It’s a rare debate where no one comes out feeling like they won. Some thoughts on how the field performed:
Ben Carson: It’s impossible to tell how he did. He looked at sea on substantive questions. Yes, as the boss noted, his weirdly effective tactic is to never criticize other candidates so that they don’t get extra time to respond to him. If you liked Carson before tonight there’s no reason for you to like him less.
Donald Trump: For people who’ve been waiting for Trump to be exposed in a debate, this might have been it. Rand Paul shivved him for conflating China with TPP. He testily complained about Carly Fiorina “interrupting.” And his answers on Syria, ISIS, and Vladimir Putin seemed both amateurish and wildly out of sync with where Republican voters are. This may not sound like much, but the totality of it was pretty bad.
On the plus side, though, Trump got into an immigration pile-up early with Jeb Bush and John Kasich in which he was clearly the only one committed to securing the border and denying amnesty to illegal immigrants. That can only help.
Marco Rubio: This performance wasn’t as strong as his last. Rubio started out talking vocational training and the nexus of family stability, virtue, and economic growth—basically the Santorum 2012 playbook.
The general consensus going into tonight was that the other campaigns would be headhunting him. Yet instead of getting targeted by Ted Cruz, the only real tussle Rubio got into was with Rand Paul over military spending. There are fewer easier wins in politics than being on the business end of a Paul who’s waving a pen in the air and lecturing about slashing military spending and staying out of foreign affairs. It’s better to be lucky than good, but it’s best to be both.
Ted Cruz: If you were forced to pick a winner, it would probably be Cruz. He picked the right fights—with Kasich and Paul. He gave a dynamite explanation of how illegal immigration impacts wage growth and was generally impressive. With each passing debate he looks more like a finalist.
Jeb Bush: Easily Jeb’s best debate just on the basis of his explanation of regulatory reform. Mind you, this is a very, very low bar. And his second biggest moment was going all-in for amnesty without even the fig-leaf of “controlling our borders.” It’s possible that Bush did well enough to keep his donors for a few more weeks. It’s extremely unlikely that he won many votes.
Rand Paul: Rand fans are going to think their guy had a great night because he got to fly his isolationist flag. In reality, what he did was highlight, over and over, how thoroughly out of step he is with Republican voters on foreign policy. Rubio tagged him early as a “committed isolationist”—the “committed” was a nice touch—and Paul only reinforced that frame. There aren’t a lot of Republican votes for that position.
John Kasich: Hurtling toward his inevitable partnership with No Labels, Kasich was angry, dismissive, hectoring, petulant, and often incoherent. Like Jindal in the first debate, you can always expect agro from candidates with nothing to lose.
Carly Fiorina: She probably had the single strongest moment of the night in her blistering, detailed, canny riff on how she would approach Putin. If she’s going to get a third-look from voters, tonight might prompt it.
In a strange way, the fractious, underwhelming nature of the main stage debate actually added some luster to Chris Christie’s night.
