Republican candidates face off
24 million watch first debate
CLEVELAND — “It’s over!” exclaimed Megyn Kelly at 11:03 p.m., just slightly more than two hours after the Fox News prime time debate in Cleveland, bringing to a close an event that John Weaver, the chief strategist for John Kasich, compared in terms of media anticipation to the chariot race in Ben Hur.
The debate was not quite that spectacular, but it was certainly a wild ride. There will be acres of analysis of the inaugural debate in the days to come, but herewith are the big take-aways from the Quicken Loans Arena:
1. Donald Trump can draw a crowd.
Sure there were nine other people on stage but do you really doubt that many tuned in just to see the Donald? An estimated 24 million people watched Fox News Channel’s prime-time debate with the top 10 Republican presidential candidates, the highest-rated broadcast in the network’s history. Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes defended his moderators, calling it “the best political debate team ever put on television.”
2. Donald Trump was Donald Trump — and that was a problem.
From the very first question, regarding the candidates’ willingness to forswear launching an independent bid for president, Trump was at the centre of the action. (The explanation he coughed for his refusal to take that pledge was a combination of word salad and verbal hash.) His answers from then on provided fuel for Trump skeptics, from his suggestion single-payer health care might at one point have worked in the United States to his reply to Megyn Kelly’s tough-as-nails question about his verbal abuse of women (“Only Rosie O’Donnell”). Whether these and other answers — including his tacit endorsement of pay to play, coupled with the suggestion his campaign donations to Hillary Clinton bought her attendance at his wedding — will dent Trump’s support with his core supporters remains to be seen.
3. Jeb Bush did nothing to reclaim the frontrunner’s mantle.
He made no errors, committed no gaffes and, contrary to some predictions, wasn’t turned into a pinata by his rivals. But aside from a strong and confident answer on Common Core, he was wooden and halting, and rarely commanding, or inspiring. Former senior Obama White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, “The front-runner should be better, much better. If his name wasn’t Bush, he would be done.”
4. The night’s big winners were John Kasich, Marco Rubio — and Carly Fiorina
Sure, the Ohio governor was playing before a friendly, home-state crowd. But he made the most of every opportunity he had in the spotlight, coming across as authentic and charismatic. Though Rubio occasionally sounded a bit too much the senator, his answers were smooth, smart, and convincing, presenting conservative policies compellingly and his biography affectingly. As for Fiorina, she was, of course, not on the prime time stage, but her performance in the undercard debate was so strong that Fox News chose to present a video clip of it to the top 10. The clip made clear how much her presence was missed, and led to rapidly forming consensus that she should be in prime time next time.
5. The big losers were Ben Carson and Rand Paul — for different reasons.
The Carson phenomenon has always been a difficult thing to parse. His biography is a big part of it, to be sure, and so his appeal as an outsider. But every time the good doctor opened his mouth, the energy level on stage plummeted; his affect was less appealingly lowkey than somnolent. Paul, by contrast, was full of life, but his irritability and thinskinnedness were on display and even when Paul wasn’t visibly annoyed, he seemed screechy and off-key.