reshuffling after that cnbc debate. is the race entering a new volatile phase as it s called? joining us now, michael smerconish. great to see you this morning. thank you. give us the big picture. how do you think the field is re-aligning today? the big picture is, if you haven t been paying attention and you suddenly tuned into this week s debate, you d have a difficult time believing that donald trump and ben carson are the front-runners. they were largely nonentities in that debate. all of the action as you ve been describing was wrong marco rubio, jeb bush and not in a good way and certainly ted cruz, i would put john kasich in that category as well. all of a sudden, that s where the momentum has shifted to. the question is, if trim and carson begin to fade, i believe they will, who benefits? and that s a more complicated picture. well, let s see how complicated it is. if there is a move in the polls,
a strong debate. i m surprised that s what they came out with. he will say they are trying to hurt me because i have a lefty agenda. that is back with a roar in this case. you heard it on the stage. it s resonating through the campaigns. we re getting it in the spin cycle, seeing it on social media. what will be the effect? someone fired off a remark at the media, probably that ted cruz comment, the others fed on it. i think better than half of the candidates on that stage ended up saying something negative relative to the media. my view on those debate questions for what it s worth is all of the subject matter was entirely appropriate. the tonality of some of the questions was problematic. i ve been going back through the transcript of the first debate, a fox debate, the second debate, a cnn debate and then cnbc. if you look at the questions only, there s frankly not much
of a difference between debates one, two or three, including fox, which is, of course, the great oracle of the rnc. style matters. how a moderator does their job is important. it s good that people get that. that s not a given. megyn kelly was asking an appropriate question in terms of what trump said in the past. how it came across wound up creating a combative dynamic. with cnbc, the expectation was that it will be more economy driven. be sure to check out smerconish on cnn at 9:00. also hear him weekdays on sirius at 9:00 a.m.
litmus test for moderators. the moderators have to be registered republicans. that sounds absurd, though he did set rules, ask cnbc to change the time, the length of the debate. maybe he does have some clout in demanding things for future debates. let s keep in mind, all of the debates, the format, including the participants was really approved in advance by the rnc. if they re going to complain about this, they should be complaining to reince priebus. keep in mind, in an unprecedented way, i think we ll see this with even cnn, there has to be a conservative media organization sitting along side all of the other journalists for it to be an acceptable debate. i ve never seen that before. they ve already gotten questions that if they want to call them saying they don t like the e - format. that s what they re saying. yes. but let s analyze why they re saying that. these so-called gotcha questions, mannatech, you
rating from aaa to something less, the united states is going to have to pay more in the interest in terms of borrowing the money. is that right? exactly. think about it. in other words, if someone is going to go out there and lend us money, they re taking on more risk because we would in theory no longer have that aaa rating. so if they re going to take on that risk, they want to be paid for it. we have to pay them by paying a higher interest rate. and so it would cost us more money to borrow. the same exact thing as if, you know, you have a lot of debt in your own personal life and you re trying to get a new credit card. that credit card rate is going to be much higher than if you had no debt at all. so that s part of what s at issue here. we don t want to have to spend more money to take on more debt. trish regan, great stuff as always. thanks so much. by the way, you can all catch trish every day at 11:00 a.m. on the call, only on cnbc. topping today s pop shots, paula abdu