The fourth Republican debate is in the can. Here’s what we learned:
- The debate was a polite and serious affair defined by relatively deep dives into tax reform proposals, the minimum wage, healthcare, immigration, bank bailouts, military spending, foreign policy and more.
- A number of candidates turned in strong performances. Texas senator Ted Cruz consistently won strong applause, as did former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson seemed at turns to captivate and then totally lose his audience.
- ‘Mogul’ Donald Trump did not seem to be working very hard, although he did get pepped up in an answer about how the US “should have kept the oil” in Iraq and used it to fund care for US military veterans. He also sank his teeth into a question about corporate inversions with visible relish.
- The debate was seeded with moments both quirky and strange. Cruz, for example, was asked about an incendiary ad portraying callous pension policy as literally throwing granny over a cliff. “My mom is here,” Cruz said, “so I don’t think we should be pushing any grannies off cliffs.”
- At another point, Trump complained about Fiorina joining ongoing discussions. “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?” he bawled, to no one in particular.
- Florida senator Marco Rubio breezed through his answers and was good at finding windows to work in optimistic stump speech talk about the next American century. He repelled an attack by Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, on military spending by accusing Paul of being an isolationist.
- Paul put himself in play by challenging the other candidates on the risks of imposing a no-fly zone in Syria and on their calls for more military spending. “I’m the only fiscal conservative on the stage,” Paul said.
- John Kasich, the Ohio governor, presented himself as a realist among fabulists. At a flat statement by Cruz that he would not bail out a big bank, Kasich said he would protect depositors and retorted that “philosophy doesn’t work when you run something”.
- Kasich’s scrappy performance did not appear to play particularly well with the live audience, which booed his muddled explanation of how he would not bail out banks yet save depositors.
- There seemed little grounds for reproaching Jeb Bush on his performance, although apart from mentioning Hillary Clinton a lot, the former Florida governor did little to stand out. He did push back on Trump suggesting that Russia could work as a practical ally in the fight against radical jihadists in Syria.
- Carson said he backed the administration’s plan to send special operations forces into Syria, and summarized his plan to beat radical jihadists: “We have to say, how do we make them look like losers? And I think the way to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate.”
