Miami — The final debate before next Tuesday’s critical primaries in Florida and Ohio was closer to a group therapy session than to the bloody brawls that have characterized the Republican primary season thus far.
Though the stakes have never been higher, Donald Trump’s rivals spent the better part of two hours on stage here at the University of Miami’s Bank United Center avoiding attacks on the front-runner. “I think the Republican establishment, or whatever you want to call it, should embrace what’s happening,” Trump said in his opening remarks. And for a while, it seemed that his three remaining challengers, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich, were listening to him.
When the momentum picked up, it became clear that, with the future of the conservative movement and the Republican party hanging in the balance, Cruz will emerge as the anti-Trump candidate — and that he will be a formidable foe. But all three of Trump’s rivals initially let the businessman’s gauzy responses to detailed questions on trade, immigration, and entitlement reform go unchallenged.
It wasn’t as if Trump gave them nothing to attack: He spent much of the debate delivering the policy equivalent of kittens, rainbows, and gummi bears.
On immigration, he openly admitted to using the H-1B visa program, which allows American businesses to recruit foreign-born workers, and then denounced the program as “very, very bad for workers.” “It’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it,” he said.
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Then, pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash about how he would preserve entitlements such as Social Security without raising the retirement age, Trump promised to cut waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, assuring the audience that, “We’re going to save a fortune.” Though trimming waste and abuse would do little to make entitlements solvent, as Bash pointed out, Trump’s rivals let him slide.
Cruz was offered a clear shot at the Republican front-runner after he suggested that Trump’s math resembled that of the Democratic candidates. “Did you just compare Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton?” Bash asked him. Again, Cruz ducked. “I’ll let Donald speak for himself,” he said, which prompted Trump to say, as he so often does, what so many onlookers were thinking: “So far I cannot believe how civil it’s been up here.”
The remaining candidates are steeling themselves for the final phase of what has been a raucous primary.
There were reasons for the civility. The remaining candidates are adjusting themselves for the final phase of what has been a raucous primary: Cruz adapting to his position as the establishment’s anti-Trump candidate; Trump attempting a more presidential mien; and Rubio and Kasich preparing, potentially, to drop out of the race if they cannot win their home states on Tuesday. When Cruz suggested only he and Trump still had a realistic path to the nomination, the other two candidates on stage seemed almost to shrug in agreement.
All of Trump’s challengers have struggled to find an effective way of attacking him, and Cruz seemed to be trying out a new method on Thursday. Repeatedly, he noted that Trump is good at identifying problems but doesn’t propose meaningful solutions. “He’s right about the problems but his solutions don’t work,” Cruz said of Trump’s proposal to impose steep tariffs on imported goods, which he noted would represent a new tax on American consumers. “This solution would hurt jobs and hurt hardworking taxpayers in America.” On foreign policy, Cruz noted that Trump talks tough but has said repeatedly he wouldn’t undo the Iran deal and has promised to be a neutral negotiator between the Israel and the Palestinians.
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Trump was unusually restrained throughout the evening. Gone were the taunts and gibes he has habitually hurled at other candidates, replaced instead with a plethora of grand promises to make great deals on matters from foreign trade to foreign policy.
“We need people who can make deals that work because right now in Washington, there’s total, absolute gridlock,” he said.
He was also quick to walk back the praise he has heaped on Russian president Vladimir Putin and past comments that seemed to flirt with admiration for the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square. “I think Putin’s been a very strong leader for Russia. That doesn’t mean I’m endorsing him,” he said. “Strong doesn’t mean good.”
#share#Trump’s appearance Thursday came as his campaign is facing increasing questions about whether it has encouraged and even participated in violence at its rallies. The culture of the Trump campaign and the actions of its supporters on the trail have come under heightened scrutiny after Trump’s campaign manager was accused on Tuesday of intentionally knocking down a female reporter who asked Trump an adversarial question.
Trump himself shrugged the incident off. “Everybody said nothing happened,” he told reporters after the debate. “Perhaps she made the story up. I think that’s what happened.” Asked during the debate about the violent incidents at his campaign rallies, he said, “We have some protesters who are bad dudes.”
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For Marco Rubio, Thursday’s contest was potentially his last moment on the presidential stage. Over the past few weeks, Rubio has seemed almost a passive participant in his own campaign’s slow death. Disappointing showings the first weekend of March were followed by total delegate shutouts in Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho, and Hawaii on Tuesday. Since then, he has been plagued by questions about whether he will even remain in the race until Florida votes next week.
Rubio’s performance, which hit on familiar themes of youthful optimism and American exceptionalism, was aimed more at burnishing his legacy, perhaps for a return to political life down the road, than scoring points over his opponents. But he did that too. After the famously disciplined candidate changed course to mock Trump relentlessly, and sometimes crudely, on the campaign trail the last few weeks, he showed up in Miami Thursday intent on reminding his party why he became a political star.
#related#When Trump insisted that the United States should resume diplomatic relations with Cuba so long as he could “make a good deal” with the island nation, Rubio responded, “Here’s a good deal: Cuba has free elections. Cuba has freedom of the press. Cuba kicks out the Russians from Lourdes and kicks out the Chinese listening station in Bejucal. Cuba returns all those fugitives from American justice, including that cop killer from New Jersey, and sends her back to the United States and to jail where she belongs. And you know what, then we can have a relationship with Cuba. That’s a good deal.”
It was a moment that exemplified how Rubio wants to be remembered by his party whether or not he wins his home state on Tuesday. To stop Trump, either he must do so in Florida or Kasich must do so in Ohio. If he can’t be beaten outright, Trump gave a hint of the potential nastiness to come in a brawl for delegates on the convention floor when he said that the requirement that the Republican nominee amass a majority of the delegates is merely an arbitrary RNC fiat. Cruz himself said that an open convention, a prospect many Republicans are now openly mulling, would be an “absolute disaster.”
As the voting barrels into its final phase, suffice it to say, this is merely the beginning.
— Eliana Johnson is Washington editor of National Review.