9:49 PM: Shorter Rubio: We need to reach out to the world’s Muslims, building bridges, so our missionaries can bring them to Jesus.
9:53 PM: Trump seems to think that the Geneva Conventions etc are something that Congress passed.
9:58 PM: It’s almost sublime the levels of evil sliminess that Ted Cruz is able to achieve.
10:00 PM: I love how Marco Rubio, gentile doofus, is the arbiter of what constitutes “anti-Israel.”
10:02 PM: Hugh Hewitt is like one of those fastidious ideologue characters out of 1984 and other such mid-century totalitarian dystopian novels.
10:12 PM: A rare good moment for Rubio.
10:15 PM: Looks like civil Trump may be fraying a bit.
10:20 PM: This an amazingly disingenuous tirade of nonsense from Rubio on climate change. There’s some great, macabre joke to be made about this line about “government can’t pass a law to change the climate.” Amazing that somewhat is running for president can spout such a nonsense.
10:25 PM: Cruz seems to be relying on votes of millennials who were not alive in 1981.
10:26 PM: Trump knows he can really on the authoritarianism of his core supporters.
9:26 PM: Good Lord. No Dana, Social Security won’t “run out of money” in twenty years. Simply wrong. Terribly misleading. Totally irresponsible.
9:29 PM: There’s quite a lot of truth in what Trump is saying about federal contracting and bidding. But sort of terrifying to think of Trump bidding out military or social spending contracts.
9:30 PM: There’s our first tell: Trump just ignored Rubio’s attack.
9:30 PM: Cruz endorses Bush Social Security phase out plan. Awesome.
9:31 PM: Dana Bash basically trying to goad Trump into fights with Cruz and Rubio.
9:33 PM: This is becoming a taunt match. Like baiting a dog. Who can get Trump to pounce.
9:34 PM: “We’re all in this together.” … Trump is basically rubbing the civility into the faces of Rubio and Cruz at this point.
9:36 PM: My very early read here is that Trump and Cruz are doing well for themselves. Kasich and Rubio are dying. Trump is ahead. So he just needs to cruise and if possible start to soften his image. Cruz’s angle is not so much to attack Trump as to keep talking to the audience as a staunch conservative. There’s a big anti-Trump audience out there. He wants to get them. Kasich is doing fine but he doesn’t stand out as much against the backdrop of a calmer, more civil debate. Rubio can’t really be the calm guy or the attack dog. He’s done.
And here it is. As Ted Cruz gives his answer, Trump cracks out a coke and takes a swig in homage to classic Rubio flail. After the jump …
9:06 PM: Rubio’s not doing terribly but putting on the kind of performance that basically made it impossible for him to ever breakthrough. Tired mainline GOP talk from the last two decades, bland, with none of the anger or ideological force which is the coin of the realm this year.
9:09 PM: These foreign worker hiring out-source consultancies is a fascinating subject. I’m glad I learned about it from Rubio. But his campaign’s dying. He needs to talk about something besides an obscure point that doesn’t have real political traction in any way.
9:14 PM: Introducing new policy wonk Trump. (Almost a firmware upgrade.)
9:16 PM: Wait, did anyone see Trump crack that coke out from under the lectern while Ted was talking?
Former Jeb staffer, now spokesman for Anti-Trump group, imbibes the Trumpist mojo and goes in for inter-male height-shaming with CNN’s new official Trump surrogate (and former Apprentice contestant) Andy Dean.
Dean: “We are tough. We’re winning.”
Miller: “That’s why you’re sitting in a booster chair right now, because you want to seem tall and strong.”
8:42 PM: So the big line tonight is that Trump is going to try to ‘go presidential’, calm down the tone and start pivoting to the general. That makes sense. And it does seem like Trump will try to do that. I’m skeptical he’ll be able to do that. Kasich won’t pull a Rubio 3.0. That’s not his brand. Rubio will have a hard time given all the grief he’s been getting over the Rubio 3.0 debacle. But Cruz has lots of incentive to hit Trump hard – not on silly Rubio stuff but on red meat ideological orthodoxy. I tend to doubt Trump can resist the characterological drive to strike back.
8:47 PM: I guess Reince Priebus is not part of the #NeverTrump movement. (I’m among the half hour hostage of CNN like you are.)
You’ve no doubt seen the news of the Trump supporter who brutally sucker punched a protestor as he was led out of the arena at a Trump rally yesterday. Unlike other earlier incidents, 78 year old John McGraw, the puncher, has been charged with assault. But here’s the thing. TPM Reader MS points out that at least once in recent months, Trump has offered to pay the legal fees of supporters who roughed up protestors at his events.
Of all the weird political stories of the last 24 hours, this may be the weirdest, and it has nothing to do with Trump so far as I can tell.
You may have seen this quite sad but also quite revealing article in The Washington Post about the collapse of the Rubio campaign. It’s fascinating piece. But the central element of the story is that what Byron York aptly called Rubio’s post-South Carolina “personality transplant” (I prefer to think of it as a firmware upgrade) was the turning point of his campaign and what really did him in. The additional critical element, according to the WaPo piece, is that big GOP donors were aghast when they saw Rubio go on his multi-day tear of sophomoric insults against Donald Trump.
But I don’t buy that for a second.
Trump supporter charged with assault for sucker punching protestor at Trump rally.