The third GOP presidential debate, hosted by CNBC, was a debate plagued by “gotcha” questions, angry candidates, lack of substance, and flat out lies. This debate was supposed to be a platform for many candidates to change the direction of their campaigns. Most notably, Jeb Bush looked to turn around his floundering campaign as he is polling in the single digits after being an early favorite for the nomination. Marco Rubio was looking for his breakout moment to try and propel himself into the top tier of candidates that is currently dominated by candidates without a political background. Finally, this debate would be a test of how Donald Trump performs from behind as he finds himself in second behind Dr. Ben Carson in Iowa and in one national poll. However disappointing this debate may have been compared to expectations, there are many lessons to be learned about the field.
It pains me when candidates running for the highest office in the country try to lie their way to victory. The message for majority of this campaign season has been focused on how it’s hard to trust politics and how Washington has failed the people. If these candidates cared so much about honesty and are trying to restore trust to politics, they failed. Maybe dishonesty is only a problem when someone of the other party controls the office. First I will look at the case of Chris Christie talking about the “socialist” Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. It’s important to note that even though the word was thrown around too many times to count, neither Sanders, Clinton, or President Obama are socialists. There is a difference between a socialist and a DEMOCRATIC socialist but for political expediency they seem to ignore that. Sanders has noted this difference time and time again, but the right apparently know his views better than he does. Aside from misidentifying Senator Sanders, Christie cited that under Sanders we would pay 90% in taxes. This is a number that has been brought up before and also proven to be false, but yet Christie still used the number. Why? Probably to strike fear into people because I for one sure don’t want to pay 90% taxes. Next, the moderator asked Donald Trump about him calling Marco Rubio Mark Zuckerberg’s “personal senator” in relation to his position on H-1B visas. Trump refuted calling Senator Rubio this and then attacked the moderator and told him he needs to do better fact checking. In fact, Trump’s own campaign site used those exact words so Trump should be the one doing better fact checking and also be aware of the content of his own site. Carly Fiorina, who is currently polling at or around third in most polls, went after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s jobs policies saying that they were demonstratively bad for women. Fiorina then went on to assert that 92% of the jobs lost during President Obama’s first term belonged to women. This statement was just flat out false. In fact, the number of women with jobs actually increased by 416,000 during Obama’s first term. I urge everyone who watches these debates to pay careful attention to fact checking sites such as politifact.com. I personally went there after the debate was over to see how much of the truth we were getting from these candidates who were running to restore trust to Washington. I found it very troubling that four of the ten candidates on stage had two or fewer true statements throughout the entire debate. What kind of message does that send? Either these candidates are okay with lying to the people they hope to lead, or they believe that the American people will take their statements as truth which sadly is what happens majority of the time. I won’t discuss the full fact checking results, but I urge everyone to take a look at them here.
Next, I’d like to talk about the alleged mistreatment of the candidates by the CNBC moderators. If you watched the debate I don’t believe it is any secret that some of the questions were a bit out there and didn’t necessarily cover substance pertinent to the problems we are looking to fix in our country. Before the debate even started, Donald Trump voiced his opinion that the debate would be unfair and I believe that prejudgment by him and other candidates may have affected how they viewed the questions. NBC networks have a reputation of being a left-leaning news outlet. However, I don’t believe that the moderators were “left-wing operatives” as suggested by Ted Cruz as he called for all future moderators of GOP debates to be conservative. I don’t believe the questions were intentionally set out to belittle the candidates but I do believe that the questions could have been articulated better. When the question was asked if Donald Trump’s campaign was like a comic book, I believe it would have been better to ask if Donald Trump considered himself a serious candidate as many have deemed his campaign a publicity stunt as he has acted more like a reality television star than someone running to be president. With that being said, I think it’s important to note that if you’re running to be president not everyone is going to be nice to you. With repetitive bashes against the current president I felt that the current GOP field would understand that. I don’t want my president to complain because someone isn’t nice to them, just roll with the punches. A key trait needed to be president is thick skin which didn’t appear to be a characteristic many of those on stage possessed. John Kasich after the debate said that he didn’t feel that anything was below the belt which I agreed with. I felt that questions could have been framed better and more questions dealing with substantive issues could have been asked as said by Ted Cruz but I do think that the candidates were too harsh on the moderators.
As previously stated, this debate served as a platform for candidates to possibly break out from the pack or to reestablish themselves as serious candidates. The former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, has severely underperformed compared to expectations and this debate was seen by many as one of his final chances to establish himself above the other candidates. To do so, Bush challenged his fellow Floridian, Senator Marco Rubio, head on about his excessive absentees from the Senate during his campaign. Rubio capitalized on this moment and challenged Bush directly citing that Bush supported John McCain even though he was also absent from Senate votes and has tried to model his campaign after his and that the only reason Bush had a problem with Rubio missing votes is that they were running for the same office. Rubio undoubtedly won the exchange which contributed to his strong performance in the debate that many, including myself, believe he won. A big question looming over the debate was how would Donald Trump deal with his poll numbers dipping slightly behind Dr. Ben Carson in Iowa and also in a national poll. Although Trump registered only 15 mostly true or half true comments, no true comments, and 44 comments that were considered mostly false or worse, I enjoyed the calmer demeanor that Trump brought to this debate compared to past ones. His actions more closely mirrored a serious presidential candidate and his responses, whether true or not, seemed better articulated and thought out compared to his previous responses that seemed that they were given on the fly and without second thought. I also think it’s worth noting that in the early debate, Lindsey Graham performed exceptionally well and may have debated his way to the main debate stage with his strong performance with regard to foreign policy. That could prove to be very interesting as many of the candidates on the main stage seem to struggle with foreign policy.
I look forward to seeing the progression of all of the campaigns going forward after this debate as well as how poll numbers may change. Hopefully, minus the complaining and extensive bashing of the left, we see more of the field focusing on substantive issues rather than attacks on each other. It will also be interesting to see whether or not any of the candidates decide to drop out or make any significant changes as a result of this debate.
