CBS Republican Debate: Live Coverage

Commercial break lightning round! We now have just six candidates on this stage — which departed candidate do you miss most?

Yes, I would think that expanding Medicaid may hurt Kasich in this primary. A 2014 YouGov poll found that just 35 percent of Republicans were for expanding Medicaid. On the other hand, 55 percent of Republicans were opposed.

John Kasich, who ran explicitly as a moderate in New Hampshire and who is defending his expansion of Medicaid tonight, is not a terribly natural fit for South Carolina. But with an open primary, the state’s electorate isn’t quite as conservative as you might think. In 2012, 32 percent of Republican voters in South Carolina identified as moderate or liberal, placing it exactly halfway in between Iowa (17 percent) and New Hampshire (47 percent). CORRECTION (10:14 p.m.): An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that Kasich defended his expansion of Medicare in Ohio. He expanded Medicaid, not Medicare.