What Went Down At The CNN Republican Debate

Is replacing Scalia on the Supreme Court a case where the hyperbole of its importance is warranted? Seems like Scalia’s replacement really does have the potential, depending on who’s confirmed, to reshape the court, and therefore the law?

Here’s that epic Ted Cruz 21-hour-and-19-minutes Senate-floor speech favoring the defunding of Obamacare that Trump mocked.

It’s probably worth re-emphasizing how few Hispanics have actually voted for Donald Trump so far. In Nevada, 8 percent of the turnout was Hispanic, according to the entrance poll, and 45 percent of those Hispanics voted for Trump. Based on a caucus turnout of about 75,000 Nevadans, that works out to about 2,700 Hispanics in a state that has around 800,000 of them.

https://twitter.com/hemdash/status/703042238998298624

Trump quickly backed off his comment that he doesn’t believe anything Telemundo says, adding that he loves it. That’s wise if he wants to protect what he claims is his popularity among Hispanics (disputed by a Telemundo poll): Telemundo’s popularity has been rising in recent years.

Ross Douthat was right when said on Twitter, “If you aren’t interrupting, you’re losing.” Questions have made up less than half of candidate’s opportunities to speak so far in this debate. Interruptions have accounted for more than 15 percent of all chances candidates have had to speak, and everything else has been replies to attacks. The result: Trump has spoken more than twice as often as Cruz and one and a half times as often as Rubio. (Let’s not even mention Kasich and Carson, who have spoken less than once per seven times Trump has opened his mouth).

Ted Cruz says the “Obama economy” has been bad for Hispanics. That depends on which numbers you look at. Hispanics have a higher unemployment rate than the overall population (5.9 percent vs. 4.9 percent) and lower median incomes ($42,491 vs. $53,657). But they have made faster gains on both measures during the recovery.

There are different thoughts on that, but I’d be careful on this one. The reason is that “Hispanic” is a catch-all phrase for people from different countries. Mexican-Americans are far more liberal than Cuban Americans, who, like Cruz and Rubio, are far more conservative than most other Hispanic groups. Then again, as our own Dan Hopkins pointed out, it’s possible that Cruz or Rubio is able to perform better with Hispanics than another Republican would, as Cruz did in 2012.

Could Cruz and/or Rubio help the GOP make inroads with Hispanic voters?

Every single question so far has been on immigration, with the only possible exception being the question to Trump about whether he would start a trade war with Mexico. But since that was a follow up to how he planned to make them pay for a border wall, I’m inclined to count it.

Leah, immigration has dominated this debate so far, right?

Nate, it’s remarkable that there’s anyone left who hasn’t Googled Trump — he’s dominated the Republican race’s search traffic for months.

Marco Rubio just railed against President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows certain undocumented immigrants who arrived as children to be exempt from deportation, saying, “DACA is an executive order that is unconstitutional. I will cancel it on my first day in office.” But Obama’s executive order is just one in a long line of presidents using executive orders to act on immigration.

People at home are listening to Marco Rubio: there was a huge spike in Google search for Donald Trump after Rubio asked viewers to look up Trump’s history of hiring undocumented Polish workers.

John Kasich says the U.S. shouldn’t deport millions of undocumented immigrants, but should build a wall to prevent more of them coming in. Donald Trump says “Mexico will pay” for his proposed border wall and that “it will work.” It’s important to note, though, that border-crossing is only one way that people end up in the U.S. illegally. A 2013 report from the Pew Research Center found that a growing share of undocumented immigrants – perhaps a third to half — are people who entered the country legally then overstayed their visas.

One thing I’ve noticed here is that Trump’s theme is to divert to an attack as quickly as he can. That’s really annoying for someone watching for analytical reasons, but it’s probably good priming — reminding the audience of Rubio and Cruz’s worst qualities. Cruz, in contrast, is really hammering this idea of “doing what you’re elected to do.” That’s been an especially important trope for Republicans for a couple of years now (think the Tea Party-Freedom Caucus, Grover Norquist pledges) — but it hasn’t gotten them all that far.

The attack on him for hiring non-citizens seems like it’s a cousin to the attacks on Romney for firing people through Bain. And those seemed to land!

I’m not sure they are hitting, but it’s about time someone is throwing them.

To some extent Trump has been attacked so little over the course of the campaign that we don’t have a lot of evidence for which types of attacks work and which don’t. To be honest, you might as well throw your whole playbook at him, up to the point where you begin to look unfocused or desperate.

Yeah, both Cruz and Rubio are going after Trump on immigration tonight in a way that makes me wonder if there wasn’t some discussion of this beforehand. I think that’s a smart move, taking him on his principal issue and picking away at it in a more exacting, academic way.

Does the “soft on immigration” argument seem like a fruitful line of attack on Trump?

Ted Cruz mentioned that Trump fired Dennis Rodman on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2013. That didn’t stop Rodman from endorsing Trump last July. That’s no minor endorsement: Our colleague Ben Morris thinks Rodman might be the most valuable NBA player of all time.

Here’s the New York Times report about Trump’s hiring practices that Trump and Rubio are squabbling about. And here’s what Trump said about The New York Times in a debate last month: “It’s The New York Times. They’re always wrong.”

That’s right, Micah. The number of Mexican immigrants moving back to Mexico outnumbered those moving the other way by 140,000 from 2009 to 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. These days more immigrants are entering the U.S. from Asia than from Latin America.

Carl, hasn’t net immigration from the southern border basically fallen to zero?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ph-2014-09-03-immigration-01.png?w=423

The case for holding back would be that Rubio is doing OK, making progress in the polls against Ted Cruz, perhaps even enough to knock Cruz out on March 1. So Rubio could keep his favorables high and save the fight with Trump for later. Twenty-four hours ago, I might have found that case more convincing, but Trump had a pretty good day in the polls in a way that the media’s making a big deal of, and which risks lowering the morale of Rubio’s supporters.

Perhaps that he first wants to knock Cruz and the others out of the race, consolidate much of their support, then go after Trump.

Ill-formed notions that going negative hurts candidates. I don’t think there’s clear evidence for this. Maybe some mixed evidence from studies of ads.

So everyone seems to think Rubio should attack Trump ASAP. Then what’s the Rubio campaign’s rationale for holding back?

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/703031821089558532

I asked my Twitter followers earlier today whether they thought Marco Rubio would attack Donald Trump in tonight’s debate. Rubio’s campaign had signaled to reporters that he wouldn’t attack — but of course, such signals can be sent out with the intent to deceive. My personal view is that it’s time for Rubio to attack. There are a few reasons why:

• If you’re going to portray yourself as the anti-Trump candidate — indeed, if you’re going to suggest that other candidates should drop out so that you can take on Trump one-on-one — it’s probably time to start actually being anti-Trump.
• The current storylines for Rubio are pretty bad. Trump is increasingly viewed as the inevitable nominee, and the media is sick and tired of Rubio’s second place “wins.” A lot of this is silly and premature, but these debates are important partly because of the way they affect the media narrative. Right now, the media is like a pack of vultures circling around the non-Trump candidates. “Rubio takes fight to Trump” would be a better headline.
• Somewhat contrary to the conventional wisdom, Trump has actually wobbled when attacked in debates before. In particular, he lost several points after the South Carolina debate after Jeb Bush attacked him, which cut into his margin of victory there.

Besides, Rubio’s almost certainly going to have to attack Trump sooner or later — so why not start now? To use a football analogy, the situation is like that of a football team that scores a touchdown after trailing by 15 points early in the fourth quarter. The correct move in this case is usually to go for the two-point conversion right away, since you’ll probably need one sooner or later and it increases your strategic flexibility later in the game. Instead, NFL teams usually kick the extra point. That guarantees they’ll keep it as a “one-score game,” but lowers their probability of eventually winning. Rubio, likewise, doesn’t need to merely stay close to Trump — he eventually needs to overtake him, and he probably requires a more aggressive strategy.

Micah and Harry, I actually think watching to see HOW people attack Trump is key. Will someone like Kasich try to plump up his own executive record next to Trump’s? Will Rubio wade in more? Etc, etc. It will be telling to see how people choose their angles.

What I’ll be watching for: Is anyone going to go after Trump? Specifically will Rubio go after Trump? Rubio will have to at some point, so why not now? At least (as one wise person told me) if you go after him now, you’ll get a better idea of what sticks and what doesn’t. Moreover, I do agree that the media doesn’t give Rubio enough credit for his performance so far, but if he doesn’t win a single state on Super Tuesday, it’s going to look very bad.

Harry, what are you going to be watching for tonight?

Politico reports today that some Republican National Committee leaders are feeling at least a little confident in their ability to use their resources to rein in Trump if he’s the GOP nominee. The national party organization hastens to remind us of the information and campaign infrastructure it can provide. It’s not clear what the leadership will be able to do in the event of a Trump nomination, but the Politico piece reminds us that the RNC and the Democratic National Committee are like the scenery in a play: Not the main event, but certainly part of the production. As a result, the national committees are often overlooked by media and scholars alike. The “parties as networks” school downplays their importance, and decades of political science research casts party organizations as weak and ineffectual. However, the party organizations have reasserted their role in national campaigns. And they’ve been fairly visible during the 2016 campaign. (Though not usually favorably.) This might be a positive development – not just for formal party leaders, but for those who think that a bigger role for them might lead to more moderate candidates, and for observers who’d like to know more about what national party committees actually do. But it also means that national party committees will need to face the blame they are owed for electoral strategies that sought votes by appealing to racial resentment, including their willingness to let independent groups do the dirty work of stuff like racially inflammatory advertising. The RNC has also allowed a decentralized primary process, giving lots of autonomy to the states to allocate delegates as they wish – something that’s likely to benefit Trump. In other words, if the party organizations want to save the day, they also need to take responsibility for helping to create the current state of affairs.

Julia, Jody, it’s not just Trump who’d have to answer to supporters who say they disapprove of the Emancipation Proclamation. Among Ted Cruz’s supporters, 15 percent disapproved of it — just 5 percentage points fewer than among Trump’s supporters. So did 9 percent of supporters of Ben Carson, the lone African-American candidate in the race, as did 5 percent of Marco Rubio’s supporters and 3 percent of John Kasich’s supporters. The question didn’t name the proclamation, instead asking about “the executive order which freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government.” Also, the sample sizes are small, and for some candidates the percentages are so low that they might reflect people misunderstanding the question or mistakenly choosing an answer they didn’t intend to. https://twitter.com/YouGovUS/status/703004632226926592

Well, at least one political science prediction has stayed true this election: After the early contests, the field has winnowed. Tonight’s debate will take place without Chris Christie or Jeb Bush – two candidates who, as of the end of 2015, had more endorsements from Republican elected officials than every other candidate. But the actual voting has left Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as the main contenders. It’s pretty clear that the party’s elites – however late and tentatively – have cast their lot with Rubio. But as a couple of people have pointed out, eventually he’s going to need to win a primary. Something to note here is that if Cruz and Rubio were one candidate, that candidate would be in first place. Trump would be playing the same role that Bernie Sanders is for Democrats – doing well enough to make the frontrunner have to try, but not actually winning. As a result, it’s hard for me not to see Cruz, and his supporters, as pivotal here. He’s had some nasty exchanges with both Trump and Rubio. I suspect the Rubio campaign is probably thinking about the kinds of goodies it could offer Cruz to leave the race. And I wonder if the RNC and others are exerting pressure on him. But even if that is happening, and even if Cruz cared enough to respond, could he really guarantee that his supporters would back Rubio at the polls? This brings us back to the question of how much control elites really have over this process. And to the fact that if Cruz and Trump were the same candidate, that candidate would be crushing Rubio.

I’ll echo Julia’s sentiment that I’d like to have someone — either a candidate or, hey, the moderators! — bring up some of the troubling polling we saw this week describing the bigoted views of a significant portion of Donald Trump supporters. This polling was so troubling, in fact, that we convened a special podcast today to discuss the numbers. As Harry Enten pointed out, if John Kasich doesn’t take the chance to press Trump on some of these trends, then it’s unclear what role he’s going to play. It’s both strategically savvy (if you can say there’s a Kasich strategy still to be had) and the morally right thing to do. Listen to the podcast below, and cross your fingers that the difficult facts around race and bigotry our country is grappling with get addressed head on. http://c.espnradio.com/s:5L8r1/audio/2688132/fivethirtyeightelections_2016-02-25-125732.64k.mp3

Normally, I’m not a big fan of “so-and-so said this, how do you react?” questions in these debates. Arguably, these were part of the approach that allowed the Trump candidacy to flourish in the late summer and early fall. But tonight I’d really like the moderators to ask the candidates – especially Trump, but not only him – to address the survey results that show some supporters who disapprove of the Emancipation Proclamation. This gets at three issues I think are important: race, presidential power and accountability. (Meaning, can or should we hold candidates accountable for what their supporters say?) What’s not very encouraging, though, is that we’re likely to hear what we have heard all season. Rubio and Kasich will disavow racist ideas. Trump will deny. Ben Carson will talk about astronauts and string cheese. The interesting wild card is Cruz, who I suspect will divert any questions about whether Trump – or others in the party — have cultivated racial resentment among supporters – toward an answer that makes the issue about executive orders, not about the thorny race questions that it’s becoming increasingly clear that the party will eventually need to face.

Welcome all, to the umpteenth 2016 presidential debate [annoying editors note: actually, the 10th Republican debate], this time, a showdown between the GOP candidates, a.k.a., the Thrilla-in-a-Place-That’s-8,000-miles-away-from-Manila: Houston, Texas. It’s been a while since we’ve seen our motley crew. OK, not that long, but in the intervening 12 days, Jeb Bush has dropped out of the race after a poor finish in South Carolina, leaving frontrunner Donald Trump bereft of his favorite punching bag. He will have to settle for pillorying Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Ben Carson. Trump is coming off commanding wins in South Carolina and Nevada, and he’s the favorite in most of the upcoming Super Tuesday contests. While Trump is likely to continue tonight with his DJ Khaled-esque rhetoric of winning, what should we be looking from the others on stage? To see if they attack him head-on, for one thing. The last debate got heated, and not just because of Trump — Rubio sniped that his fellow Cuban-American, Cruz, couldn’t understand Spanish. On the topic of Cruz, the Texas senator is in a tight spot these days. He didn’t do as well as he might have with South Carolina’s evangelicals, and as our own Dave Wasserman points out, his campaign’s delegate math is looking increasingly nonsensical. And in Rubio’s case, while the mainline-Republican endorsements keep rolling in, he has yet to log an actual first-place finish in the primary, which, let’s politely say, complicates things for him. Stay with us all night for charts, wisdom, and kvetching!

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