Wednesday’s GOP debate lacked much substance and seemed like an endless three-hour marathon, but it was entertaining with its one-liners, shouting matches and overall energy. So who won, who lost and what were some pivotal moments throughout the debate?
The three political outsiders did the best according to Independent Journal, with Carly Fiorina coming in first, then Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson rounding out the top three. Fiorina stood out by speaking forcefully on the deal with Iran and her military strategy, strongly went after Trump for his comment about her face and passionately argued against funding for Planned Parenthood, despite her substance not holding up to scrutiny.
Carson maintained a similar strategy to the first debate, where he really only spoke when spoken to and gave simple answers. He didn’t contribute anything noteworthy besides not tearing Trump apart on linking vaccines to autism, a total and dangerous falsehood which Carson said, “there have been numerous studies… and none of them shows a correlation between vaccines and autism.”
As usual, Trump got in a lot of fights with many candidates. Within the first minute of the debate, he delivered on of the final blows to Rand Paul’s campaign by saying “He shouldn’t be on this stage. He’s got one percent in the polls.” Later on, he talked about Scott Walker’s terrible record where he has embellished his economic success as Governor of Wisconsin and went toe-to-toe with Fiorina over their business records.
Along with the three winners, there were three major losers. Ted Cruz barely spoke and when he did, he was either speaking abstractly about conservative values or sucked up to Trump. Usually Cruz is able to generate headlines with crazy ideas, like the possibility of an upcoming government shutdown, but he was never able to spout something compelling from his rhetoric.
Rand Paul was an even bigger loser after this debate. He called Trump out on his childish insults of people’s appearances, to which Trump responded, “I never attacked him on his looks, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter there.” The rest of the night, Paul barely spoke and when he did, it was quite meekly. His strongest moment was when he challenged Chris Christie on allowing states to choose whether or not to legalize marijuana, but even though Paul was correct on the substance, Christie bullied him the entire exchange.
Neither of these candidates did as poorly as Scott Walker, who literally had a forgettable performance. Within the first half-hour he had a brief exchange with Trump over their records. Walker brought up Trump’s four bankruptcies, then Trump came back by claiming that Walker lost both money and jobs in Wisconsin. Clearly, Walker lost the exchange and said nothing of importance until the last half hour. I forgot he was even there for most of the night. Walker’s campaign is in dire straights right now with his numbers plummeting in Iowa, a state which he should win given its proximity to Wisconsin and that he used to live there.
There were two important exchanges that went beyond the pettiness and had real substance. Both included Donald Trump and surprisingly, he spoke the truth on both issues.
The first was one of the many exchanges between himself and Carly Fiorina. Both candidates are running on their business acumen and they were asked why they thought they were more qualified than the other. Most in the business community acknowledge that Fiorina had a horrible tenure as the CEO of Hewlett Packard. Often throughout the campaign she has stated that “we doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its top line growth, we quadrupled its cash flow, (and) we tripled its rate of innovation.” Trump was correct in asserting that most of this growth happened because HP bought Compaq. The truth is, during Fiorina’s tenure, the company’s stock went down 55 percent. Towards the end of the exchange, she said, “the man that lead my firing, Tom Perkins, took out a full page ad in The New York Times saying he was wrong, I was right.” It turns out that ad was bought by a pro Fiorina Super-PAC.
Trump also claimed that Jeb Bush was beholden to special interests because Bush raised over $100 million before announcing his candidacy, while Trump is self funding. Bush argued that he’s “not beholden to anybody,” but politicians often give special concessions to their donors all the time. It’s hard to believe that a candidate, one who a lot of people still don’t know what he stands for, can’t be swayed for a subsidy or a lenient regulation for some money.
Although there won’t be many lasting ramifications from this debate, Fiorina cemented herself as part of the top tier of candidates. Some of the lower-tier candidates, like Rand Paul and certainly all those in the early debate are in danger of dropping out of the race. Scott Walker was reeling going into this debate and his performance will not help him regain ground in Iowa. Middle tier candidates like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and John Kasich should become more aggressive in gaining ground over the upcoming weeks.
