The GOP Debate: Without Trump, a Serious Discussion

By Anika Smith Published on January 29, 2016

Without the frontrunner, tonight’s Republican debate centered on rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — currently running second and third in Iowa and in the national polls. Both got nearly three times as many chances to speak as Carson and Kasich. In a surprise move, debate moderator Megyn Kelly hit both senators with video montages that amounted to attack ads on immigration.

Rubio v. Cruz, and also v. Bush

Rubio was first up, with a montage of clips where he said that he would never support amnesty for illegal immigrants. Kelly aggressively questioned him on his immigration bill from 2013, asking, “Haven’t you already proven that you can’t be trusted on this issue?” Rubio defended his position. “No, No, because if you look at the quote, and it’s very specific. And, it says blanket amnesty, I do not support blanket amnesty.”

Bush was asked for his take on Rubio’s stance and explained his confusion. “He led the charge to finally fix this immigration problem that has existed now for, as Marco says, for 30 years. And then he cut and run because it wasn’t popular amongst conservatives, I guess.”

From there it quickly devolved to a tu quoque:

“You changed your position!” Rubio said to Bush.

“Yeah, but so did you, Marco,” Bush responded.

Next up was Ted Cruz, who was faced with video clips where he appeared to support a comprehensive immigration bill, as long as it included his proposed amendment to eliminate the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. “Was that all an act? It’s pretty convincing,” Kelly said.

“The bill was 1,000 pages,” Cruz said. “The fact that each amendment didn’t fix every problem didn’t mean that I supported the rest of the bill.”

Rubio v. Paul

In a moment that should have been longer, senators Rubio and Paul managed to raise their differences on issues of civil liberties and how to conduct the war on terror. “Rand and I have some significant issues on policy, but I respect Rand,” Rubio said. “But I want to be frank about what I stand for. I believe the world is a safer and a better place when America is the strongest power in the world. And I believe only with a strong America will we defeat this radical group, this apocalyptic group called ISIS.”

“The bulk collection of your phone data, the invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack,” Paul responded. “I don’t think you have to give up your liberty for a false sense of security.”

Paul benefited from being back on the main stage, after having skipped the last undercard debate, fielding a question from a Youtube technology reviewer who asked a question about Ferguson and body cameras. After noting his support for requiring police to wear body cameras, he extolled his record on criminal justice reform. “In Ferguson, for every 100 African American women, there are only 60 African American men,” Paul explained. “Drug use is about equal between white and black, but our prisons — three out of four people in prison are black or brown. I think something has to change.”

All of Them v. Hillary

The candidates fielded questions from the Fox News moderators directed at their greatest weaknesses.

Cruz was asked about his personality and whether it would be a liability to him as president. Cruz used the opportunity to remind voters that he is “not the candidate of career politicians in Washington.” He added: “The endorsements that I’m proud of are conservative leaders like Dr. James Dobson, and over 700,000 contributions nationwide.”

Kelly told Bush that polls show him doing the worst against Hillary in a head-to-head contest, but that his campaign is investing ad money in going after Republicans, particularly Rubio. “Do these attacks do more harm than good by targeting those candidates who appear to have the best chance of defeating Mrs. Clinton?”

Bush responded by saying he’s seen polls where he beats Clinton, and that he has the best record. “And this is beanbag compared to what the Clinton hit machine is going to do to the Republican nominee.”

Brett Baier brought up the TIME cover story that called Rubio “the Republican Savior” and contrasted it with Rubio’s current standing in the polls. “Let me be clear about one thing,” Rubio began. “There’s only one savior and it’s not me. It’s Jesus Christ who came down to earth and died for our sins.”

He reminded Iowans that they will be “the first Americans to answer the question of what comes next for this country after seven disastrous years of Barack Obama?” He offered a surprise answer: “And let me tell you what the answer better not be. It better not be Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. I think Bernie Sanders is good candidate for president of Sweden. We don’t want to be Sweden. We want to be the United States of America.”

Chris Christie promised that “there is no one on this stage better prepared to prosecute the case against Hillary Clinton than I am. She will never get within 10 miles of the White House. The days for the Clintons in public housing are over,” Christie said, in one of the better laugh lines of the night.”

Paul was asked to explain his stance on abortion to evangelicals. “I think abortion is always wrong,” he said. Roe v. Wade nationalized the issue, he explained, “But I’ve also said for the most part, these issues would be left back to the states. … The less abortions we have, so the more states that we have that made abortion illegal, the better, as far as trying to save and preserve lives.”

And in a statement that took some courage to make in Iowa, Cruz defended his stance against the ethanol subsidies that support the corn industry. “I don’t believe that Washington should be picking winners and losers. And, I think there should be no mandates, and no subsidies whatsoever,” he said. “I have introduced legislation that would phase out the ethanol mandate over five years, but that is in the context of having no mandates whatsoever for anyone.”

Without Trump there, the debate was, to no one’s surprise, more substantive. But still, Americans weren’t forgetting the frontrunner. According to FiveThirtyEight, through the first eighty minutes of the debate, “Trump” was searched on the web more than all the other candidates combined.

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