I think this is right, note-for-note, from @charlescwcooke pic.twitter.com/TgUtYtZFmc
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) November 11, 2015
Very Serious Person / Media Village Idiot consensus seems to be that the “winners” at last night’s debate were Marco “Since Jeb’s Just Not Cutting It” Rubio and Ted “Republic of Gilead” Cruz. Cynic that I am, I still can’t see the Repub voters currently cheering Trump’s YUUUUGE VERY CLASSY deportation fantasies happily pulling the lever for either one of those two. So my working theory is that the RNC has decided to distract the rubes with some heavily hyped Cuban-American-on-Cuban-American action before the real candidates get rolled out after the Iowa caucuses; after all, both of these guys are Palin-hungry for some easy RNC money and a brand upgrade for their grifting tours, and both are young enough to run again in the future once they’re sidelined/given the veep slot in 2016. Feel free to argue, though!
Marco Rubio reminds me of many politicians I've known. Ted Cruz reminds me of many warlords I've known.
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) November 11, 2015
Slate, immediately after last night’s debate:
Unlike the past two Republican prime-time debates, there was no clear winner on the Fox Business stage Tuesday night. Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, though, appeared to do the most to help themselves at a time when a chaotic nomination race is starting to slowly come into focus.
The two were poised and confident throughout the night, inserting themselves into the conversation when it served them and playing it safe when it didn’t. Rubio arrived in Milwaukee as many pundits and politicos’ favorite for the GOP nomination, and he’ll leave that way too. Cruz, meanwhile, stood out at a time when his slow-but-steady strategy is beginning to take hold…
The two men lived up to their reputations as the smoothest orators in the GOP field, but neither was perfect on Tuesday. While rattling off the five federal agencies he’d like to cut, Cruz needed to list the same one twice to make his self-imposed quota. “The IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and HUD,” he said. (He blanked on the Department of Education.) Fortunately for him, though, the moderators moved on before he could go full Rick Perry. Rubio’s biggest misstep, meanwhile, came after a lengthy windup about the importance of being a good parent that ended with a distinctly different P-word. “The most important job any of us will [have],” he said, “is the job of being a president.”…
Who won last night? Rubio, according to 38% of @politico GOP insiders followed by Bush & Fiorina (12%) and Paul (8%) https://t.co/egmTqC4Fwq
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 11, 2015
That only 6% chose Cruz (fewer than Fiorina, Bush or Rand) says a lot about the sample group here https://t.co/PnHa9fOhYV
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) November 11, 2015
The Politico story in question:
… “Energy,” said an Iowa Republican of Rubio. “He wants the job.”
“By every measure Marco Rubio won the [night],” a New Hampshire Republican said. “Strong and informed on every issue, inspirational, presidential. He actually moved the ball down the field.”
Added a Nevada Republican, Rubio “gave a compelling vision for a hopeful future contrasting his youthful vision to a tired “older” take on the country epitomized by Hillary.”
For the second Republican debate in a row, the POLITICO Caucus named the Florida senator the biggest winner of the night, noting his vigorous defense of a muscular American foreign policy — one of the biggest applause lines of the evening — and forceful remarks concerning Wall Street as evidence of a strong and articulate candidate.
Forty-two percent of Democrats also agreed that Rubio won the night…
They do, however, note that “Ted Cruz impressed nonpartisan Caucus members. The Texas senator was ‘always focused, on message,’ according to one.”
Keep an eye on Cruz. He’s going to last quite a while in the primary process. He’s good at this.
— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) November 11, 2015
if we figure out a way to convert sanctimony to energy we can run our entire country on ted cruz forever
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) November 11, 2015
The NYTimes, attempting to stay above the fray:
… In the most substantive Republican debate so far, Mr. Kasich and Mr. Bush, who have been fading in polls, presented themselves as experienced chief executives who had practical solutions to deal with national challenges like immigration. Yet Mr. Trump and another candidate, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, inveighed against what they called amnesty and argued that undocumented workers were driving down Americans’ wages.
The splintering over immigration, in a campaign dominated so far by the personas, speeches and backgrounds of the candidates, illuminated the brightest dividing line between Republican hopefuls like Mr. Bush and Mr. Kasich, who favor a comprehensive immigration overhaul, and the many primary voters who have embraced Mr. Trump’s harsh language about immigrants in the country illegally…
Mr. Rubio was not only able to avoid being drawn into the contentious immigration debate, but also repeatedly received questions that allowed him to answer with versions of his stump speech. Even he seemed unable to believe his good fortune when he was asked to make his case against Mrs. Clinton. He chuckled for a moment before unspooling a well-rehearsed argument: why he can prosecute a “generational” case against her.
“If I am the nominee, they will be the party of the past, and we will be the party of the 21st century,” said Mr. Rubio, 44…
The Times also gave Rubio and Cruz top billing on their “Highlights / Scorecard” page.
Reaching out to a lot of my evangelical friends. All my Carson leaning friends are talking about Rubio.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) November 11, 2015
fox turning the machine behind rubio i believe
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) November 11, 2015
The Economist, “Marco Rubio rises above the rest in Milwaukee“:
… The prize for the wackiest economic ideas probably goes to Mr Cruz, however gifted his rhetoric. He said he would let the Bank of America fail in case of another financial crisis and argued for a return to the gold standard. Mr Cruz also wants to close down the IRS as well as several federal departments. He wants so badly to put paid to the Department of Commerce that he mentioned it twice on his hit list.
The evening’s likeliest winner was the 44-year-old Mr Rubio, who was yet again confident and articulate and made a good case for a generational change. He was spared any questions about his shaky finances and the use of a GOP credit card for personal expenses. And Mr Bush, wisely, decided not to go after him with another aggressive attack (his attempt at putting down his former protégé had failed disastrously in Colorado). Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is said to be furiously researching Mr Rubio’s weaknesses…
Ted Cruz is great at debating, Marco Rubio is great at giving memorized speeches at debates, and Ben Carson is great at smiling
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) November 11, 2015
Still holding out hope that Camacho jumps into this primary pic.twitter.com/LONbiKRVK8
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) November 11, 2015
Corner Stone
Shut up, Hitlery lover.
redshirt
I reckon Baud won.
Corner Stone
Carly is just awful. Every single time I see her answer it makes me wonder.
Jeffro
Erick Erickson is lying…all of his Carson-leaning friends, assuming he has any (friends that is) are leaning Cruz.
jl
@redshirt:
” I reckon Baud won. ”
Baud didn’t say squat last night, just sat there. If Baud won, like Rubio, it was his weakest performance yet, and only because everyone else did worse. Which is an outcome in a GOP debate that I like. It looks promising.
And Slate is wrong, chaos always looks the same, no matter the focus. Which is what the GOP primary is looking like to me.
Omnes Omnibus
Dear god, AL figured out the giant tweet method on the new site.
gratuitous
So, was Politico’s “Who won the night” poll taken before or after the forum? Does it matter?
Ziggurat
Meanwhile, Google Consumer Surveys poll says that Trump won.
Of course he’s a joke. But what the twitterer with the pretentious armful of initials doesn’t realize is that he’s winning because he’s a joke, not in spite of it.
Villago Delenda Est
Anyone running for President who seriously believes we should return to the gold standard should be taken behind the stage and shot.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: Tweets are easier to replace, if the godsdamned site drops out at a crucial point.
And after the other front-pagers had the good sense to go do something other than finding entertainment for you ingrates, too.
Anthony
@Villago Delenda Est: It kind of fucks up the budget projections for your tax plan, if your monetary policy would destroy the economy, doesn’t it? Everyone seems so confident that they’re lying that no one even bothers to point out that it’s insane.
Mike in NC
Rubio is the new Pawlenty. Both tower above the rest at about 5′ 6″.
beltane
@gratuitous: Last time around it was Fiorina who was the predetermined winner. Since she received no real momentum from this, they’ve had to move on to someone else.
beltane
Baud won the debate by not attending the debate.
jl
@beltane:
” Baud won the debate by not attending the debate. ”
But, isn’t that cheating? You calling Baud a cheater?
Felonius Monk
@redshirt:
Baud didn’t even have to be there to win.
Frankensteinbeck
Let the fisking begin!
We got over that before the first debate. Otherwise, yeah, good summary.
‘Starting’ is doing a whole lot of work there.
Rubio’s reputation is for being an awkward speaker who looked like an idiot trying to follow Obama . This is the best they’ve got, folks.
The superficiality of the GOP is staggering. They heard Obama had a youth appeal, and they think they can copy that by running a relatively young candidate, and… that’s it. A desperate attempt to copy the most two-dimensional interpretation of someone else’s successful strategy.
‘Most’ is doing an incredible amount of work in that sentence.
That language was ‘rapists and murderers.’ Is it really that hard to use the word ‘racism’?
They’re doomed. The Republican Party has no concept that they’re holding the debate version of t-ball, where Hillary and Bernie have been winning in the big leagues.
beltane
@jl: I’m calling him the political genius of our generation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I wasn’t complaining, just expressing surprise. :P
beltane
@efgoldman: Didn’t Pawlenty run in 2008? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Republicans had a much stronger field then. They were expecting Pawlenty to be McCain’s VP pick, but Sarah Pawlenty was chosen instead.
jl
@beltane: And I only praise Baud with strong damns.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: If it’s Rubio v. Clinton in the general look for the debates to look like Handsome Joe and the Granny Starver’s session.
beltane
Rubio has a really dumb (to normal people) ad playing in NH. He says that if the US leaves the Middle East there will be a “space”, and “Someone else will fill that space.” That “someone else” will be a country with a state controlled economy. If we militarily disengage from the Middle East the Soviet Union is so going to swoop in and implement Five Year Plans in Iraq, maybe even collectivize the peasantry.
BillinGlendaleCA
@beltane:
I think it was 2012.
beltane
@BillinGlendaleCA: Pawlenty is a forgettable guy.
Calouste
How much is the opinion of GOP insiders worth when poll after poll shows that more than 50% of the GOP voters want an outsider.
Redshift
Rubio having a “youthful vision” is this election’s version of “Palin will appeal to women.” Having a 44-year-old guy espousing 19th-Century policies that are anathema to most younger people while claiming to be a “new generation” isn’t going to fool anyone outside of the right wing bubble.
beltane
@efgoldman: Yeah, once the Republican base got a taste of red meat, they were never going back to the processed chicken nuggets the Republican establishment wants to serve them.
mai naem mobile
@beltane: Pawlenty ran in ’12. Remember he schlubbed around for Mitman and he didn’t even get interviewed for Veep and he got himself lobbying gig right away.
mclaren
If you think of the Republican candidates as masked Mexican wrestlers, it suddenly all makes sense.
BillinGlendaleCA
@beltane: I was thinking of adding that nobody noticed. 2008 had (Da-Dun) Fred Thompson.
mclaren
@beltane:
Yes, but smell isn’t everything.
Suzanne
My boss, who is a nice dude but crazy right, thinks that all of “the Hispanics” will loooove to vote for Cruz or Rubio. He also thinks that black people voted for Obama because he’s black. I said, “No, they voted for Obama because THEY are black, and Obama is forwarding their interests.” He said that he expected me to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. I said, “By that logic, I would have voted for Michele Bachmann. I can assure you that that did not happen.”
smintheus
And yet Trump argued that Americans’ wages have to go down.
BillinGlendaleCA
Trump’s ‘deport them all’ won’t hurt him, but ‘everybody needs to make lower wages’ will.
beltane
@BillinGlendaleCA: It’s hard to believe Fred Thompson was only in his mid-sixties back then. He looked older than his age, a quality which the Beltway media claimed was attractive to women. Maybe if he was wheelchair bound and drooling he would have won.
mclaren
@Anthony:
We won’t need taxes. The Republicans will shut down the IRS. Under a Republican president, the U.S. economy will operate using magic pony rainbow sparkle dust.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: that sounds like the Reagan vs. Mondale “bear in the woods” ad. “Some people don’t see the bear,” or something like that…
lamh36
Good night BJ. Earlier schedule means I can’t stay up late. So I’m off to bed.
Saw on twitter, that tonight was the last day of filming for the last season of Mythbusters on Discovery. If you are a fan of the show, then you can imagine Adam will cry a little, but Jaimie will probably be like… I’m Out This Bitch
Thoughtful David
@Suzanne:
I slightly disagree: they voted for Obama because they are black and because he’s not antithetical to their interests.
beltane
@FlipYrWhig: Given the age of the average Republican primary voter, it might be an effective ad. It’s not like any of these people realize the bear’s been dead for twenty-five years. To anyone under the age of 60, the ad makes no sense at all. My husband is what we politely call a low-information voter. The first time he saw that Rubio ad he turned to me and said “What kind of [insert R-word] bullshit is that?”
JPL
@jl: Some say he’s a liar and a cheater. Not me though.
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agreed with everything up to here. Doomed in presidential elections, but still holding the House after 2016, as well as 35 or so states with one party dominance.
I would not mind the Democrats being that doomed.
srv
@Suzanne: You probably don’t look at Sarah as being a real woman.
Duane
mclaren
@efgoldman:
This illuminates the central burning issue of this election. Ladies and gentlemen, are you in favor of unicorns? Or magic ponies?
The fate of our nation rests on your answer.
srv
Missouri students have had enough of the crackers
NotMax
@mclaren
#EquineFantasiesMatter
groucho48
I thought Cruz did the best at feeding the base short, concise, angry and totally false talking points. Rubio might appeal to older Republican women. To me he comes across as an earnest kid who memorized a few speeches for communications class and can deliver them fairly effectively whether they pertain to the question asked or not. I don’t think any of the others got any positive momentum from the debate. In fact, Bush should drop out of future debates and focus on shaking hands and hugging babies for a few months. That way, he’ll only turn off small groups of voters with his persona and it’ll be easier for the media to make up stories about how well his policies are being received in the heartland.
Kay
I think so many candidates will end up hurting the eventual GOP nominee. If there were fewer candidates the one or two who actually have a shot would get a lot more scrutiny and practice on a national stage. 15 candidates helps none of them. They’re getting 7 or 8 minutes and none of them are addressing the full range of issues they’ll have to deal with when they’re the nominee. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is getting huge chunks of time to flesh out and refine everything under the sun, and she’s also dealing with 15 Republicans attacking her at the same time. She’s dealing well with 15 Republicans attacking her at the same time, after what was a shaky start. She’s getting stronger, not weaker.
By the time they pick their nominee Clinton will have been taking daily intense scrutiny for a year and all of a sudden Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Donald Trump will be out there all alone.
Another Holocene Human
@Suzanne:
Brilliant comeback. I guess your boss is nice. I’ve worked with a lot of GOPers who can’t tolerate anyone contradicting what they’ve regurgitated from yesterday’s Hannity.
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: Sparkle dust sounds like a serious fire hazard.
Too bad they laid off the fire dep’t.
Another Holocene Human
@Thoughtful David: Maybe if you’re Cornel West that’s the case (none more lefty–none!) but I invite you to check out blogs like Pragmatic Obots Unit, Please Cut The Crap, The New Civil Rights Project and do read the comments.
Sherparick
I expect the Village political press and their BFF in the establishment Republican Party are going to be all :-( come this weekend as it turns out that Trump, Carson, and Cruz, and not their new heartthrob Rubio got the biggest jump in the polls. Trump got a chance to really give the Base a real thrill with is Mass Deportation talk and bringing back “Operation Wetback.” I do see Faux News and certain right wing hacks (Eric “the Voice of Gated Community America” Erickson) trying to pimp Rubio. But other right-wing talkers, more interested in their own grift (and realizing that for them a Hilary Clinton Presidency would be a gig as good as the Obama Presidency has been) like Laura Ingraham an Rush, are likely to point out repeatedly want a RHINO Rubio is on immigration (not helped when Rubio spent yesterday morning dodging and weaving around the question of whether he would support Trump’s idea of a “Deportation Corp.” ).
Sherparick
Gail Collins, who bears many sins for NY Times coverage of politics of the late nineties and early Oughts, apparently has learned something about Republicans. From her column today:
“…Many experts seem to think Cruz and Rubio did well, which I guess they did if you like illogical economic programs and totally terrifying views on foreign affairs….” Apparently, Village media thinks Rubio is just dandy because “He Is Going To Lead against Syria and Iran, buy leading and Being Strong” which either means saying lots of nasty things to Iran, China, and Russia, while not negotiating with them on anything, but not really doing anything about their policies.