9:25 PM: Trump knows how to do this. Always go on offense. Ignore the question. Assertion. Aggression. And Jeb looks terribly weak.
9:27 PM: Every time Trump speaks, you can see the GOP paying a price for years of politics as a fact-free zone.
9:30 PM: I’m not sure Chris Wallace can really beat Donald Trump on this. Is he really going to have the rest of the questions be asking other candidates to say Trump didn’t answer his question?
9:39 PM: It may take a bully like Chris Christie to cut a fraud like Rand Paul down to size.
9:41 PM: Cruz is an aggressive, tendentious bullshit artist. But Trump just does it better.
9:43 PM: “A caliphate the size of Indiana.”
9:45 PM: Carson unwilling to answer the question because if he does the terrorists will win. Got it.
9:47 PM: So Trump thinks single payer works pretty well in Canada and Scotland and would have worked in a different era (here?), i.e., 2000? But he wants to get rid of state based insurance regulation and also institute something like Obamacare. But Obamacare is a disaster. And yet, answer seems to have gone over pretty well.
9:52 PM: I think what Ben Carson’s talking about is just a single tax rate.
So here we go.
9:04 PM: Okay, so Trump owns the debate. Won’t pledge to support the nominee. Tells host yes he understands. And still gets a big round of applause. Curious how it plays. But I thought he did well not equivocating, just no, won’t make that pledge. No.
9:07 PM: Is it just me or did Carson seem nervous?
9:09 PM: “Maybe the bar is even higher for me” – line that will haunt Jeb.
9:11 PM: So much of this from Trump is just insanely offensive. But he knows his audience … With his answer to the “PC” question, totally owning the debate. Again, knows the audience.
9:13 PM: Watching Cruz’s answers brings home just how bad Trump’s entry has been for him.
9:21 PM: As a reasonable person, Kasich seems out of place on the stage.
Campaign forced to insist candidate said “Ronald Reagan” not “Ronald Raven”.
He’ll go far this year.
I think the debate highlight was that Rick Perry forgot how many years he was Governor of Texas.
So it was Carly Fiorina who left her debate closing remarks on the hotel printer.
5:39 PM: This debate is an example of the structural problem Republicans have never leaving the Fox ecosystem. Questions along the lines of, what will you do when lying liberals say you’re heartless for slashing government programs.
6:06 PM: One of the attractions of watching a presidential debate is the knowledge that almost certainly one of the people on the stage will either be President or at least a major party nominee. The virtual certainly that no one on this stage will be either sort of drains the event of some of its juice.
6:12 PM: Everybody should sign up for Prime twice because half of our staff had to watch this debate. It’s probably taken a year off of each of our lives just through concentrated and lethal levels of boredom.
Okay, we’re here doing live coverage of the loser candidates who didn’t make the cut into the real debate.
5:07 PM: The painful subtext of every question, even from the Foxbot questioners, seems to be ‘You’re really unpopular and your campaign is a joke, why are you even running?’ Pretty hard to come back with a good answer on that.
5:09 PM: For the over 40 crowd, the debate stage here has a vague feeling of the 70s-era Love Boat. Vaguely entertaining, but mostly ‘Oh yeah, what ever happened to that guy.’ Yeah, I’m looking at you, George Pataki.
5:10 PM: Wow, question for Jim Gilmore is the most brutal yet. Basically “Jim Gilmore, why the F are you even running?” Not a bad question. Think I’m kidding? “You were the last person on stage to declare your candidacy. You ran for the White House once and lost. You ran for the senate one time and lost. You haven’t held public office in 13 years. Similar question, is it time for new blood?”
5:20 PM: If you’re not watching this debate you’re missing nothing. The crushing weight of the irrelevance of the candidates overwhelms every word.
5:24 PM: Main question of round two seems to be, “When are you going to crack down on American Muslims?”
5:35 PM: I’d had to reassure the TPM staffers covering this debate for us that from my years of experience, this debate is challenging for the sheer level of unremarkable banal stupidity. But we’re going to persevere.
5:38 PM: Foxbot host asks candidates how they will combat the epidemic of loaferism among Americans.
Bounty hunters on the trail of a fugitive wanted on drug charges raid the home of Phoenix Police Chief.
In 1965, future Senator and then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a seminal and notorious report on what he termed the pathologies of the black family, arguing that one solution was more service in the military for black men. A year later, the Johnson administration instituted “Project One Hundred Thousand.”