Trump was evasive on healthcare, evasive on his tax returns, was evasive about his losing to Clinton in the polls, kept repeating himself while denying that he repeats himself and while criticizing Rubio for repeating himself too much, etc. I agree with Leon Wolf:
Here’s what a bad night it was for Trump. In the middle of a completely innocuous question from moderator Hugh Hewitt, which was not in any way attacking Trump, Trump out of nowhere slammed Hewitt with “No one listens to your show.” In the span of 20 seconds, he said “I don’t believe anything Telemundo says,” and “I love Telemundo. Everything is fine.” Literally within the same answer. The belief this entire time has been that Donald Trump cannot be rattled in a debate. Tonight proved that it is not true. It’s one thing to expose Trump as a liberal; what the other Republican candidates did tonight was to expose Trump as a lightweight. Trump has gotten away for months with not having answers to anything because no one has pressed him on the point. Tonight, that ended, and he looked like a child.
Trump's unprovoked insult of Hewitt reflects Trump's character. Imagine if any other candidate had done that or had done even half of the rest of what Trump did in this debate. Rubio's relatively minor mistakes a couple of debates ago got a major amount of media attention and had Rubio getting criticized widely for days on end. Will Trump get the far worse treatment he deserves, now that he's so obviously had a debate performance vastly worse than what Rubio had in that previous debate? I doubt it. We'll see how many voters are discerning enough to realize what happened in tonight's debate. Trump got knocked out by Rubio, was propped up and knocked out again by Cruz, and kept getting the same treatment over and over the rest of the night. He was a punching bag getting hammered back and forth between Rubio and Cruz. Will the media cover the debate that way? Will voters respond to the debate as they ought to? Rubio and Cruz did their part. If the media and voters don't respond as they should, then the media and the voters are to blame.
Oh, and Kasich and Carson were there, too. I think.
I only watched the highlights, which maybe aren't fairly representative of the debate, but I thought the best exchange of the debate was the exchange involving Rubio mocking Trump repeating himself.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite political pundits (Ace of Spades) had this to say about the debate:
ReplyDelete---
What Mario just did to the Donald is illegal in 28 states. ... He had people laughing at Trump. That's a tough thing. You can absorb a criticism, but you can't easily absorb being made a figure of amusement. Especially someone like Trump, who's entire strategy is to project invincibility and inevitability to disguise the fact he really has no idea what he's talking about.
Puncture that, and you've mortally wounded him.
Of course, it's pretty obvious now that Cruz and Rubio agreed beforehand to double-team Trump. They have him in the Malachi Crunch, and Trump is no Fonzie. He's trying to escape the crunch, but he's getting smashed to hell.
The Champ had a glass jaw all along. The key, it turns out, was that you just couldn't have one guy punching at it. Trump's quick-answer-bluster was enough of a defense against one punch.
But not against two.
Further Thoughts: Oh boy trump [sic] is doing terribly, and I didn't want to see him do terribly. I kinda like Trump, in a weird way.
But he is getting destroyed, and he just wasn't prepared for it. (Being unprepared is kind of His Thing.)
It's embarrassing.
This is a gamechanger.
The whole race is now reset.
---
David French over at NRO agrees.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that Rubio and Cruz pummeled Trump like this without even bringing up some of the most damaging material about Trump: his comments about wanting to have sex with his daughter, his boasting about committing adultery with so many women, his comments about how brave he is and how much he's like a soldier when he has sex with so many women and tries to avoid getting STDs, his business associations with drug dealers and the mafia, etc. Even if Rubio and Cruz don't want to bring up such issues in the debates (I'd recommend bringing them up), they should at least raise the issues in other contexts (television ads, radio ads, web videos, etc.).
ReplyDeleteI hope and pray that Trump is done...
ReplyDeleteIt's early as I write this, but the Drudge Report poll, with 250,000 respondents, gives the following result to the question, "Who Won the Debate?"
ReplyDeleteTrump: 59.62%
Cruz: 19.14%
Rubio: 14.74%
Kasich: 4.1%
Carson: 2/4%
Unfortunately, Drudge has prejudicially supported Trump for a while now.
DeleteThe Drudge "poll" isn't scientific and should not be taken seriously. I'm not even sure what protections they have against voting more than once.
Delete@Matthew -- based on the test I just did, there are no protections whatsoever :-)
DeleteI know you don't favour Cruz, but what do you think of liberals who say that he's a Dominionist and wants to turn America into a Christian theocracy?
ReplyDeletei) For starters, they need to give evidence for their claim. They need to cite specific policies of his, explain how those are "Dominionist," and how, if implemented, it would turn American into a Christian theocracy. No doubt the accusation is hyperbolic.
Deleteii) Even if elected, and even if that were his plan, he can't wave a magic wand and make it happen.