Next Thursday evening, 10 of the 17 Republican candidates for president will line up shoulder-to-shoulder on a stage at a Cleveland, Ohio, sports arena – and the political games in advance of the 2016 presidential election will begin for real. I think his performance thus far has been mediocre, with occasional moments of good to very good.
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Perry cited his experience dealing with last summer’s border surge to bolster his credentials and push back on Donald Trump’s criticism that the governor did a “terrible job”.
He said: “It’s been an incredible campaign”. I’ve not been on a stage debating.
The 69-year-old caused controversy earlier this month when he called for the US to boycott Mexico.
“People are sick of the establishment and hate their party”, said Needham, who is not a Trump supporter.
“Don’t forget, I was the fair-haired boy of Republican politics, and even in Democratic politics, I supported everybody”, Trump said via phone on CBS. “They want to digest all this stuff and then they’ll make decisions and I think when that time comes, the fact that we’ve been this specific for this long is really going to make it a benefit to us“. “I will suggest to you that’s exactly what they’ll get“. Candidates who do not qualify for the debate will be invited to participate in a separate forum to be aired on the afternoon of the debate.
“These polls, these national polls are irrelevant”, Santorum said of the Fox News’s rules concerning average national polling numbers. “They debate all the time”, he said. To which Republican primary voters will solemnly respond, “Seriously”.
“I’m not a debater, I’ve never debated before”.
When I look at the Trump phenomenon, I can’t help but recall something Gen. David Petraeus said to my Washington Post colleague Rick Atkinson as they surveyed the battlefield during the early days of the Iraq invasion: “Tell me how this ends”.
“These politicians, I always say, are all talk no action”.
Most observers think Christie will get number nine, and say the tenth debate slot boils down to a race between Perry and Kasich, both of whom appeared on the television show, “Fox News Sunday”. John McCain and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a member of the Bush family political dynasty who also is at the top of most polls. I still do not know whether Trump can sustain his appeal with voters, but as of today, it is what it is.
“These folks in Iowa and New Hampshire particularly are notorious late deciders on what they’re going to do”, Christie said. Rick Santorum, who blasted Fox News and the Republican National Committee for relying on national polls to determine the debate’s participants. No other Republican candidate polled higher than 6 percent, with nine of the 12 remaining candidates polling within a statistical tie.
Other candidates – Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore – are fighting to get into the top ten.
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What’s most mysterious is that the polls show Trump actually consolidating his lead in the wake of a series of what would seem politically fatal gaffes.
