By any objective measure, Thursday night’s debate was a trainwreck for Donald Trump. In one night, he refused to rule out a general election bid as an independent if he lost the Republican nomination, praised the Canadian socialized healthcare system, defended past sexist comments, threatened to be mean to popular Fox News host Megyn Kelly, and demonstrated a lack of understanding of important national and international issues. By any law of politics, the Trump bubble should burst after tonight.
But so far, Trump’s candidacy has defied the laws of political physics, so it’s difficult to predict the extent to which this performance will show up in the polls.
The Trump fiasco may have sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room, but several candidates made their mark, for different reasons, providing clues to how they might do once the field is narrowed in the coming months.
Sen. Marco Rubio had a particularly strong night, showing charisma, humor, a consistent command of the issues, and playing the long game by constantly turning the focus on Hillary Clinton, highlighting why he should be an effective candidate to run against her.
“If I’m our nominee, how is Hillary Clinton gonna lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck?” Rubio said. “I was raised paycheck to paycheck. How is she — how is she gonna lecture me — how is she gonna lecture me about student loans? I owed over $100,000 just four years ago.”
In different ways, Sen. Rand Paul and Gov. Chris Christie made a mark. Paul, who has been a bit forgotten for months during the campaign, came out the most aggressively against Trump of any candidate. He also went toe-to-toe with Christie on bulk collection of data. Whether these clashes will resonate beyond his core supporters remains to be seen, but he at least reminded people he was still in the race, which was important.
Christie, who used his background as a prosecutor to defend bulk data collection as part of a counterterrorism strategy, likely benefitted from the exchange among people who disagree with Paul on national security. He also deserves kudos for speaking truthfully about the need to reform entitlements, and taking on Mike Huckabee for wanting to protect Social Security and Medicare from necessary changes.
Gov. John Kasich also benefitted from the audience being in his home state of Ohio. Though if he gains any traction and becomes a real threat, his defenses of his expansion of Obamacare won’t hold up to much scrutiny.
On the flip side, two of the presumed frontrunners — Gov. Scott Walker and Jeb Bush — failed to register. Walker seemed flat and listless for much of the debate, and Bush didn’t have a message that connected with the current Republican party — it felt like a retread of his brother’s “compassionate conservatism” in 2000.
Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, and Sen. Ted Cruz, despite their outsized personalities, seemed invisible for much of the debate, other than a few moments. Cruz may benefit if Trump fades, given that he also has an anti-Washington message. And Carson gave a very solid answer on race, noting, as a neurosurgeon, “when I take someone to the operating room, I’m actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn’t make them who they are, the hair doesn’t make them who they are, and it’s time for us to move beyond that because — you know, our strength as a nation comes in our unity.”
All of this said, none of the non-Trump candidates said or did anything during this case that seriously, irreparably damaged their candidacies. There was no Rick Perry “oops” moment. But unfortunately, the real race for the GOP nomination will be in a holding pattern until Trump collapses in polls and gets demoted to the kiddie table.
