What Went Down At The CNN Republican Debate

Goodnight; good morning! That’s a wrap, everybody. I’ve been trying to think of how to describe tonight’s debate succinctly, and I’m … struggling. So, how would you sum up the night’s events? If you didn’t watch the debate, click here to start at the beginning of our live blog and scroll up. We’ll also have a separate post-debate analysis from Nate for tomorrow morning, so check back with us then. In the meantime, get some sleep!

Tonight’s debate focused on how America relates to the world. Immigration and foreign policy were the most common topics of questions, and you can give the lead to immigration if you’re willing to lump in questions about how the GOP relates to Latino voters. Foreign policy questions covered Israel, North Korea, and Syria (sorry, Putin!).

Rubio and Cruz kept attacking Trump, and that meant that Trump just got to keep on talking. He had more opportunities to speak in response to attacks than all the other candidates put together. We’ll find out soon whether voters liked what they heard from him.

One quick note on public opinion on the FBI-Apple dispute: A Pew Research Center poll showed, like the Reuters/Ipsos poll, that Republicans tended to side with the FBI — but unlike Reuters/Ipsos, showed that Democrats support the FBI, too. It’s the latest reminder that different pollsters often get different results on issue polling, which can be very sensitive to how questions are worded.

Another Cruz ally is jumping on the Glenn Beck train of praising Rubio. Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa social conservative kingmaker–who was a big part of Cruz’s win in that state–just tweeted out his support for Rubio, along with some praise for Cruz. Little signals like this make one wonder whether or not some of these Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall as far as Cruz’s campaign goes–if he can’t do well in the SEC states, his campaign is toast. https://twitter.com/bobvanderplaats/status/703054744659431424

Pursuant to that question about Puerto Rico: Predictwise currently has odds for all Republican primaries and caucuses through March 6 — and Puerto Rico is the only one where Marco Rubio is currently favored. Rubio has gained quite a bit on Trump overall in prediction markets tonight, however.

I’m a “fundamentalist.” I think the biggest factor will be the state of the economy, and that’ll determine how likely a change in party power will be. Candidate factors usually only matter at the margins. But we have a couple of … unconventional situations. Ted Cruz is very conservative, maybe too conservative for the electorate in crucial competitive states like Ohio and Florida. And Trump is, well, Trump. Like most political scientists, most of what I’ve said about Trump has been wrong.

Trump, Rubio and Cruz have had moments tonight when they haven’t exactly looked … presidential. One of them will make it to the general election (presumably); will any of this slap-fighting harm their chances of beating Clinton (presumably)?

Rubio is right that Puerto Rico is suffering economically: Puerto Ricans left for the U.S. in record numbers in 2014, and in a Gallup poll that December, just 6 percent of Puerto Rican residents said economic conditions were improving.

“The order is not: put a backdoor in everyone’s cellphone,” said Cruz in response to the question about a court order Apple is fighting. The order, following the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, asks Apple to remove security features in future devices. The ones that exist now are keeping authorities from accessing files on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple says the request is unconstitutional. First, this court order intersects with questions of digital privacy and product design, but projects the debate into the future iterations of the product. Second and more importantly, it raises the question of what access the government should have to data on devices and platforms, from the iPhone to Gmail. But aside from the question of what’s legal, there’s the matter of what’s actually done. The government has already used hacking techniques to access data on the SIM cards used in most cellphones globally.

Whether or not complying with the FBI would be “bad for America,” as Tim Cook claims, it would pretty clearly be bad for Apple. Apple increasingly depends on overseas markets to drive its sales growth, and consumers in many of those markets are concerned about protecting their privacy from governments. As law professor Mark Bartholomew told The New York Times this week, Apple is “playing the long game,” working to develop a reputation for being willing to defend its customers from government snooping.

More Americans side with Apple than with the FBI in the dispute over whether Apple must unlock a smartphone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, but a plurality of Republicans disagree with Apple’s opposition to a court order to unlock the phone, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The candidates are taking that position, too.

Notice how Rubio — in addition to starting his own fights with Trump — has also been trying to butt in on Cruz-Trump arguments. I assume this is tactical: Rubio really wants the headlines to be about how Rubio took on Trump, and not that there was a pile-on against Trump.

“Can somebody attack me please?” Carson asked plaintively. He’s right that he’s being sidelined by not being picked on. Getting to reply to attacks has accounted for a third of all speaking opportunities, the vast majority of which have gone to Trump. He’s gotten 18 replies to attacks, more than everyone else combined (Rubio and Cruz: 6 each, Kasich: 3, Carson: none).

Ok, I’m really on a delay here, but Trump just defended Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. This is pretty interesting in the sense that this has come up before – back when Rand Paul and Chris Christie were still in the race to really represent the anti- and pro-intervention positions. Trump’s not wrong that sometimes a human-rights-abusing dictator can make decisions that benefit the U.S. economically. Many people find that a morally reprehensible position, but 20th-century U.S. history is full of examples where we made that decision. It’s a very uncomfortable point, but it deserves to be made.

Just a quick note on Trump and the Syrian conflict: he’s said that he supports the Russian air strikes in the country and that’s just fine with him. Only problem? The Russian strikes are also very likely hitting anti-Assad rebels, perhaps more so than they are hitting actual ISIS targets.

Trump says the Saudis are “making less than they used to” selling the U.S. oil. That’s an understatement. A year and a half ago, oil was selling for over $100 a barrel; today it’s selling for about $30. Meanwhile, the U.S. is importing far less oil than it used to, both overall and from Saudi Arabia in particular. In 2008, the U.S. imported 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from the Saudis; today that’s down to less than a million barrels a day.

Micah, on the question of whether the Rubio/Cruz attacks on Trump will have any effect: I don’t know if Trump’s numbers will drop. They might — they did after the South Carolina debate, and after the first debate. But remember, in the first four states, a lot of Trump’s voters decided to vote for The Donald MONTHS ago. That’s why I say that the 30 or 35 percent of the vote Trump has averaged so far is more like a floor than a ceiling. The key question might be more about what happens to what I’d call Trump swing voters. Somewhere around 20 to 30 percent of the Republican electorate has a favorable view of Trump, but aren’t voting for him yet. If Trump gets those voters, he’ll win a majority. If they stick with another candidate, the GOP race could drag out for a while, although Trump could still win with his plurality by accumulating lots of delegates. But if most of them coalesce around the same non-Trump alternative — most likely, Rubio — Trump would lose.

https://twitter.com/DomenicoNPR/status/703054980136042497

If you’ve run out of political jargon to impress your friends with, add BDS — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. As the candidates discuss Israel policy, and whether the U.S. should be a neutral broker in Mideast negotiations, they do so just a day after a major move in U.S. policy. Yesterday, President Obama signed a bill pushing back against an international BDS movement against Israel. “I have directed my administration to strongly oppose boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel,” the President said when he signed the act into law. The law also includes “Israeli-controlled territories,” including settlements.

I don’t have timestamps, but I can tell you that Carson has gotten only four questions tonight. Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich have gotten seven each from the moderators, and Trump has gotten 13.

Leah, when was the last time Carson had a chance to speak?

The candidates are professing their love for Israel in part because most Americans view Israel favorably, making it among the countries with the highest approval rating in the U.S.

If this debate doesn’t do something to either dent Trump’s numbers or stop any rise, nothing will. Holding down the growth of his popularity will allow for someone to beat Trump once consolidation happens, which it will at some point.

Rubio and Cruz have landed a lot of blows on Trump tonight, but could it all be beside the point? Trump’s support has proved so durable, and as long as Kasich, Carson, Cruz and Rubio are all in the race, will any of tonight’s fireworks matter?

On the question of Donald Trump’s electability … well, we’re probably going to have about 6 million posts about that if he wins the Republican nomination. It would be foolish to say that Donald Trump could never become president. He could also lose in a landslide. But it’s important to keep in mind that so far, Trump’s popularity is concentrated among an enthusiastic plurality of Republican voters, rather than the broader American population. In fact, only about 35 percent of Americans overall have a favorable view of Trump. Those numbers haven’t really changed since Trump announced his presidential bid in June.

A report last week showed the rewards and risks that other candidates face when attacking Trump. The College of William and Mary and FairVote released results from an unusual poll among Republicans and independents conducted both just before and after the Iowa caucuses, asking respondents to rank all 11 candidates who remained back in more innocent times when nearly a dozen people thought they could be the Republican nominee. The poll found that Trump’s lead over Rubio narrows to 8 percentage points when all other candidates drop away, and that Cruz overtakes Trump in a one-on-one. That’s the upside of attacking him: Both Rubio and Cruz likely will look good to many voters when on the attack. (Those numbers might look better for Rubio now and worse for Cruz, based on more traditional polling numbers.) But even back when the race had 11 candidates, Trump was the last choice of more than one in five voters. That suggests that plenty of voters already strongly opposed Trump back when no one was attacking him, so they may not be that many people who can be moved by the attacks.

This is the first debate where I can remember Trump being pushed this far back on his heels. Rubio and Cruz, who I’m pretty sure did have a little pow-wow before this, are really going after him hard on the idea that he doesn’t have a solid, workable plan for any of the proposals that he’s offered up during his campaign. The two senators are really just trying to stanch the bleeding of their electoral support. One thing we do know is that once you’ve made up your mind to vote for Donald Trump, you’re likely going to stick with him, so Cruz and Rubio are really aiming their performances tonight at those Super Tuesday undecided voters, who, seeing Trump win the last few contests, might figure that he’s actually a viable candidate. They’re hoping those people think differently after tonight.

In our elections podcast we do a segment called “good use of polling or bad use of polling,” where we evaluate how candidates or the media talk about poll numbers. Suffice it to say, we were taking notes during that last Trump/Cruz exchange.

Cruz tried to bring the discussion back around to Hillary Clinton, possibly because other attacks against Trump seem to be making little impact on his swagger. This is first time Clinton’s name has been emphasized tonight. There have only been two passing mentions so far, as the candidates have mostly been talking at and over each other.

General-election polls aren’t worth much yet, but for what little they are worth, Clinton is leading both Trump and Cruz by 5 percentage points in the average poll of those respective hypothetical matchups.

Trump cites the polls more than any other candidate — which isn’t surprising because he’s leading in so many of them. Less surprising: He cites ones that are more favorable to him than the polling average.

Trump has three times referenced his net worth of $10 billion, and twice said he is worth more than $10 billion. As has been a theme during his public life, his claimed fortune is far more vast than others’ estimates of his fortune.

In non-Republican news, a WBUR poll just came out showing Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders in Massachusetts, which votes on March 1. Other polls of Massachusetts have shown Sanders ahead, but Massachusetts is one state that Sanders will need to win to have a credible shot at the nomination. Trump has a big lead over Rubio — 40 to 19 — on the Republican side of the WBUR poll.

Does Trump really get audited every year? It’s not that far-fetched. The Wall Street Journal this week reported that the IRS is increasingly auditing Americans who report $1 million or more in income. Roughly 10 percent of such returns got audited last year.

It’s typical of Trump to criticize Hugh Hewitt for his show’s low ratings — he did it back in September, too. That sort of criticism is no surprise to Trump’s more than 6 million Twitter followers, who regularly read his attacks on media on the basis of their small audiences.

If Rubio or Cruz wins the nomination, reaching out to the broad demographic of Latino-Americans may require some uncomfortable conversations about ethnicity, immigration privileges, and tensions between different Latino groups. The majority of Latino Americans are of Mexican descent, followed by Puerto Ricans (who are immediately eligible to vote if they move to the U.S. mainland), and Cubans. But today, there’s a debate over who gets right-of-way at the border. Cuban immigrants are offered a path to legal residency immediately, which is different not only than most Latinos but most immigrants from other parts of the world. The U.S., for the moment, has no plans to change policy, but some now argue the entry and accommodations offered to Cubans should be phased out since the U.S. has re-opened its embassy. Also, the Cold War tensions with the island have eased because the Soviet Union no longer subsidizes the Cuban economy… and, well, the Soviet Union no longer exists. One new twist: tensions at cities along the U.S./Mexico border, including Laredo, Texas, have seen tensions and protests over how Cubans are treated compared to other immigrants. President Obama is scheduled to visit Cuba next month — the first time in 88 years a sitting President will visit the nation.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Trump: “If you eliminate [the Department of Education and the EPA], that’s $76 billion. The current deficit is $544 billion. Where are you going to come up with the money?” That’s a throwback to an earlier debate era, when deficit questions were more the norm than the exception.

It seems like we spent about the first half hour of this debate on immigration. Is this normal? A quick glance at GOP debates 16 years ago reveals that no one mentioned immigration, like, at all. The only person who brought it up really was Gary Bauer, who was a pretty minor candidate. This changed in 2008, and Republican primary debates have featured quite a bit of immigration discussion ever since. Below is a very rough measure of this, with a raw count of debate mentions of the words “immigrant” and “immigration” during each primary season. There are two takeaways from this. First, Trump isn’t totally responsible for a pivot toward this issue for Republicans. It’s not clear whether economic decline, national security concerns, or the exposure of intra-party fissures after Bush’s attempt at immigration reform are the cause of this (or some combination). But there’s a big change between 2000 and 2008. Before we let Trump and the current field off the hook, though, we should also observe that this year’s debates have almost caught up to 2012 in terms of numbers of immigration references – in half as many debates. If the field continues to look like it does, I think we can expect to catch up with the 2008 numbers fairly quickly.

YEAR	NUMBER OF GOP PRIMARY DEBATES	MENTIONS OF THE WORD IMMIGRATION OR IMMIGRANT	MENTIONS PER DEBATE (ROUNDED)
2000	11	2	0.2
2008	16	293	18
2012	20	218	11
2016	9*	191	18

There’s significant disagreement among economists about how much various candidates’ tax plans would cost. But there’s essentially no disagreement over Trump’s plan. All credible estimates find it would cut government revenue by trillions of dollars. (Cruz and Rubio’s plan would lead to significant, though somewhat smaller, cuts as well.)

If you think that Marco Rubio is doing well tonight, you’re not alone–Glenn Beck thinks so too, and he took to Twitter to say so. One thing, though: Beck endorsed Ted Cruz last month. Awkward? https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/703047147919265792

https://twitter.com/andrewflowers/status/703047364249055233

Kasich said, “It’s easier to interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls than to understand your hospital bill.” Without getting into interpretation of the scrolls — which are beautiful — Kasich has a point on hospital bills. Steven Brill wrote the longest single-author article Time Magazine has ever printed in 2013 about the inscrutability of American medical bills.

Has “Obamacare” really led companies to cut back workers’ hours, as Marco Rubio said? Perhaps, but the effect has been very small. Virtually all of the employment growth during the recovery has been full-time; part-time employment is basically flat. But the so-called employer mandate, which requires most companies to offer health insurance to anyone working at least 30 hours a week, seems to have led employers to cut the hours of workers who are already near the 30-hour cutoff. A year ago, I estimated the cuts affected a few hundred thousand people, small in the context of millions of total jobs. But the people affected are disproportionately low-wage workers and women.

Some of his blows have landed better than others, but another reason why it’s been smart for Rubio to attack Trump is simply because Rubio has made himself the focal point for the Trump opposition: a way out of the game-theoretical trap Republicans have found themselves in throughout the campaign where there’s been no clear Trump alternative even when polls suggest Trump would be vulnerable one-on-one.

Just 6 percent of Republican voters in an October Quinnipiac poll said it was the most important issue in their vote for president. The economy is of far greater importance.

Harry, does Obamacare have the same salience for Republican voters it did in 2010? Or 2012 or 2014?

What has “Obamacare” accomplished? So far it has brought health insurance to 9 million Americans who didn’t previously have it. But there are still 33 million people living in the U.S. (citizens and non-citizens) who don’t have health insurance. Of course, one reason for that is Republican opposition to the law: Close to 4 million people fall into the so-called Medicaid gap in states that have declined to expand access to Medicaid under the law. Those states, all with Republican governors, have higher uninsurance rates across the board. https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/barry-jester-uninsured-3.png?w=575

Trump’s rhetoric on Planned Parenthood is fascinating, and offers a glimmer of the hodge-podge of political views he’s held over his lifetime. During this 2016 run, he’s taken the standard Republican line that he would defund Planned Parenthood because the group provides abortions, but Trump went on tonight after giving that answer, to offer a line about the organization that you hear most often from Democrats, that it provides cancer screenings and regular checkups for many women. Moments like that stick out in this group of Republicans.

As the candidates debate the fate of the Supreme Court, many existing cases will end up in a 4-4 tie, leaving lower courts’ decisions intact. In some cases, like affirmative action, that may favor liberals; and in others, like a Texas abortion case, it may favor conservative positions. Anecdotally, in my conversations with voters, the fate of the Supreme Court nominations comes up heavily. But most Americans, according to a brand new Pew research study, don’t know much about the court or how it works, and 20 percent didn’t know Justice Scalia was conservative.