into the lead by the time the voting starts on February 1. Stone joined us to discuss tonight’s debate. Not only are his poll numbers in the lower single-digits, but U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has been pressuring Paul to focus on keeping his seat in Congress next November.
