Watching Ted Cruz spar with Marco Rubio over foreign policy and civil liberties in the fifth Republican presidential debate, with occasional assists from Rand Paul, brought to mind a pair of recent columns by my Examiner colleague Tim Carney.

In the first piece, Tim asked why Paul kept talking answering questions about what he would do about the Islamic State by restating his opposition to invading Iraq. In the second, he noted that the Kentucky senator had become a message candidate who was more eager to criticize Rubio, with whom he is competing for relatively few votes, rather than trying to win back some votes he may have lost to Cruz.