Oh, and bombing someone. Lindsey Graham of SC.
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This year’s contests have attracted millions more viewers than past contests, a spike largely attributed to the inclusion of reality television star turned GOP front-runner Donald Trump. But that’s never hurt him in the polls before, and it’s unlikely to do so now. But in this debate he got some tough questions and took some shots from other candidates, and he looked uncomfortable and out of his depth. The one notable exception was Rand Paul. The crowd was definitely not feeling his attempts to be a maverick by rejecting the security state and (some) war.
“He’s the weakest of all the candidates on immigration”, Paul said.
And Jeb Bush believes he did by standing up to the Republican frontrunner.
The last Republican presidential debate of 2015 is in the books but we’re already looking ahead to 2016.
Loser, Actually Getting Anywhere With The Voters Division: Jeb Bush. But despite landing a couple of blows during the debate, Bush’s concluding remarks were so limp he got bored with them and trailed off. Voters will soon forget that he’s even in this race. The Texas senator is on the rise, particularly in Iowa’s kickoff caucuses, and is casting himself as a more electable alternative to Trump, while Rubio is seeking to straddle the divide between his party’s establishment and more conservative wings. How do you tell the Kurds, ‘We’ll arm you. So both candidates, when faced with the question, rattled off officious-sounding nonsense to run out the clock.
Hale added, “This was a now typical solid debate performance for Chris Christie”.
Cruz, who’s been surging in the polls in Iowa, had the most speaking time of the debate, with 16 minutes and 27 seconds, according to POLITICO. It was a foreign policy debate, but the major points of disagreement among the candidates were all ones of degree: which of them would deport the most immigrants, bomb ISIS soldiers (and the civilians laboring under their rule) into the smallest and most atomized fragments, establish a no-fly zone over Syria so as to shoot down the most Russian jets, punch Putin in the nose the hardest.
Loser, Being Able To Sleep At Night Edition: The viewers. She continued to respond throughout the debate, hitting the Republican candidates on guns control, their refugee policies and planned responses to threats from terror groups like the Islamic State. But either way, neither candidate spent much speaking time going after Trump except to push back on details of his plan to bar all Muslims from entry to the United States. Christie clearly has a debate script and he followed it. No major mistakes other than forgetting the King of Jordan’s name.
The candidates also offered competing visions on national security.
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Christie didn’t take the bait, keeping his focus on what he said were others’ reckless foreign policies.
