Detroit — It was not immediately clear which of the four remaining candidates won Thursday’s Republican presidential debate here. But there was no shortage of losers.
Marco Rubio, needing a strong performance to reassure donors and persuade voters ahead of Florida’s do-or-die primary on March 15, spoke with a hoarse voice that rendered him incapable of topping Donald Trump in their frequent shouting contests. He looked and sounded fatigued, and was outshone by Ted Cruz in the race to ridicule Trump.
Trump, who in the debate’s opening minutes assured the American people of his sufficient genitalia, was on the defensive from start to finish. Cruz, Rubio, and Fox News’s moderators skewered him relentlessly on his shifting positions, his allegedly shady business dealings, and his fitness for the presidency. At one point Megyn Kelly, reunited with Trump for the first time since they feuded at the first debate in August, quoted an appeals-court ruling that said Trump had acted like a “con artist” in administering Trump University and compared his victims to those who fell for Bernie Madoff’s infamous Ponzi scheme.
Cruz and John Kasich were the evening’s finest performers, delivering sharp arguments to their respective target audiences. Cruz prosecuted Trump as a phony conservative, openly asking that the front-runner’s supporters consider defecting to his campaign. And Kasich repeatedly gave the audience a breath of fresh air — and appealed to centrists in the Midwest and nationwide — by breaking up extended tit-for-tats with affirmative, detail-oriented soliloquies. But both men were squeezed for speaking time as Trump dominated the stage and found himself in the middle of practically every exchange.
Cruz and John Kasich were the evening’s finest performers, delivering sharp arguments to their respective target audiences.
And at the end of the evening, after bludgeoning Trump for the better part of two hours, both Cruz and Rubio pledged — almost nonchalantly, after spending two weeks calling him a “con man” and worse — to support Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee. Moderator Bret Baier, who kicked off debate season by asking all the candidates in August if they would commit to supporting the eventual nominee, brought it full circle by ending Thursday’s debate by asking Trump’s rivals if they would back him as the nominee. All three responded in the affirmative, though Kasich won applause by initially replying with a grin, “I think by the time it’s all said and done, I’ll be the nominee.”
The audience of nearly 5,000 inside the historic Fox Theatre in this city’s downtown was rambunctious from the outset. A chorus of hecklers targeted three of the four participants — Cruz, Rubio, and Trump — with chants and taunts, and some were ejected from the arena. The moderators on several occasions had to delay their questioning amid the circus-like atmosphere, which seemed to fuel a series of ugly back-and-forths between the candidates.
At one point, amid a lengthy shouting match over Trump University and its alleged deceptions, Cruz turned to the audience and asked: “Is this the debate you want playing out in a general election?” He was speaking specifically to a treasure trove of accusations against Trump, and how Democrats would exploit them to elect Hillary Clinton in November. Yet his question doubled as an indictment of a Republican primary process that has, in the eyes of many, gone off the rails.
In an opening sequence straight from the nightmares of Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, Trump was first asked to respond to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney’s accusations that he was a “phony” and a “fraud.” (Trump called Romney a “failed candidate” and an “embarrassment” who was trying to remain “relevant.”) He was then pressed to renounce, once and for all, the Ku Klux Klan. (He obliged: “I totally disavow the KKK.”) Finally, after Rubio was asked to explain his recent detour into the mud with Trump — which included a suggestion that the front-runner has a small penis — Trump tackled the allegation head-on: “I guarantee you, there’s no problem.”
And that was just the first five minutes.
#share#The event quickly took on a familiar pattern. Cruz or Rubio would launch an attack on Trump, eliciting ad hominem putdowns and emasculating nicknames. (Trump called them “Lying Ted” and “Little Marco.” Rubio once responded by sarcastically calling him “Big Donald,” which in lieu of the front-runner’s earlier claim seemed subconsciously promotional.) Cruz or Rubio would retort that Trump wasn’t addressing the issues, and press the questions themselves. Trump would talk over them. The crowd would whip itself into a frenzy, making the cross-talk all the trickier to comprehend. The moderators would try shouting over the warring candidates. And Kasich, when given the floor, would assert himself as the self-described “adult on the stage.”
The action left Republicans on social media openly mourning the mess they found themselves in. “My party is committing suicide on national television,” Jamie Johnson, a longtime Iowa GOP official and activist, tweeted.
When Fox News turned for post-game analysis to Frank Luntz, the Republican focus-group guru, he asked a series of GOP viewers for one-word responses to the night’s debate. Their choices: “sophomoric,” “embarrassing,” “childish,” and “disgusting.”
The spectacle had Democrats salivating over the circular firing squad that has effectively concealed their own candidates’ warts. “Tonight’s Motor City debate was a demolition derby,” Brad Woodhouse, president of the pro-Clinton group Correct The Record, said in a statement. “These Republicans revved up their hate-fueled speech and slammed each other with insults from every direction.”
The spectacle had Democrats salivating over the circular firing squad that has effectively concealed their own candidates’ warts.
To be sure, plenty of the punches thrown at Trump landed with devastating effect. Cruz grilled him over effectively underwriting the Affordable Care Act and the “Gang of Eight” immigration effort by donating money to Democrats. Rubio stung him for claiming to champion the American worker while making his clothing overseas and hiring foreign workers at his golf courses in Florida. And both senators teamed up to press Trump on his off-the-record comments to the New York Times editorial board, in which he allegedly expressed flexibility on the question of mass deportation of illegal immigrants. (Trump, who has made media-bullying a staple of his campaign, claimed he has too much respect for reporters to release the audio of his off-the-record exchanges with the Times.)
The crowd cheered boisterously on each occasion, savoring the sight of a wounded Trump. But as with months of previous assaults on the controversial front-runner, their impact was clouded by his consistent tactic of jeering his assailants until substantive attacks devolved into playground spats. If the rough exchanges did in fact hurt Trump, it’s not at all clear whom they might have helped.
“You don’t beat Trump by getting into an insult war with him,” Kasich told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly after the debate concluded.
The Ohio governor has campaigned vigorously here in Michigan, his neighbor to the north. He hopes to keep his campaign afloat with strong performances in the Midwest, and promised during the debate that he would win his home state. Yet he later acknowledged to O’Reilly that his goal was forcing a contested convention – a reflection of the reality now dawning on Republicans that it will be nearly impossible for any of Trump’s challengers to overtake him and claim the nomination outright.
In that scenario, Kasich said with a wishful tinge of optimism, Republican delegates at the convention will choose “an adult” to be the party’s standard-bearer in November.
— Tim Alberta is the chief political correspondent for National Review.