Summary: GOP Debate(s) #1

Trump proves himself a clown, Fiorina shines on a smaller stage.

by Darren Hertenstein

5PM: Junior Varsity debate or ‘Justify your Existence’

The early GOP debate started pointedly, with Fox News asking each candidate to basically justify their existence on the stage. Very pointed and direct, I would highly recommend following the link and watching the video from Mediaite.

By and far the winner of the ‘JV’ debate was Carly Fiorina and it really makes you wonder why she wasn’t included in the ‘big show’. How can the GOP be taken seriously when they relegate their only female candidate to the sidelines? Even more so when that female candidate then runs away with the debate by a large margin (83% of people polled believed she won the debate, Google Trends also indicated Fiorina as the early winner). The first part (and subsequent parts) of the first Fox News debate can be seen below.

9PM: The ‘Big Show’ — The “popular” candidates duke it out

Fox News seemingly did their best to be direct and create some controversy with both debates. The second debate started out with a question for all the candidates that was clearly directed towards Trump (shown below), which did spark a nice dogfight between Trump and Rand Paul.

Things were fairly nondescript throughout the night, a few highlights were posted to our Twitter.

This was followed by an interesting clash between Trump and Megyn Kelly over the “War on Women” and how Trump has treated some women. Trump came back with an interesting quip that got some cheers, but was very un-presidential with the way he responded to Megyn’s question.

The first question addressed to Cruz was how he expected to win when he is so divisive within his own party:

Scott Walker’s first question was on his stance towards abortions, with rather pointed phrasing:

Made a stop at Kasich, who started his rhetoric about doing great things in Ohio (he has, for the most part) and then made it back over to Trump on Immigration:

There was one thing in Trump’s bloviating that was remarkably untrue:

The nation as a whole has been focused majorly on immigration since last year. Republicans have been working on “fixing” immigration for much longer than that (see: Gang of 8 bill).

Kasich then tried to capitalize on some of Trump’s momentum, followed by Cruz seemingly setting himself up as a sane version of Trump.

Then we got into the other thrilling event of the first half of the debate, a question setup specifically for Christie and Rand Paul that resulted in fireworks:

The night went along much like this; Moderator’s going after Trump, ignoring a lot of the candidates in the process. At half time the talk time looked like this:

Topics covered ranged from ISIS to Entitlement Reform, Donald Trump Properties bankruptcy, then back to Iran (ie: All over the place). After the break they got specifically to Social issues, including Planned Parenthood. This revealed that Jeb! had worked with the Bloomberg Foundation, who had made donations to Planned Parenthood, and brought about another Trump attack:

Then we moved on to a Gay Marriage question, before jumping to #BlackLivesMatter, then onto military.

Before closing statements from the 10 candidates they were asked if they’ve specifically heard from God on running for president:

3 of the 5 candidates asked the God question even dared answer it, this was a shining moment for Walker, Rubio and Cruz. Kasich and Carson decided to avoid talking about God.

Finally, we came to the closing statements from the candidates:

In this writer’s view it was a rather bland debate. Sure there were some fireworks, which everyone enjoys, but no one really stood out. Cruz, Rubio and Walker did well for themselves, but didn’t really separate themselves from the pack. Trump did pretty much what everyone expected him to do and self-imploded. Jeb! seemed every bit the Bush, while still trying to separate himself from his family name. Rand Paul showed up and didn’t hurt himself by attacking Trump or Christie, but also didn’t help himself. Carly Fiorina should’ve been in this debate rather than Huckabee/Christie/Carson/Kasich.