One of the most important things for a candidate for any
office to maintain is message discipline. You cannot let others dominate the
conversation nor can you let others pull you off your platform and down into
talking about other, unrelated things. Through everything that happened last night m,
Donald Trump maintained shocking message discipline.
He managed to bring to bear all of his familiar and much
loved talking points “he’s small, he’s a loser, I’m really rich,” while
refusing to be knocked off his game by the facts. When Megyn Kelly showed clips
of him clearly contradicting himself, he blew it off. When shown that the
numbers for his proposals clearly did not add up, Trump maintained message
discipline, repeating his platform “build a wall,” “the polls are good.” When
confronted with the fact that Mitt Romney, the man who the party backed four
years ago does not support him, Donald Trump reverted to a major part of his
stump speech…screaming.
Marco Rubio had an ok night, although if I were a conspiracy
theorist I would say he and Ted Cruz were already collaborating-having gotten together
to stop the Donald. Both of them dancing around and punching Trump from the
back and front, but neither dropping out so they can continue to maul him on
the debate stage.
Rubio does indeed need to drop out soon, and will probably do
so before he faces the inevitable and embarrassing loss of his own home state
of Florida.
John Kasich was rather boring, sort of a cross between
Charlie Brown’s teacher and a white noise machine. I can’t imagine he will last
much longer, but he does seem determined to fight Donald Trump, whatever the
cost. If for no other reason than to keep Ohio away from Trump, Kasich seems
likely to stay in at least until then.
And then there was the winner of the debate, Ted Cruz. While
Rubio and Trump were arguing about the size of Trump’s hands, calling each
other “Little Marco” and “big Trump,” Cruz didn’t open his mouth; he just
stood, trying not to laugh. Instead of calling names he argued about policy,
while at the same time drawing a contrast between himself and two men who
cannot win, and one man who must not win.
Perhaps Cruz should not have said “count to ten” to Trump,
maybe he shouldn’t have encouraged him to breathe, although, to be fair,
perhaps Cruz was just concerned about him. But for all that, Cruz did manage do
a masterful job last night, and any team that put together such a debate
performance for their candidate can be very proud of themselves and of him.
A word on the moderators: Megyn Kelly handled Trump well,
while Bret Bair was alright. Chris Wallace had his moments, although there were
some questions he asked that could have been phrased better.
Last night it was Donald Trump vs. the world, and the world is going to win this thing.
Andrew C. Abbott
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