The Republican debate this past Saturday in South Carolina began with a somber moment of silence in honor of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away earlier in the day. What transpired in the ensuing two hours was anything but somber: it was the most vicious cage match in this continuing reality show drama spawned by the bombastic front-running candidate, Donald Trump.
The death of Scalia has enormous implications on multiple levels. There will be controversy on the timing of the naming of his successor, there will be a significant impact on the politics of the presidential campaign, and also the question of what happens to the cases already heard and how the Court functions with only eight members. The death of Scalia is really of much broader significance than a single debate and I’ll have more thoughts in the coming days.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand, Saturday’s debate, which may turn out to be the most significant of the nine contests waged among the GOP presidential aspirants thus far. Just as his absence from the Iowa debate may have caused Trump to fall to 2nd place in the Iowa caucuses, the bombastic billionaire’s presence this Saturday may have dealt a blow to his standing in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday. Trump has had some debate moments that would knocked a normal politician out of the box but what he said two days ago was stunning out of the mouth of a Republican nominee for president.
Here’s an edited transcript (courtesy of The Washington Post), starting with a pointed question from CBS debate moderator John Dickerson. John Kasich and Marco Rubio were given the opportunity to weigh in on this key moment; I’ve included their responses as well:
JOHN DICKERSON: In 2008, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, talking about President George W. Bush’s conduct of the war, you said you were surprised that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t try to impeach him.You said, quote: “which personally I think would have been a wonderful thing…” Do you still believe President Bush should have been impeached?
DONALD TRUMP: Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake…. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.
DICKERSON: But so I’m going to — so you still think he should be impeached?
TRUMP: You do whatever you want. You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
(BOOING)
JEB BUSH: So here’s the deal. I’m sick ask tired of Barack Obama blaming my brother for all of the problems that he has had.
(APPLAUSE)
BUSH: And, frankly, I could care less about the insults that Donald Trump gives to me. It’s blood sport for him. He enjoys it. And I’m glad he’s happy about it… But I am sick and tired of him going after my family. My dad is the greatest man alive in my mind.
(APPLAUSE)
BUSH: And while Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that.
(BOOING)
TRUMP: That’s not keeping us safe.
BUSH: Look, I won the lottery when I was born 63 years ago, looked up, and I saw my mom. My mom is the strongest woman I know.
TRUMP: She should be running.
BUSH: This is not about my family or his family. This is about the South Carolina families that need someone to be a commander-in- chief that can lead. I’m that person.
DICKERSON: Governor Kasich, please weigh in.
JOHN KASICH: I’ve got to tell you, this is just crazy, huh?
(LAUGHTER)
KASICH: This is just nuts, OK? Jeez, oh, man. I’m sorry, John.
DICKERSON: Why is it nuts? Talk about it. Give us your sense of…
KASICH: Oh, well, listen, I think being in Iraq, look, we thought there were weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell, who is one of the most distinguished generals in modern time said there were weapons there.
DICKERSON: Thirty seconds, Senator Rubio.
MARCO RUBIO: I just want to say, at least on behalf of me and my family, I thank God all the time it was George W. Bush in the White House on 9/11 and not Al Gore.
(APPLAUSE)
And you can — I think you can look back in hindsight and say a couple of things, but he kept us safe. And not only did he keep us safe, but no matter what you want to say about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was in violation of U.N. resolutions, in open violation, and the world wouldn’t do anything about it, and George W. Bush enforced what the international community refused to do.
And again, he kept us safe, and I am forever grateful to what he did for this country.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center — the World — excuse me. I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe, Marco. That is not safe.
RUBIO: The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And George Bush– by the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn’t listen to the advice of his CIA.
OK, let’s digest this. It was not shocking that Trump reiterated his oft-stated position that he (and he alone among the current Republican candidates) was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. What was absolutely flabbergasting was that he took the most extreme left-wing position on the war in Iraq, “Bush Lied, People Died.” When he said, “they lied; they said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none, and they knew there were none,” my jaw nearly hit the floor. This is something you would expect from Michael Moore, not from the Republican front-runner for president.
Acknowledging that some of you reading this do believe that the Bush administration deliberately misled the United Nations, Congress and the American people, this is not what most Republicans believe. Most (like myself) believe it was a tragic mistake, an over-reaction to the 9-11 attacks based on faulty intelligence, reinforced by Saddam Hussein’s foolishly stubborn intransigence over allowing U.N. inspectors to verify that he didn’t have the WMDs that were the basis of war. But Trump was booed because he sounded like he should have been on stage with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Seven years after leaving office, George W. Bush’s image is mostly rehabilitated among Republicans throughout the nation and he is especially popular in South Carolina, with its a strong pro-military base of voters. The 43rd president has a 84% approval rating among Palmetto State Republicans.
In this race, Trump has defied all conventional wisdom, the Teflon Don has said and done multiple things that would have sunk anybody else into oblivion. He called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers and nobody cared. He said John McCain was not a war hero because “he was captured” and nobody cared. He mocked Carly Fiorina’s face and nobody cared. He vows to deport 12 million illegal immigrants and his supporters cheer. He claims he’ll get Mexico to pay for a wall on our southern border and his supporters cheer. He vows to put a universal ban on all Muslims entering the United States and his supporters cheer.
This is different. Taking the Muslim ban, for example, this is actually popular with more than 50% of Republican voters despite the fact that it’s insane and unenforceable. Republican voters are mad as hell about illegal immigration. His extreme positions separate him from the crowd. But to blame Bush for 9-11 and to say the war in Iraq was based on lies is fundamentally NOT a position shared by the vast majority of conservatives in the U.S. This line of attack has dominated the airwaves since he made it in a way that will drive voters away from him. Coming into Saturday’s debate, The Donald was riding high from his twenty-point win in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary and has held a nearly 20 point lead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in South Carolina taken since Tuesday. If this doesn’t knock him down a few pegs, maybe he really will have to shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue to cause his support to drop.
Here are my thoughts on the six participants and how the debate will help or hurt them in the next week. The % numbers next to each candidate indicate the results of a scientific poll taken immediately after the debate by CBS asking viewers who they felt won the debate
Marco Rubio (32%): after an awful momentum-stifling debate performance the previous week (when Chris Christie nailed him on delivering prepared 30 second speeches), the Florida Senator was spectacular this time. While Trump was on his “Bush Lied, People Died” rant, it was Rubio who most effectively came to the defense of the former president, an irony given that brother Jeb was also on stage.
Rubio also had a terrific moment when, defending his tax plan that includes an expanded child tax credit, turned what could have been a wonky explanation into a simple explanation that if company can write off a piece of equipment, families should be able to essentially “invest” and get a bigger write off in their family. But he magnificently positioned it not as a “handout” but as simply allowing families to keep more of their own money. He finished with the aspirational message that “I’m going to have a tax plan that is pro-family because the family is the most important institution in society. You cannot have a strong country without strong families.” My guess is that Rubio regains his Marco-mentum and starts to rise again in the national and Palmetto State polls. He will battle with Ted Cruz neck and neck to finish 2nd behind Trump.
Donald Trump (24%): the fact that The Donald ranked second in the “who won the debate” polls shows the potency of the Kool Aid that is being consumed by his supporters (with apologies to my friends among them). The billionaire real estate developer has a loyal and unwavering fan base. Still, on a national level, that support is between 30%-and-35% and he will have to grow it to at least over 40% in order to win enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination before the convention. It is inconceivable to me that Saturday’s debate will help in that quest. To me, the Bush-bashing only solidifies and unifies those who are against him.
One of the interesting complaints that Trump raised in this (and the previous) debates is that the booing he received was a result of the audience being stacked with lobbyists and donors. Reports on Breitbart confirm this to a certain extent but many of the donors are simply people who donated to the South Carolina Republican party and are not directly supporting any individual candidate.
I have a little experience on this topic. In October 2011, as a Las Vegas resident, I attended a CNN Republican debate featuring Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann. I was not a lobbyist or donor for any particular candidate but WAS a donor to the Nevada Republican party. That’s in essence how I got my ticket, by donating about $350 to the Nevada GOP. My sense of the audience was that there was not an over-sized presence supporting the “establishment” favorite Romney and that people were just people. The one exception is that the organizers offered discounted tickets to students at UNLV. I was sitting next to some of them and was impressed with how well informed they were and was not surprised that most of them supported the libertarian candidate Paul. Anyway, this is a different year, with strong anti-establishment candidates. If “business as usual” is to distribute tickets to state officials and party donors, it’s not surprising that the audience would be anti-Trump, who derives a significant amount of his base among those who were not previously interested in politics.
But here is another truth: even if the audience was stacked with 17% of Trump supporters (one-sixth for each of the six candidates), the other 83% would STILL be anti-Trump because he is the ultimate “love him or hate him” candidate. The reason this matters is that, once again, in a press conference today, Trump talked about the “deal” he made with the RNC and raised the specter of running as an Independent if he’s not “treated fairly.” Being treated fairly is something only The Donald can determine in his own brain but, not to fear, there is NO chance he will make good on that threat. An independent bid would be extraordinarily expensive and would almost certainly result in an embarrassing third place finish. Two things we’ve learned about Trump is that he doesn’t like to open his wallet unless he absolutely has to and he doesn’t like losing.
Trump is very likely to still win in the Palmetto State this Saturday but my guess is that the win will be much more narrow than the current polls indicate.
John Kasich (19%): the Ohio Governor followed up his solid 2nd place finish in New Hampshire with another excellent debate performance. South Carolina is a tough state for the man who is considered the most moderate of the GOP field but he’s clearly gotten a bump from New Hampshire. Where Kasich stood out last Saturday was in being positive, reasonable and for staying above the back-and-forth sniping that engulfed most of the other candidates. Of course, his biggest strength (the most likely to “get along”) remains his biggest weakness in the “blow everything up in Washington” environment that dominates both the GOP and the Democrats.
Ted Cruz (12%): there is a narrative starting to stick to the Texas Senator is the Pinocchio factor, that he will say anything to get elected, that he is in essence a liar. That harsh term (usually reserved for Hillary Clinton in Republican debates), was painted on him by both Trump and Rubio. The incident in Iowa, where Cruz campaign staffers told Iowa caucus-goers that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race, has not left him. Trump is pushing the narrative that Cruz “cheated” to win in the Hawkeye State by “stealing” thousands of votes from the good doctor. Still, Cruz remains well positioned in this race as the most popular non-Trump candidate among evangelical voters. South Carolina sets up well for him, he’s currently 2nd to Trump in the RCP average of polls. If Rubio passes him and Cruz finishes 3rd, that will be a warning sign going forward.
Dr. Ben Carson (8%): I’m not sure why he’s still in the race. As usual, the retired neurosurgeon disappeared for long stretches of time in the debate. His principal role seems to be the the on-stage aggrieved party in Trump’s attacks against Cruz for stealing Iowa. Carson is currently last in the South Carolina polls.
Jeb Bush (5%): in the accumulated wisdom of the pundits on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, a majority felt that this was Bush’s best debate. But the viewers surveyed put him solidly in last place. The irony is that, in my view, the blowup from Trump about George W. Bush will hurt Trump but won’t help Jeb. The optics of a 63-year old man talking about his father being the “greatest man alive” and asking his rival to stop criticizing his family just doesn’t look or sound good. It’s a no-win situation for Jeb. He has to defend his family but every time he does he reminds people once again that he would be a third Bush president in a year where voters clearly want something new.
South Carolina is a state where Bush must do well. His father and brother both won here and his brother is very popular in the state, so popular that he joined Jeb on the campaign trail for the first time today. I watched both W’s speech and Jeb’s thereafter. Both were really solid. But I don’t see how it moves the needle. Despite all the Super PAC money in the world, Jeb has managed just a 6th place finish in Iowa and a 4th place showing in New Hampshire (barely, by less than half a percentage point). Right now in the RCP average, Bush is in a statistical tie for 4th in South Carolina (with Kasich). Normally, one would say he needs to finish second or third to continue on, but there is all that money so he could keep muddying up the waters indefinitely. Still, with his brother on the campaign trail, if he can’t even beat Kasich and finishes 5th out of 6th, there will be a drumbeat for him to exit stage right.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Bodig