Republican Presidential Debate: Live Coverage

Carly Fiorina is right that more companies are shutting down. And it’s also true that new business formations are falling, as Marco Rubio mentioned earlier. But it’s hard to blame those trends on “Obamacare” — the decline in entrepreneurship is a decades-old problem that long predates Obama or the Affordable Care Act. No one is sure why the startup rate is falling, but the decline has mirrored similar trends in labor participation, job turnover and geographic mobility (how often people move between cities). Economists worry that suggests the U.S. economy is losing the flexibility that helped fuel its past growth. There’s probably no single policy that would help reverse those trends. Still, I’m glad to see the problem finally entering into mainstream political discourse.

Interesting that the first time race and policing came up was not via a journalist question but roundabout via Christie. Christie said that President Obama “failed” police, and that under a Christie presidency “police officers will know they will have the support of the president of the United States.” He introduced this by referencing the FBI director’s musings that viral videos and reaction to Ferguson had dampened police response and raised crime. The only problem: There’s no evidence of a causal link, and the White House made a point of quickly and publicly distancing itself from the remarks.