The eighth Republican presidential debate, all three hours of it, has come and gone. Here’s a summary in case you missed it:
- New Jersey governor Chris Christie ambushed Florida senator Marco Rubio by laying bare his rhetoric as repetitive, rehearsed and off-point. “You have not been involved in a consequential decision,” Christie told Rubio.
-
Rubio seemed shaken by the attack, repeating a single sentence, about the fiction of Barack Obama not knowing what he was doing, three times.
- The debate got off to a rocky start, as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson declined to take the stage upon being introduced, apparently not having heard the moderator introduce him. He lingered awkwardly.
- Very awkwardly:
- Donald Trump handled a question about his use of eminent domain to evict an elderly lady from a planned New Jersey casino parking lot with aplomb, saying the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, “would not get 10 feet” without eminent domain.
- But Trump was booed when he attacked the crowd for booing him. “We needed tickets. You can’t get them.” Booed and booed and booed.
- Ohio governor John Kasich told voters that if he’s elected president, they better “go out and buy a seatbelt”, because he’s going to hit the gas in his first 100 days.
- Trump and Cruz both said they would “bring back” waterboarding, which both said did not constitute torture.
- Bernie Sanders was on Saturday Night Live!
