Bounty hunters on the trail of a fugitive wanted on drug charges raid the home of Phoenix Police Chief.
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.
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.
So it was Carly Fiorina who left her debate closing remarks on the hotel printer.
I think the debate highlight was that Rick Perry forgot how many years he was Governor of Texas.
Campaign forced to insist candidate said “Ronald Reagan” not “Ronald Raven”.
He’ll go far this year.
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.
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.
10:09 PM: Always interesting to see Huck somewhat pivoting against his opponents. Also, was he saying he’s going to get the pimps and prostitutes to pay taxes?
10:11 PM: I’m really not sure Chris Wallace wins this. We’re supposed to feel bad that people who invested in one of Trump’s companies lost their money when the business failed?
10:13 PM: I’d like to thank Time Warner Cable and their amazingly bad cable TV service for making it hard for the staff here to watch the debate for the last few minutes. I would like Donald Trump to buy TWC so he can drive it into bankruptcy so maybe we can get service from a different company.
10:28 PM: Okay, I think the last part of Trump’s answer about when he became a Republican was his first sour note. The abortion answer was reasonably okay as ridiculous answers go. But the ‘when I became a Republican’ answer was almost incomprehensible. I became a Republican because the last few months of W’s administration was terrible so I became a Republican? What?
10:30 PM: Again, Kasich just too normal a person to be on this stage.
10:40 PM: Frightening the amount of ignorance and nonsense coming from Ben Carson. Smallest Navy since 1917? As President Obama once said, there are these things called Aircraft Carrier Groups.
10:43 PM: Listening to these jokers talk about military and security policy is sobering as I get more pessimistic about the Democrats’ chances in 2016.
10:54 PM: Consensus Republican answer: God speaks to me all the time. But in fairly conventional ways.