In what was the most aggressive and cutthroat Republican primary debate yet, five of the six candidates – excluding the somnolent Ben Carson – upped the anger ante in Greenville, South Carolina, on Saturday night. Here’s a summary of what we learned:
- Donald Trump has clearly been advised that bullying Jeb Bush is a vote-winner. He spent a large amount of his overwhelming speaking time treating the former Florida governor to the political equivalent of pushing his face in a toilet bowl filled with his own campaign finance history and shouting: “You gonna cry? You gonna cry?”
- The Republican presidential candidates don’t think Barack Obama should nominate a successor to supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday. Marco Rubio says it’s a matter of principle but Trump says he would if he were a president with 11 months left.
- Ben Carson used a quote from Stalin – that in order to destroy a healthy body “you have to undermine three principles: their spiritual life, their patriotism and their morality” – that appears to be utterly and entirely fabricated.
- If Marco Rubio could speak to any historical president, it would be – surprise, surprise – Ronald Reagan.
- Trump supports Planned Parenthood – at least the parts of it that don’t provide abortions – and is willing to say so in a televised Republican debate, which is pretty much unprecedented.
- Jeb Bush said he’d moon someone, but it is relatively unclear whom, and whether he ever went through with it.
- Ben Carson wants you to go to his website. He said this at least five times.
- “Jeez, oh man”, as spoken by John Kasich, is about as accurate a summary of the current Republican primary as we’re likely to hear, and is likely to become a catchphrase.
- Ted Cruz doesn’t speak Spanish. At least, according to a comeback smack-down by Marco Rubio he doesn’t, and the Texas senator didn’t deny it.
- 9/11 is still as strong an issue in this campaign as it ever was, mainly because of Bush’s line that his brother “kept us safe” and Trump’s rebuttal, repeated several times, that “the World Trade Center came down on [George W Bush’s] watch”.
The South Carolina primary is Saturday 20 February. We’ll see you there.
