Tuesday night’s fourth Republican primary debate, held in Milwaukee, did little to change the dynamics of the presidential race.
Both frontrunners, Ben Carson and Donald Trump, struggled when the moderators pressed for specifics on foreign policy, and the more policy-focused questions left them looking out of depth. For Carson, this may not matter much—the more important events for him in this past week were the multiple attempts by the media to catch the retired neurosurgeon in inconsistencies with his life story. Carson has argued that his vetting by the media has been harsher than any previous presidential candidate, and Republican primary voters inclined to like him will no doubt agree. A shaky but otherwise uneventful debate performance, and one where none of his opponents has gone after him, won’t hurt Carson in the polls. His fight with media is likely to help him.
Trump, on the other hand, mostly played nice with the other candidates (John Kasich excluded) in between his platitudes about making America great again. Between that and his lack of policy chops, he mostly faded into the background.
Marco Rubio continued to show why he’s increasingly seen as a favorite to win the nomination. The Florida senator has a great talent at making stump speech lines and ideas sound natural and spontaneous, and he did so again in Milwaukee. And in his heated exchange with Rand Paul over defense spending, Rubio got the better of his Senate colleague with a sharp jab about Paul being an “isolationist” and noting his own support for a more robust defense budget. It didn’t have the same stinging effect as the comeback to Jeb Bush’s “absentee senator” attack from the previous debate, but it was still a good moment.
Rubio has been lucky, as well, by what he hasn’t had to talk about. Tuesday, he narrowly escaped a contentious discussion about immigration, his weak point in the primary, when moderator Gerard Baker changed the subject. And while Ted Cruz didn’t mention Rubio in his entreaty for Republicans to not “join Democrats as the party of amnesty,” it was a clear signal the Texas senator sees Rubio as his biggest competition.
Cruz gave another solid performance, though his delivery was much more clunky than at the Boulder debate. His best moment, on immigration, came across nearly as well as his excoriation of the media in Colorado. Cruz’s mini-monologue captured exactly what conservative populists want to hear on immigration:
“And I will say, for those of us who believe people ought to come to this country legally and we should enforce the law, we’re tired of being told it’s anti-immigrant. It’s offensive,” Cruz said. “I am the son of an immigrant who came from Cuba to embrace the American dream. And we can embrace legal immigration while believing in the rule of law.”
“It’s not compassionate to say we’re not going to enforce the laws and we’re going to drive down the wages for millions of hard working men and women,” Cruz concluded. “That is abandoning the working people.”
Don’t be surprised if Cruz’s numbers in Iowa get a bump, and don’t be surprised if some of his more cryptic criticisms of Rubio become more explicit in the coming weeks and months.
Beyond the top four candidates, it was a mixed bag. After dropping back down to earth in the last month, Carly Fiorina once again succeeded in shining on the debate stage. She may have had the best line of the night calling out Trump on a rambling answer about Vladimir Putin in which the New York real-estate mogul said he had met the Russian leader while appearing on 60 Minutes together. “I have met him as well,” Fiorina said. “Not in a green room for a show but in a private meeting.” She may see a boost in her poll numbers, but she’ll have to show she can maintain that boost, unlike the last time she received one from a strong debate performance.
Jeb Bush proved he may have a little life after death, but to what end? By not targeting Rubio and having the more generous answer times the Fox Business format allowed, Bush was allowed to let out his true inner policy wonk. He even uncorked a good line about Hillary Clinton (likely cribbed from Mitt Romney). Donors may not be so shaken as they were after Boulder, but it was a performance unlikely to move many voters into Bush’s camp.
Similarly to Bush, Rand Paul had a more energetic performance than in past debates. But the energy was all expended to tout his more pure libertarian message on foreign policy and government spending, areas where the rest of the party simply isn’t. Paul’s best moment was a detailed defense of his tax plan, where he showed a deep knowledge of the code and how to fix it. Whoever is the Republican president in 2017 will likely call on the Kentucky senator to consult about tax reform.
Finally, John Kasich gave rambling answers, complained about the lack of time he was given to speak, and defended government bailing out banks. It was clear from the undercard debate that Chris Christie, not Kasich, should have been on the main debate stage.
