Friday Open Thread [1.15.2016]

NATIONAL—NBC News/Wall St. Journal: Trump 33, Cruz 20, Rubio 13, Carson 12, Bush 5, Christie 5, Fiorina 3, Kasich 3, Paul 3, Huckabee 1

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos has her thoughts on the GOP Debate last night in South Carolina:

* There was a whole lot more direct attacking this time around. In some cases, it was clear when a hit landed, but how does it shake out when two people got in hits on each other?
* Ted Cruz owned Donald Trump on birtherism, then Trump owned Cruz on New York values.
* Rubio showed that he can be fast and aggressive as opposed to his usual bright-eyed high-flown rhetoric, but how much of an impact did he make?
* Jeb Bush can’t shake the aura of weakness.
* Chris Christie lied a bunch … so I guess he’ll be getting some next-day coverage in the form of fact-checks.
* Ben Carson was palpably irrelevant even though he was the same candidate he’s been in past debates. If Sarah Palin had been a neurosurgeon …
* John Kasich was there.

I did not watch, listen to or follow a second of the debate on Twitter. I enjoyed a movie on Demand instead. And my life is better for it.

A “smart Republican” gives his take to Mike Allen on last night’s debate:

“To me the morning story is that if GOP was worried about Trump or Cruz on Monday, today they’re terrified. These two dominated the debate… Cruz and Trump separated even further from pack… Rubio/Christie 3rd place draw, Jeb/Carson/Kasich might as well stay home. … It’s Cruz and Trump, rest fighting to stay alive. Sad – but true… Trump has had his best debate performance to date. It pains me, but its true… Marco was fine. Always looked polished. But Trump and Cruz controlled conversation… Marco had to interject to be involved.”

“The party is starting to look like the banks on Wall Street did in April 2008: ‘What did we do?’… There’s no fixing this — buckle up.”

Why is Trump leading?

All the other candidates say “Americans are angry, and I understand.” Trump says, “I’M angry."

— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) January 15, 2016

Matt Yglesias says Ted Cruz won the debate.

Ted Cruz dominated the Fox Business News Republican primary debate in South Carolina. He went toe-to-toe with Donald Trump and with Marco Rubio. He didn’t slay either of them, but they didn’t slay him. Best of all, he was centrally positioned throughout the evening — someone who speaks for grassroots discontent with the GOP establishment, but someone who does so from a standpoint of a conservatism that is much deeper and more authentic than Donald Trump’s.

The center of the party is a good position to hold in a primary, and Cruz firmly seized that middle ground. With Trump exerting a gravitational influence on the shape of the race, a guy who stood on the margin of the Senate Republican caucus suddenly looks like a useful bridge between Republican officialdom and the conservative grassroots. He’s not well-liked by the party leadership in Washington, but he’s intensely in touch with what committed conservatives think and care about.

He combines disloyalty to the party with intense loyalty to the cause in a way that makes him well-positioned to further rise as the field inevitably narrows. 2015 was all about Trump, but 2016’s first debate showed that the main concrete impact of Trump has been to transform Cruz into a potentially unifying figure.

Dylan Matthews of Vox has his winners of the debate: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio. The losers: Chris Christie, the moderators and the truth.

Cruz is in a very good position at the moment: he leads in the influential Des Moines Register poll of Iowa, and is neck-in-neck with Donald Trump in the polling averages there. Add in the fact that Ted Cruz has a solid ground game, with thousands of volunteers and a 48-room dormitory in which to house them too, whereas one of Trump’s Iowa precinct captains has disowned his candidate’s anti-Muslim comments on the grounds that 9/11 is an inside job and Muslims are thus not to blame, and the odds of Cruz winning Iowa, and gaining momentum thereafter in New Hampshire and South Carolina, look pretty high.

But uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, and naturally Cruz has faced more incoming attacks as his polling has improved, most notably attacks from Donald Trump arguing that Cruz’s Canadian birth renders him ineligible for the presidency. What he needed to do Thursday night was effectively rebut those attacks and preserve his position. He did that brilliantly. “Well, Neil,” he told moderator Neil Cavuto after he brought up the issue. “I’m glad we’re focusing on the important topics of the evening.” The crowd applauded. Cruz continued with the following devastating riposte to Trump:

Back in September, my friend Donald said he had his lawyers look at this from every which way and there was no issue there. There was nothing to this birther issue. Now since September, the Constitution hasn’t changed. [Laughter] But the poll numbers have. [Cheering] And I recognize, I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa. But the facts and law here are really quite clear. Under longstanding U.S. law, the child of a U.S. Citizen born abroad is a natural born citizen.

It succeeded, however briefly, in making Trump look like something he’s never resembled this whole campaign: a loser, and a petty, small loser at that.

Emphasis mine. That’s the key to beating Trump. Turn him into a loser.

Nate Silver says last night’s debate reflected the entire GOP Primary so far in one capsulized form:

If you’d spent the past eight months hiking the Appalachian Trail, and Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate was the first whiff you’d gotten of the candidates in action, you’d be more than a little surprised to see Donald Trump at center stage, where the polling frontrunner normally stands. And maybe you’d be wondering where Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker went. But by the end of the nearly two-and-a-half hour debate, you’d have a reasonably good understanding of the dynamics of the Republican race.

You’d see, in Trump, a lot of political “street smarts.” You’d see a willingness to draw from a populist grabbag of topics (tariffs on China; a ban on Muslims entering the United States) that candidates from both parties usually avoid. You’d also see plenty of self-indulgence on process topics such as Ted Cruz’s “natural born” citizenship, and a willingness to pontificate on topics he clearly knows nothing about. You’d notice that several of Trump’s opponents seemed too intimidated to attack him. You’d see Trump wobble — sometimes badly, such as in his initial exchange with Cruz — and then recover, almost miraculously.

You’d see, in Cruz, a smart tactician who serves up plenty of red meat, and who (perhaps more effectively than any other candidate) plays to both the debate hall and the home viewing audience. You’d also see a candidate who doesn’t invite sympathy and can overextend himself, sometimes tempting an effective counter-attack, like the one Trump got in about “New York values” and Sept. 11.

You’d see, in Marco Rubio, the ultimate glass-half-full, glass-half-empty candidate. Just when you thought Rubio was finally going to have his breakthrough moment (his opening answer was effective and flashed anger that Rubio has sometimes been lacking), he’d disappear for long stretches of time, with competent but canned-sounding answers that failed to raise him above the fray. Then just about when you were ready to count Rubio out, he’d surprise you with an effective strike, like the one he carried out against Cruz on immigration and other topics toward the end of the debate.

You’d see, in Chris Christie, a candidate who seemed to be on the fringe between top-tier and second tier. You’d notice that he was using his personality to mostly good effect (this wouldn’t have been true if you’d watched some of Christie’s earlier debates). You’d see that, like Cruz, he was a good tactician. But you’d also wonder if his blows were landing as effectively with the home audience of conservative Republicans as they were on stage.

You’d see Jeb Bush, and wonder why a candidate who was once one of the frontrunners was standing over yonder in 4-percenter territory. Then you’d witness Bush’s seeming inability to read the moment. He’d invite a fight with Trump over Trump’s proposed Muslim ban — a slightly risky tactic given where Republican voters poll on the issue, but perhaps worthwhile if Bush wants to appear dignified and presidential — only to be oddly ineffective in delivering his punch, bogging himself down in process instead of principles.

You’d see John Kasich and wonder if his goal was to win New Hampshire, or maybe just to get liberal pundits to say nice things about him on Twitter.

You’d see Ben Carson and wonder if he had a pulse.

There is a Tombstone convention beneath the Republican Congressional Retreat in Baltimore. Symbolism much?

PIC: One floor below the GOP Congressional retreat in Baltimore is a tombstone makers' convention. pic.twitter.com/zWjvzHSN1x

— Ali Weinberg (@AliABCNews) January 14, 2016

Brian Beutler said earlier this week that the GOP Establishment had one last chance in this debate. The title of his new piece, “Thursday’s Debate was a Nightmare for the GOP Establishment,” suggests somehow that they missed that chance.

Under different circumstances, [the battle between Trump and Cruz] might’ve been cause for Republican Party officials, who are eager for Trump and Cruz to annihilate one another, to celebrate. But within the context of the full debate, it represented the beginning of a terrifying new chapter: one in which Cruz and Trump have settled into their final roles as the only plausible competitors for the Republican nomination.

The GOP establishment’s dual hopes for Thursday’s debate were to see Trump and Cruz stumble, and Marco Rubio rise to supersede at least one of them.

Instead, as Trump and Cruz parried, Rubio interjected, not with a transcendent moment, but with a familiar recitation of a relevant portion of his stump speech. And then another. And another.

Rebecca Leber of the New Republic says the GOP has no answer to President Obama’s record on the economy:

One of the most striking and mystifying aspects of the Republican presidential primary has been the candidates’ inability—or unwillingness—to offer up any kind of coherent economic prescription for the country. That didn’t change on Thursday night. On the Fox Business debate stage in South Carolina, the remaining GOP field had the floor to rebut President Barack Obama’s rosy picture of the American economy during this week’s State of the Union.

Instead, they pivoted to fear-mongering on foreign policy.

The tone was set with the debate’s very first question, posed to Senator Ted Cruz. Fox Business moderator Maria Bartiromo asked him to respond to Obama’s declaration earlier this week: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” That should have been a softball, ready for the surging candidate to hit out of the park. Instead, Cruz launched into a prepared digression on the American soldiers captured and released by Iran before addressing the actual question—with another digression.

Steven Stromberg writes about how negative the tone was:

With only a few weeks left before the first primary contests, the GOP race has devolved into a competition for who can squeeze the most political advantage out of voter fear, no matter how over-the-top they sound and no matter how much damage they do by darkening the national mood. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) “won” the latest round of this increasingly disgusting show, with Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) coming in second. But being the most effective at exaggerating the dangers the country faces and preying on voter anger is not an achievement; it is a moral failure. […]

Here is a dose of reality: It is possible to disagree with the GOP base and be a patriot. The nation faces many challenges, but it is stronger economically and more secure from various foreign threats than nearly everywhere else in the world. In many ways, Americans are better off now than they ever have been. The continuing desire of non-Americans to move, work and do business here is a sign of strength, showing the appeal of the United States rather than demonstrating weakness.

It don’t think it is possible to be a member of the GOP base and be a patriot. To be a member of the GOP base requires you to be a bigoted fascist. America goes to war against bigoted fascists. It does not call them patriots.