Ronald Reagan’s “eleventh commandment”—”thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”—may be an unnecessarily strict standard, but the Republican presidential field could at least try to observe a twelfth commandment: Thou shalt avoid calling one’s fellow Republican a liar.
In the South Carolina Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump used “liar,” “lie,” “lies,” “lied,” or “lying” a whopping ten times. Five of those were directed at Ted Cruz (mostly in response to Cruz’s correctly noting that Trump supports federal funding for Planned Parenthood), four were directed at Jeb Bush (in response to Bush’s saying Trump went bankrupt, when—more exactly—several of his business ventures did), and one—the most memorable and consequential—was directed at the George W. Bush administration. About the Bush administration, Trump amazingly said, “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none.”
Marco Rubio used “liar,” “lie,” “lies,” “lied,” or “lying” five times—half as many times as Trump did—directing all five uses at Cruz. Rubio accused Cruz of lying about Rubio’s positions on immigration, about Ben Carson, about Planned Parenthood, about marriage, and—as a catch-all—”about all sorts of things.” In none of these cases did Rubio even try to substantiate his accusation—he simply accused Cruz of lying and left it at that.
To their credit, Cruz, Bush, Carson, and John Kasich didn’t respond in kind.
Note: The headline to this piece has been amended.
