let s talk about strategy here tonight. i want lawrence to pick up on this first of all. ted cruz, first of all tonight, i ve been told, is heading towards trying to aggregate the entire right wing. he wants evangelicals, tea party and libertarians. tonight, almost systematically, look what he did. he wants to audit the fed, he wants to replace rand paul as the champion of the libertarians. he wants to get rid of the irs, the champion of the tea parties. he did seem to be checking off his list to try to aggregate. i think cruz is really moving in on trump. trump was so good on anti-immigration that he will probably hold on to 20 points maybe. or maybe not. i think cruz is going to join them really soon. the tea party now clearly has a candidate. it s ted cruz. there s no doubt about it. and he definitely solidified that. look, the win tonight went to the people with the best debating skills. it s a pretty old fashioned way to get to an outcome here.
Them really soon. the tea party now clearly has a candidate. it s ted cruz. there s no doubt about it. and he definitely solidified that. look, the win tonight went to the people with the best debating skills. it s a pretty old fashioned way to get to an outcome here. marco rubio showed much better debating skills tonight than he ever has before. ted cruz, we knew had the skills but he never really had the time and he never had the moments in previous debates to show it off. chris christie we knew had debating skills and he got a couple of those moments tonight. it s not complicated where this went. i think one of the biggest problems for trump is, the trump campaign and the republican campaign has been all about trump. meaning it s all about a star. this campaign has a star, donald trump. he was not the star of this debate tonight. and in the world in which donald trump cannot hold on to that
Republican debate now in the books. the headlines being written and voting opinions being formed even as we speak, the first debate in which donald trump was not the undispute the gop poll leader, the first opportunity for dr. ben carson to speak at length about economic issues and an opportunity for ted cruz to displace his well-honed debating skills and jeb bush to show he s still a nominee and for others it was a time to take aim at media. here are some of the highlights from tonight s debate. where did i read this and come up with this probably, i don t know. you people write this stuff. i don t know. i didn t write this stuff. the democrats have the ultimate superpac called the mainstream media. i don t think it s so much about when the government orders corporation to do something. in fact, that s part of the problem. if you saw that blimp that got cut loose from maryland today. it s a perfect example of government. i mean, what we had was something the government mad
And we have got to break off but clinton showed her sharply honed debating skills when lincoln chafee tried to skewer her on iraq, only to find that dart fired right back at him. looking at someone that made that poor decision in 2002 to go into iraq when there was no real evidence of weapons of mass destruction i recall very well, on a debate stage, i think about 25 times, with then-senator obama, debating this very issue. he asked me to become secretary of state. he valued my judgment. five more of these debates on the democratic side. it is unclear after last night how many of those candidates will make it all the way to the end. also unclear what effect last night will have on joe biden s decision to get into the race. will he look at hillary clinton s strength and say why bother? or say someone needs to challenge her and jump in. thank you very much john roberts. there s a lot to go over.
Played to his base, hillary clinton played to her strengths, which is the smarter political option, do you think? i think they both did what they had to do. bernie sanders, i think, is going to stay in the race and be a relevant factor all the way through iowa, new hampshire, nevada, south carolina. he displayed not great debating skills. he didn t look all that presidential. i mean, hillary clinton dwarfed the other four candidates when it came to looking presidential. but bernie gave his base enough to hold most of them in check. he may have lost a few on the gun issue. i didn t know he voted five times against the brady bill. that s really shocking to me as a democrat and as a progressive. but hillary clinton did a great job. and you know, in debates, people look at particularly for executive offices, mayor, governor, president people look at the field and they say, who can i imagine as president of the united states. and clearly the person who portrayed himself or herself as