Republican candidates mix it up
Front-runners take a back seat as lesser lights strive to gain a bit of momentum
BOULDER, Colorado — Republicans struggling to gain traction in a crowded presidential field sharpened attacks against their rivals in a combative primary debate Wednesday, while the race’s frontrunners largely pressed their advantages as political outsiders — opting often to remain above the fray.
In the third meeting of Republican presidential contenders, several candidates tried to reverse recent struggles, leading to some of the most direct confrontations of the race to date only three months before the first nominating contests.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whose campaign just announced steps to retrench amid stagnant poll numbers and slowing contributions, targeted Sen. Marco Rubio in an effort to blunt the fellow Floridian’s momentum. But Bush was met with a swift counterpunch that raised new questions about his viability in the race where he was once considered the front-runner.
“Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you,” Rubio said. “My campaign is going to be about the future of America; it’s not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage.”
Other candidates trained their sights on the two surprise leaders of the campaign in the centre of the stage, Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Ohio Gov. John Kasich warned that voters were “on the verge of picking someone who can’t do this job.”
And Calgary-born Sen. Ted Cruz led a charge directed at the media, turning what was expected to be a discussion of economic issues into a battle of personalities that occasionally included the CNBC panellists.
“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said.
Such attacks aside, the fluid nature of the Republican race has placed additional importance on the televised forums for candidates trying to win over voters, even if some Republican strategists expected a decline in viewership; the debate was pitted against the second game of the World Series.
Polls show that voters are increasingly engaging in — and unsure about — the race. Only 28 percent of Republicans had made up their mind about which candidate they supported in a CBS News/ New York Times survey this week, down from 37 per cent a month earlier.
One of the most electric moments of a two-hour forum came when Bush turned to Rubio, an old protégé from Florida who has emerged as seemingly the strongest threat to Bush’s candidacy.
Under questioning from CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, Rubio brushed aside a home-state newspaper editorial that cited his frequent absence from the Senate and urged him to resign. Rubio said the newspaper did not criticize Democratic senators who ran for president and missed votes and called it an obvious sign of anti-conservative bias.
The partisan crowd cheered, then Bush leaped in. “I’m a constituent of the senator,” Bush said, turning to face Rubio, and “expected that he would do constituent service, which means that he show up to work.”
“Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term. … The Senate, what is it, like a French work-week?” Bush scoffed. “You get like three days where you have to show up? You can campaign. Or just resign and let someone else take the job.”
Rubio responded in a tone of more sorrow than anger. Despite Bush’s attack, he said, “I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Gov. Bush.”
Bush headed into Wednesday’s debate fresh off something of a campaign shake-up that aides say reflects the reality that the contest has not played out as his team expected. The campaign said at a recent meeting with donors that it would shift resources away from campaign headquarters and into the early nominating states in an effort to boost Bush’s standing.
In the poll released this week, Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, narrowly overtook Trump as the leading Republican candidate nationally with 26 per cent support to Trump’s 22 per cent, while several other recent polls in Iowa also showed Carson jumping out to a significant lead in the state.
But Carson’s ascendancy did not result in the kind of direct probing by moderators that some rival campaigns expected. Aside from an initial grilling over the feasibility of a flat tax proposal, Carson only faced glancing blows from moderators and Kasich.