Vox - CNN Republican debate in Las Vegas: News and updateshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2015-12-16T12:20:02-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/99839952015-12-16T12:20:02-05:002015-12-16T12:20:02-05:00Donald Trump issued a remarkably blunt denunciation of the Iraq War during the debate
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<p>Midway through the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas">GOP debate Tuesday night</a>, Republican poll leader Donald Trump offered a blunt and brutal denunciation of the last Republican president's main foreign policy initiative — the Iraq War.</p>
<p>Indeed, Trump went further even than most Democratic politicians would, calling the war "a tremendous disservice to humanity" — and added that it achieved nothing whatsoever, except to leave the Middle East "a total and complete mess." Here's what he said:</p>
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<p>"We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems — our airports and all the other problems we have — we would have been a <i>lot </i>better off, I can tell you that right now.</p>
<p>We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East — we've done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away — and for what? It's not like we had victory. It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!"</p>
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<p>As <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10270608/trump-won-debate">Matt Yglesias pointed out on Tuesday</a>, this, like much of what Trump says, exists outside the bounds of normal political discourse. Even for Democrats who criticize the Iraq War, it's considered gauche to say that so many veterans died and were injured for nothing (though many likely believe this in their hearts).</p>
<p>And even those Republicans who now think the war was a mistake would hesitate to call it "a tremendous disservice to humanity." Beyond that, they certainly wouldn't suggest the money spent on the war could have been plowed into increasing <em>domestic spending</em>, which they generally argue won't improve things.</p>
<p>Yet again, Trump has identified an opportunity left open by the polarized two-party system. By pairing his tough rhetoric and persona and avowed nationalism with various efforts to play to Americans' racial anxieties on immigration and terrorism, he can convincingly tell conservatives the Iraq War has been a disaster. And here again, he may come off to voters as more honest and straight-talking than the other candidates.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10296032/donald-trump-gop-debate-iraq-warAndrew Prokop2015-12-16T12:00:02-05:002015-12-16T12:00:02-05:00The most important exchange in the GOP debate had nothing to do with Donald Trump
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<img alt="Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz at the December 15 debate in Las Vegas." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/21jXmW394apJDWh3RAsCEQKCGeI=/277x142:2879x2094/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48185621/GettyImages-501525500.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz at the December 15 debate in Las Vegas. | Justin Sullivan/Getty</figcaption>
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<p>The most important exchange in the GOP debate had nothing to do with Donald Trump.</p> <p>An hour and a half into the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas" target="_blank">fifth debate of the 2016 Republican presidential primary</a>, America — or at least that very small sliver of America that really cares about policy differences between presidential candidates — got the fight it had been anticipating for months: Ted Cruz taking on Marco Rubio on immigration.</p>
<p>It was inevitably going to happen at <em>some </em>point. Cruz and Rubio are arguably the two most serious candidates in the field — which is to say, of the candidates who actually have policy arguments during presidential debates, they're the two doing best in the polls. And while they agree with each other on many issues, and the distinctions between them on others (like intervention in Syria) are nuanced, immigration is the issue where Rubio's record distinguishes him from Cruz and from a lot of Republican primary voters.</p>
<p>Rubio's immigration record is a legitimate weak spot for him with conservatives, and simply by picking the fight and staying focused, unlike other candidates who've tried similar attacks, Cruz "won" the exchange. But underneath the argument about Marco Rubio and his support for "amnesty" — the one most viewers saw and will remember — was an argument about <em>Ted Cruz</em>'s<em> </em>immigration position and whether he also supports some kind of legalization.</p>
<p>The latter argument ended inconclusively. But it's going to continue to be relevant to many establishment Republicans and business types — especially if Cruz ends up winning the nomination and gets the chance to run to the center.</p>
<h3>This is the fight everyone has been waiting to see from the debates</h3>
<p>Donald Trump might be leading the polls — just as he's done since July. But many political insiders and observers still believe Cruz and Rubio are the two candidates most likely to actually win the nomination when this is all over. And while, for a time, this looked like foolish wishful thinking in the face of the Trump juggernaut, both candidates — especially Cruz — are picking up in the polls. Cruz is currently in first place in Iowa, according to many pollsters. Rubio's polling is less strong, and his path to victory is less clear, but he's still the strongest "establishment" candidate by far.</p>
<p>But why does freshman senator Rubio get tagged as "establishment" while freshman senator Cruz is a conservative "outsider"? Immigration.</p>
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<img alt="Cruz Rubio" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tO12ewqPxtuQWFtT2jPZkji-dj8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4209097/Screen_Shot_2015-10-28_at_10.31.52_PM.0.png">
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<p class="caption">(CNBC)</p>
<p>Marco Rubio was one of the eight original co-sponsors of the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the Senate, also known as the Gang of Eight. That group included four Democrats (including Republican bête noire and likely next Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer) and three other Republicans (including known immigration apostates John McCain and Lindsey Graham).</p>
<p>The bill famously included a "path to citizenship" for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the US. As many Republican primary voters understood it, this was amnesty. Ted Cruz vociferously opposed the bill and voted against it both in the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor. Marco Rubio even more vociferously supported it.</p>
<p>Rubio was deliberately picking a fight within his own party. He even did a media tour of conservative talk radio to defend the bill, because he understood how the base would feel about it.</p>
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<img alt="Marco Rubio immigration reporters" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kRXLe56YwlAjvP5F1G5rvqQSwqw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5350955/GettyImages-168241844.0.jpg">
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<p class="caption">Marco Rubio talks to reporters about immigration in 2013. (Douglas Graham/CQ-Roll Call via Getty)</p>
<p>The upside was huge. Pass comprehensive immigration reform, and Republicans could begin rebuilding their relationship with one of the nation's fastest-growing voter blocs — with Rubio himself at the lead. But so was the downside: Rubio was outing himself as a supporter of a policy that much of his party's base (and its media ecosystem) wasn't just opposed to, but <em>passionately </em>opposed to.</p>
<p>Rubio's plan backfired: He got all of the downside and none of the upside. He bailed on his own bill shortly after it passed the Senate — helping cement the idea that it was politically toxic for House Republicans. But it was too late for him to save his own reputation. He had permanently identified himself in the minds of conservatives with an "amnesty" bill — one that, predictably, got even less popular among Republican primary voters when there were no longer prominent Republican elected officials supporting it. By doing that, he'd created an easy opening for another would-be presidential candidate — say, another freshman senator with a Hispanic surname who came to office in a Tea Party surge — to distinguish himself as the true conservative alternative.</p>
<h3>Rubio's current policy is an attempt to delay his disagreement with conservatives — but that ends up reinforcing the disagreement in principle</h3>
<p>For the past two and a half years, Rubio has been espousing a sort of conversion narrative on immigration: In 2013, he didn't understand just how little Americans trusted the federal government to secure the border, and now that he understands that, he's changed his mind. That's what he's said since the summer of 2013, and that's what he told Dana Bash when she initially asked him about his support for the 2013 Senate bill last night:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>BASH: So let's talk about immigration. Senator Rubio. You co-authored a bill that supported a path to citizenship to immigrants. Do you still support that path to citizenship?</p>
<p>RUBIO: My family are immigrants. My wife's family are immigrants. All of my neighbors are immigrants. I see every aspect of this problem. The good, the bad, and the ugly. In 2013 we learned that the American people don't trust the federal government to enforce immigration laws and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we prove to the American people that immigration is under control.</p>
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<p>Republicans have heard that before — namely from Sen. John McCain, who said something very similar in the 2008 primaries about his own immigration reform bill. And since after losing the 2008 election McCain went right back to supporting legalization, conservatives had reason for distrust.</p>
<p>Rubio, however, has taken the conversion narrative one step further — he's made it the central principle of his current immigration proposal, which is essentially, <em>Let's do the things that all Republicans agree on, and then we can deal with the rest after that. </em>This looks a lot like the 2013 Senate bill in terms of <em>what </em>Rubio wants to do: more border agents and fencing, mandatory employment verification for all workers, and "modernizing" the legal immigration system (including an expansion of high-skilled immigration). But instead of those things happening <em>while </em>unauthorized immigrants are being legalized, they'd be <em>prerequisites. </em></p>
<p>There are big unanswered questions with Rubio's policy (similar to those raised by <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/4/9095851/bush-border-secure-plan">Jeb Bush's similar proposal</a> this summer). But what matters to many conservatives is what Bash pushed Rubio on in a follow-up question: whether his policy means unauthorized immigrants would ultimately get legalized. And the answer to that is yes.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>BASH: You described a long path but does it end at citizenship?</p>
<p>RUBIO: I am personally open after all that has happened and after ten years in probationary status, I am open to a green card. You can't begin that process until you prove to people not just pass a law that says you will bring illegal immigration you should control you have to prove it is working. That is the lesson of 2013. And it is more true today, after a migratory crisis with migrants coming over after all the executive orders, more than ever we need to prove that illegal immigration is you should control.</p>
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<h3>Just by picking the fight — and not screwing up — Cruz won with GOP voters</h3>
<p>One big reason many Republican insiders have been impressed by Rubio so far is his debate performance. And one big reason people have been impressed by his debate performance, frankly, is that he's managed to fend off attacks from other candidates on immigration even though everyone in the party knows it's his weak spot<em>.</em></p>
<p>Marco Rubio is very good at debating policy, and he knows immigration policy extremely well. Ultimately, that doesn't matter in a presidential debate — when two candidates argue with each other about a policy disagreement and voters agree with one of the candidates, it doesn't much matter whether the other one has more facts at his disposal. But Rubio's been able to use his knowledge to deflect and distract his opponents from the fundamental problem of the 2013 bill. He was able to do this with Donald Trump in the first debate, and then again in the third debate.</p>
<p>This is what Rubio tried to do when Bash asked the question last night — he turned the subject to his current position, which he could defend on the merits. Unfortunately for Rubio, he is not, in fact, the only Republican good at debating.</p>
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<img alt="Ted Cruz" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Yd04Auj8YQowUISdPG3RulWSK3g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/assets/4807778/465615413.jpg">
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<p>Ted Cruz is literally a champion debater. But Cruz didn't launch a frontal attack on Rubio on immigration in the first four debates. Cruz's strategy in the primaries has generally been to bide his time and let super-outsiders like Trump and Ben Carson dominate the headlines, on the assumption that he'll take their support when they collapse. (That appears to be what's happening with Carson, at least.) Now that he's surging in the polls, especially in Iowa, he saw his moment.</p>
<p>Cruz used Rubio's tendency to focus on the details against him. He turned attention to the 2013 bill's refugee provisions, leading Rubio to sputter that "in 2013 we had never faced a crisis like the Syrian refugee crisis now" — reinforcing Cruz's message that the 2013 bill wouldn't have kept America safe from 2015's threats.</p>
<p>But ultimately, Cruz drew his authority from the fact that as a member of the Judiciary Committee and then again on the Senate floor, he opposed Rubio's bill. That was the ultimate message of the exchange for conservative viewers: In 2013, "a time for choosing" (Cruz paraphrasing Reagan), Rubio supported a bill that would have legalized unauthorized immigrants, and Ted Cruz didn't. Rubio was the arsonist, and Cruz was the firefighter.</p>
<h3>Does Ted Cruz secretly support legalization?</h3>
<p>For most casual viewers — including primary voters — this was basically the end of the argument. Cruz, Rubio, CNN moderators, and Carly Fiorina (somehow) all started talking over each other, and only a very dedicated listener would have caught the flow of conversation.</p>
<p>But many "establishment" Republicans, including donors, were probably very dedicated listeners. Because it turns out that while voters may care more about Rubio's immigration position, political elites are very interested in Cruz's.</p>
<p>Marco Rubio and his campaign have been pushing the idea — one Rubio repeated last night — that the two candidates' positions on immigration are basically the same. As Rubio said: "You support legalizing people who are in this country illegally," too.</p>
<p>The Rubio campaign's evidence for this is a single amendment that Ted Cruz filed in 2013. (<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-13/did-ted-cruz-actually-support-legal-status-for-undocumented-immigrants-">Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur </a>has the backstory of the amendment.) But more importantly, Ted Cruz had never categorically <em>disavowed </em>legalization.</p>
<p>So just as the CNN moderators latched onto the "legalization or no?" question with Rubio, now they did so with Cruz. His response sure sounded categorical: "I have never supported legalization and do not intend to support legalization." But Team Rubio — and others who believe that Cruz is deliberately keeping his options open — seized on that "do not intend" as something other than an absolute no.</p>
<p>The reason this theory matters is that it's a way for Republicans who support legalization (or immigration reform more broadly) to reconcile themselves to the idea of a Cruz candidacy, as he increasingly looks like the less-crazy alternative to Donald Trump. It reinforces the idea that because Ted Cruz is a smart man — as everyone agrees he is — he is just pretending to be a hardcore conservative to sneak past the base in the primaries. In reality, they believe, he supports pragmatic, pro-business policies like (as they see it) comprehensive immigration reform — and will out himself as such once he's running in a general election campaign.</p>
<p>But pro-business Republicans have a history of deluding themselves about this. In 2011, many pro-business Republicans believed that Mitt Romney, who was, after all, a businessman like them, must secretly support comprehensive immigration reform. They turned out to be wrong, or at least not right enough to matter — whatever Romney felt in his heart, he ended up foreclosing his options to run to the center by endorsing "self-deportation." But with Cruz finally having nailed Rubio to the wall on immigration, it might be more appealing for Republican elites to persuade themselves that Cruz isn't really as aligned with anti-legalization conservatives as he seems.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10294226/immigration-cruz-rubio-amnestyDara Lind2015-12-16T10:50:02-05:002015-12-16T10:50:02-05:00Hey, Republican establishment: it's time to panic
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<img alt="No. 1 and No. 2 in the polls. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xVaLb5r3bfV0uLTkk7-2WNMKBm0=/0x82:3000x2332/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48181003/GettyImages-501525464.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>No. 1 and No. 2 in the polls. | Justin Sullivan/Getty </figcaption>
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<p>You've probably heard the hoary old tale of the boiling frog. A frog is put into a pot of pleasant warm water, and then the water's temperature is increased. The temperature goes up little by little, and so gradually, that the frog doesn't even notice — until eventually the water boils and it's cooked to death.</p>
<p>The story is a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-boiled-frog-myth-stop-the-lying-now/7446/">total myth</a>. Frogs don't really act this way. If subjected to this painful treatment, they actually jump out of the water to try to save themselves.</p>
<p>What will the Republican Party do?</p>
<p>The nomination of Donald Trump would likely be an utter disaster for the GOP. The nomination of Ted Cruz would be either only slightly less bad or even worse, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9866726/ted-cruz-electability">depending on whom you ask</a>. And yet, amazingly enough, the slow-motion train wreck that's been playing out over the past five months of the GOP primary process has put these two candidates in first and second place. Additionally, <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ia/iowa_republican_presidential_caucus-3194.html">each</a> now <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_republican_presidential_primary-3350.html">leads</a> one of the two earliest states to vote.</p>
<p>It's a debacle for Republicans that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of this year. Yet it's happened so slowly, and so gradually, that the reaction from GOP elites still appears oddly muted. Even as summer stretched into fall, they kept comforting themselves by saying that <em>it's still early</em> — accurately pointing to the fact that early polls have frequently been wrong in the past, and that outsider candidates like Trump have lost in the past.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10274602/republican-debate-winners-losers">Tuesday night's debate</a> was the final GOP debate of 2015 and could well be the year's last major campaign event. Before you know it, Christmas will be here, and New Year's will follow soon afterward. And then we're in January, and there's just one month before voting begins in Iowa on February 1. So it's definitely time for the Republican establishment to hit the panic button.</p>
<p>But it's also not clear what, exactly, elites can do at this point. Their traditional tools seem to be ineffective against both Trump and Cruz — and any organized attempt to stop them could just backfire further.</p>
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<h3>This is pretty close to a worst-case electoral scenario for Republicans</h3>
<p>Let's be clear on the political stakes here. It is not <em>impossible</em> that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/11/9891334/can-donald-trump-win">Trump or Cruz could win</a> a general election. But there's ample reason to believe that a Trump or Cruz nomination makes all of the following far more likely:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sweeping electoral defeat for Republicans, for the presidency and in the Senate at <em>least</em> (some Democrats have even suggested to me that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5960095/what-would-it-take-for-democrats-to-win-the-house">the House could be put in play</a>)</li>
<li>Either a liberal takeover of the Supreme Court or a missed chance for conservatives to pad their majority (since four of the court's nine justices will be older than 80 when the next president is inaugurated)</li>
<li>A tarnishing of the GOP's image among Hispanics that will last a very long time. (This is obviously true for Trump, but Cruz is also far further to the right on immigration than any modern GOP nominee.)</li>
</ul>
<p>With so many other options available, nominating either Trump or Cruz would be a tremendous risk to take for a party that has any interest in winning.</p>
<p>And yet somehow Trump and Cruz have ended up <em>first and second</em> in the polls, with one of them leading Iowa and the other ahead in New Hampshire.</p>
<p>Yes, the GOP saw several extreme or seemingly unelectable candidates<a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html"> surge to first place</a> during the 2011 nomination contest, but establishment favorite Mitt Romney ended up winning. Yes, past examples like Howard Dean show a poll leader really <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/25/9794796/will-donald-trump-win">can collapse very quickly</a>.</p>
<p>Is the establishment really still willing to assume that <em>two</em> poll leaders will just collapse? Two poll leaders who not only have excited voters but who <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/09/30/how-rich-is-donald-trump-you-dont-want-to-know">each</a> has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/ted-cruz-super-pacs-rake-in-38-million-120889">access</a> to tens of millions in cash?</p>
<h3>Where's that party? And if it shows up, what difference, at this point, would it make?</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0vUhjLuftD26qptBT970VRSv-a0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3970454/GettyImages-490158339.0.jpg">
<cite><p>Alex Wong/Getty Images</p></cite>
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<div style="text-align:center">
<p class="caption">"Why won't the party decide to back me?"</p>
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<p>For months, the GOP's escape hatch out of this dilemma has seemed obvious — he was named Marco Rubio. Sure, the establishment's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027471/campaign-finance-visualized">$114 million man Jeb Bush</a> had gone <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9623320/jeb-bush-president-polls">down in flames</a>. But Rubio actually seemed like a stronger general election nominee than Bush in many ways — younger, more charismatic, with more potential appeal to Hispanics, and lacking a controversial legacy name. Appropriately, his debate performances got rave reviews from pundits. "Marco Rubio is the nominee in waiting," wrote <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/marco_rubio_s_debate_win_should_make_him_the_gop_nominee_in_waiting.html">Slate's William Saletan</a> in November. "Another winning debate performance seals it."</p>
<p>Yet both Republican elites and voters keep stubbornly refusing to rally behind Rubio. He's stagnant in the polls, and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9910868/can-marco-rubio-win">faces questions about</a> his seeming lack of interest in the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. And though he's gotten a few new endorsements from GOP politicians (and a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/paul-singer-marco-rubio-215411">couple</a> of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/09/kenneth-griffin-richest-man-in-illinois-endorses-marco-rubio/?_r=0">billionaires</a>), he hasn't amassed a <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-endorsement-primary/?ex_cid=538twitter">particularly impressive overall total</a>. Rubio is not out of the picture by any means, but the past month hasn't inspired much confidence that he's well-positioned to wrap the whole thing up.</p>
<p>The <em>lack</em> of a GOP establishment effort to coordinate behind Rubio has been puzzling to many. Indeed, there's been a remarkable and historic paralysis of Republican politicians overall. You can see clear as day in <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-endorsement-primary/?ex_cid=538twitter">FiveThirtyEight's endorsement charts</a> that at this point in the nomination contest, every eventual GOP winner for decades had more endorsements than any candidate in this year's race so far.</p>
<p>However, it's also not so clear that a more organized elite backing of Rubio would do much to help him. When you get down to it, the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/23/9352273/party-decides-trump-sanders">"party decides" theory</a> has always, in the end, relied on elites' ability to persuade voters that what they want is best. Yet this year, condemnations from the party establishment have been taken as a badge of honor. Anything that can be spun as a backroom attempt to anoint a favorite would play right into Trump and Cruz's hands. And what would Rubio do with more money — pour it into yet more TV ads, a form of spending that has seemed strikingly ineffective so far?</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/z6I_sRKdBYRaItkU4EgIgxuSrVY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5337665/Ad_spendingVspolls2-1%20(1).jpg">
<cite>Javier Zarracina / Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Ad spending from the operations (campaign, Super PAC, outside nonprofits) of GOP candidates as of early December.</figcaption>
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<p>But the fact that elites aren't yet even <em>trying </em>very hard to block a likely disastrous Trump or Cruz nomination is still pretty weird, and there seem to be two main reasons for it. First, there's a sense of complacency, bred by the long-held certainty that Trump's long-held lead will vanish, that has lasted far too long by now. Second, elites just really don't know what to do — if money and endorsements won't work, they may be genuinely unsure what does.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/plan-a-for-gop-donors-wait-for-trump-to-fall-there-is-no-plan-b/2015/11/25/91436a00-92dd-11e5-8aa0-5d0946560a97_story.html">Washington Post's Matea Gold and Robert Costa</a> shed some light on this in a report last month, writing that GOP financiers are reluctant to do much against Trump for these two reasons. Some "remain confident that the race will eventually pivot away from him," and others just aren't sure what they can do to stop him. As a result, the establishment seems to feel powerless — held hostage to the whims of its voters, even in the face of imminent catastrophe.</p>
<p>Not everybody is failing to coordinate, though. As <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428515/conservative-leaders-ted-cruz-earns-allegiance-private-meeting">National Review's Tim Alberta reported</a>, a group of top social conservative leaders met this week to discuss uniting around one candidate.</p>
<p>Their choice? Ted Cruz.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10288202/republican-debate-cnn-trump-cruzAndrew Prokop2015-12-16T09:05:00-05:002015-12-16T09:05:00-05:00In a debate about "keeping America safe," Republicans mentioned guns just once
<figure>
<img alt="Republicans debate in Las Vegas." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dv97M7-PuCS7UAiw9rD8-tCvYhY=/190x0:4298x3081/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48164269/501507532.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Republicans debate in Las Vegas. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas" target="_blank">two-plus hour Republican presidential debate</a> focused on "keeping America safe," candidates mentioned guns just once — when <a href="http://www.vox.com/jeb-bush" target="_blank">Jeb Bush</a> said, "America is under the gun to lead the free world, to protect our civilized way of life."</p>
<p>But guns are one of the biggest security threats to Americans. The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-states-america">research</a> strongly indicates that America's easy access and abundance of firearms contributed to the deaths of nearly 34,000 people in 2013, including more than 11,200 due to homicides. (Terrorism <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/9437187/obama-guns-terrorism-deaths">killed</a> fewer than 75 Americans annually between 2002 and 2011.)</p>
<p></p>
<div class="chorus-snippet s-related" data-analytics-action="link:related" data-analytics-category="article">
<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-states-america">America's gun problem, explained</a><br>
</div>
<p>This is not to say that Americans should not care about terrorism and only care about gun violence. Rather, it shows that for all our (justifiable) time spent seriously debating how to confront terrorism, many of America's presidential candidates aren't willing to even <em>discuss</em> how to deal with America's gun problem, even though it takes thousands of lives each year.</p>
<p>And let's be clear: America's gun problem is very unique in the developed world.</p>
<h3>America's unique gun problem</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="America has far more gun homicides than other developed countries." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JhCH-c921B8zdhRSnQaWY-vlEqU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4119056/gun%20homicides%20developed%20countries.jpg">
<cite><p>Javier Zarracina/Vox</p></cite>
</figure>
<p>No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as America. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate as Canada, more than seven times as Sweden, and nearly 16 times as Germany, according to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list">UN data</a> compiled by the Guardian. (These gun deaths are a big reason America has a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8364263/us-europe-mass-incarceration">much higher overall homicide rate</a>, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.)</p>
<p>In fact, no other developed country comes close to the levels of gun violence, including suicides, that America has, as this chart from <a href="http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/">Tewksbury Lab</a> shows:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="America has more guns — and more gun deaths." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M0yDtOf9W32eRBRjIyB0AMVubeQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4002396/gun%20ownership%20countries.jpg">
<cite><p><a href="http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/">Tewksbury Lab</a></p></cite>
</figure>
<p>The correlation this chart demonstrates — more guns mean more gun deaths — has been backed by a lot of research. Whether at the state or country level, reviews of the evidence by the <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/">Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Control Research Center</a> have consistently found that places with more guns have more deaths after controlling for variables like socioeconomic factors and other crime. "Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide," David Hemenway, the Injury Control Research Center's director, wrote in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iANw1pb4fPAC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=david+hemenway+%22more+guns+in+a+community+lead+to+more+homicide%22&source=bl&ots=GMTIi0MHC2&sig=x63NBQltDDNYkxHQeADfEl1EOis&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2nQIVLiKFY6wyATa5YGoCw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=david%20hemenway%20%22more%20guns%20in%20a%20community%20lead%20to%20more%20homicide%22&f=false"><em>Private Guns, Public Health</em></a>.</p>
<p>This is <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8364263/us-europe-mass-incarceration">widely believed</a> by experts to be the consequence of America's relaxed policy approach to and culture of guns: Making more guns more accessible means more guns, and more guns mean more gun deaths. Researchers have found this is true not just with <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/8/9870240/gun-ownership-deaths-homicides">gun homicides</a>, but also with <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8721267/gun-suicide-gun-control">suicides</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/guns-domestic-violence-united-states-risk">domestic violence</a>, and even <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/15/9157087/police-officers-guns-homicides">violence against police</a>.</p>
<p>Here's one chart, from a 2007 <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17070975">study</a> by Harvard School of Public Health researchers, showing the correlation between statewide firearm homicide victimization rates and household gun ownership after controlling for robbery rates:</p>
<center>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="More guns means more gun homicides." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hmr5ukJau8O9I4eg3SGBkQ9WU2Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5283283/gun%20ownership%20and%20homicide%20victimization.jpg">
<cite><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17070975">Social Science and Medicine</a></cite>
</figure>
</center>
<p>At the same time, other developed nations have had some big successes curtailing gun violence by reducing the number of guns. After a 1996 <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/port-arthur-massacre-shooting-spree-changed-australia-gun-laws-n396476">mass shooting</a> in Port Arthur, Australia, killed 35 people and wounded 23 more, lawmakers passed new restrictions on guns and imposed a mandatory buyback program that essentially confiscated people's guns, seizing at least 650,000 firearms.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2012/10/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf">one review of the evidence</a> by Harvard researchers. Australia's firearm homicide rate dropped by about 42 percent in the seven years after the law passed, and its firearm suicide rate fell by 57 percent. Although it's hard to gauge how much of this was driven by the buyback program, researchers argue it likely played some role: "First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates."</p>
<p>Still, similar measures would be <em>very</em> difficult to pass in America, a nation in which gun culture and ownership are deeply ingrained. Republicans' unwillingness to even discuss the issue is a good example of that.</p>
<hr>
<h3>Watch: America's gun problem, explained</h3>
<p></p>
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<p><b>Correction</b>: Due to a transcript error, this article originally suggested there were three mentions of guns. There was only one.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10267814/republican-debate-gun-controlGerman Lopez2015-12-16T08:20:02-05:002015-12-16T08:20:02-05:003 charts that prove Trump, Rubio, and Cruz dominated the CNN Republican debate
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/d46icBC66dSY2uLcXnLNMVF6LV4=/0x0:1255x941/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48168573/time.0.0.jpg" />
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<p>Tuesday night's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas">Republican debate</a> technically had nine candidates onstage. But when you run the numbers, it's clear that three men dominated the event: <a href="http://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/marco-rubio">Marco Rubio</a>, and <a href="http://www.vox.com/ted-cruz">Ted Cruz</a>.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these are also the candidates leading the polls — and they essentially treated the CNN/Facebook debate as one all about them.</p>
<p>Look at how long each of the candidates spoke. Cruz, Rubio, and Trump all clock in above 13 minutes. After that, there's a drop-off down to Chris Christie, who spoke for 10 minutes and 47 seconds.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tO4ldFjfj7_HmBxCnUjC7DlWAEg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5306543/time.0.jpg">
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</p>
<p>If you splice the numbers by when they spoke, you can see that all three were a major presence throughout the debate. There aren't large chunks of time when they remain silent. Then look at someone like Ben Carson, who spoke three times during the debate's first hour.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IeavYq_LPXGWFL-VusZ457K9lRQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5306865/time2.0.jpg">
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<p>Trump, Cruz, and Rubio also were the dominant candidates whom <i>other </i>candidates wanted to talk about — although former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joins them in this group. He had a heated exchange with Donald Trump, while Rubio faced off with Ted Cruz over immigration.</p>
<p>The two confrontations dominated the interchanges, while the rest of the candidates concentrated their attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FhOZ7M1hPmSTjxEtmJp8sOfSRhE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5307319/mentions.0.jpg">
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</p>
<p>Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich arguably played the smallest role in the debate; he spoke the fewest minutes and wasn't once mentioned by any of the other candidates.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10272280/republican-debate-trump-rubio-cruzJavier ZarracinaSarah FrostensonSarah Kliff2015-12-16T00:38:07-05:002015-12-16T00:38:07-05:003 winners and 3 losers from the fifth Republican debate
<figure>
<img alt="Winners." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qvrVMsXEQi3II9fDwdINEW_Vd5g=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48169769/501523154.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Winners. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tuesday night's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas">CNN Republican debate</a> was perhaps the most entertaining installment since the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/7/9115255/first-republican-debate-gop-fox-news">first Fox News debate</a> in August. <a href="http://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/jeb-bush">Jeb Bush</a>'s weird personal issues with each other went from subtext to explicit, brutal text. <a href="http://www.vox.com/marco-rubio">Marco Rubio</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/ted-cruz">Ted Cruz</a> went at it over the 2013 immigration battle. Ben Carson compared bombing Syria to removing a brain tumor from a small child.</p>
<p>We won't know who "really" won until poll results trickle in. But in the meantime, here are the candidates who ended the night better off than they started it — and the ones who slipped.</p>
<h3>Winner: Donald Trump</h3>
<p>It's a good time to be Donald Trump. While he's fallen a point behind Ted Cruz in <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ia/iowa_republican_presidential_caucus-3194.html">Iowa</a>, he remains ahead by double digits in <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_republican_presidential_primary-3350.html">New Hampshire</a> and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/sc/south_carolina_republican_presidential_primary-4151.html">South Carolina</a>. <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html">Nationally</a>, he's doing as well as he ever has, with the two most recent polls showing leads of 23 and 27 points respectively. What he needed tonight was a) to not be embarrassed, and b) for no one else onstage to break out in dramatic fashion.</p>
<p>He accomplished both, and then some. Bush and Rand Paul both unleashed attacks in his direction, and he deflected both in grand fashion. Bush he dispatched with all the ruthless efficiency and contempt of a schoolyard bully. I mean that as a compliment — if not of Trump the person, then of Trump the candidate. I mean, just look at this:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>Trump: You're a tough guy, Jeb. I know.</p>
<p>Bush: You're never going to be president of the United States by insulting your way…</p>
<p>Trump: I'm at 42, and you're at 3. So far I'm doing better. You started over here [gestures next to himself in the center of the stage]. You're moving over further and further. Pretty soon you're going to be off the end.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was, in one sense, a perfect illustration of Bush's point: Trump was replying to an accusation that relies on insults and bullying with … <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10264898/donald-trump-jeb-bush-insult">insults and bullying</a>. But it successfully made Bush look pathetic and small. And some GOP viewers weren't buying Bush's shtick at all:</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Frank Luntz tells me, of his focus group: "Jeb Bush made a critical mistake by attacking Trump personally. Trump won that exchange 22 to 4."</p>
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) <a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/676970489777160195">December 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p>Same goes for Trump's exchange with Rand Paul, who assailed Trump's comments about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/08/i-dont-care-donald-trump-brushes-off-horrified-reaction-to-his-muslim-ban">"closing up the internet in some way"</a> as an assault on Americans' freedoms:</p>
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<p>Of course, Trump has been proposing policies — mass deportation, a Muslim immigration ban, etc. — that increase state power at the expense of individual liberties for this entire campaign. It's worked because it's always tied to the idea that civil libertarians are dangerous naifs and that only by getting unconstitutionally "tough" can the US compete. And so that was how Trump replied to Paul's criticisms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>TRUMP: And as far as the Internet is concerned, we're not talking about closing the Internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it.</p>
<p>Now, you could close it. What I like even better than that is getting our smartest and getting our best to infiltrate their Internet, so that we know exactly where they're going, exactly where they're going to be. I like that better. [MIXED APPLAUSE/BOOS]</p>
<p>But we have to -- who would be -- I just can't imagine somebody booing. These are people that want to kill us, folks, and you're -- you're objecting to us infiltrating their conversations? I don't think so. I don't think so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sure enough, Frank Luntz's focus group liked that too:</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Rand Paul just lost to Donald Trump, as well. Every candidate who attacks Trump fails with my focus group. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GOPDebate?src=hash">#GOPDebate</a></p>
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/676956234847768577">December 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p>"Every candidate who attacks Trump fails": This has been the dynamic all campaign. As long as it persists, Trump stays on top. And nothing that happened tonight changed that dynamic.</p>
<h3>Winner: Ted Cruz</h3>
<p>These are also auspicious times for new Iowa frontrunner Ted Cruz. Not only is he the only non-Trump candidate with real upward momentum in the polls, but <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10215348/tony-perkins-ted-cruz">establishment social conservatives are rallying behind him in droves</a> in an early sign that the GOP establishment might be willing to get past Senate Republicans' annoyance with Cruz and accept him as a less horrifying alternative to Trump.</p>
<p>Cruz didn't give the most coherent performance in the world. At one point he demonstrated that he has basically no idea what the term "carpet bombing" means:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>BLITZER: To be clear, senator Cruz, would you carpet bomb Raqqa, where there are a lot of civilians? Yes or no.</p>
<p>CRUZ: You would carpet bomb where ISIS is. The location of the troops. You use air power directed. But the object isn't to level a city, the object is to kill the ISIS terrorists. To make it, listen, ISIS is gaining strength because the perception is that they're winning. And President Obama fuels that perception.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As my colleague <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10262644/ted-cruz-isis-gop-debate">Zack Beauchamp</a> notes, this is 100 percent pure nonsense. "Carpet bombing" means the mass, indiscriminate bombing of populated areas — think the US conventional attacks on Japanese and German cities during World War II. You can't do "directed" carpet bombing. That's just normal bombing, and Obama's already doing it. Cruz was doing, in Beauchamp's words, "pure tough guy positioning."</p>
<p>But the Republican base sure seems to love pure tough guy positioning. It allows a combination of nationalistic disinterest in overly complex interventions with hyper-hawkish rhetoric in the cases where the base does want to intervene. Cruz doesn't just promise to somehow bomb the hell out of ISIS without killing more civilians than Obama already has.</p>
<p>In the debate, he promised an "America first" foreign policy, in a hopefully unintentional echo of the Charles Lindbergh–backed, Germany-sympathetic anti-war movement in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He wants to kill the bad guys but not waste time on this cuddly "democracy promotion" nonsense the way Bush did. It's a brilliant way of channeling anti-ISIS fervor without having to defend the <em>last</em> time America did a massive intervention to dislodge a regime we didn't like in Mesopotamia.</p>
<p>Even better was Cruz's exchange with Marco Rubio on immigration. Cruz repeatedly hit Rubio for his support of a pathway to citizenship, and Rubio had what he thought was an airtight rejoinder: When the Senate was debating the bipartisan immigration reform bill that Rubio helped craft, Cruz proposed an amendment that would repeal the pathway to citizenship but still allow some unauthorized immigrants to obtain legal status. Cruz didn't directly respond to that point, instead hammering home the point that Rubio wanted amnesty and Cruz fought against it.</p>
<p>Now, Cruz did sponsor that amendment. You could make an argument that his sponsorship of it indicates that he once supported legal status — or you could note that many around Cruz insist <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-13/did-ted-cruz-actually-support-legal-status-for-undocumented-immigrants-">the amendment was meant as a poison pill</a> to reduce Democratic support and kill the bill as a whole. It more or less doesn't matter. What mattered is that Rubio gave Cruz a big chunk of the debate in which to remind base voters of the one issue where they don't trust Rubio at all, and to remind them that Cruz was on their side when it counted.</p>
<h3>Winner: Hillary Clinton</h3>
<p>If you asked Hillary Clinton to rank her preferred general election opponents in order, odds are that Cruz and Trump would top the list. Trump is a candidate almost tailor-made to energize Latino turnout and turn the demographic even more strongly pro-Democratic. And Cruz has most of Trump's substantive liabilities, plus he's <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/8/9866726/ted-cruz-electability">proposed a massive 16 percent sales tax on everything</a>. Both of them are extremely potent boogeymen to get base Democrats enraged/energized. And neither has the ability to make inroads with young and Latino voters that Marco Rubio has.</p>
<p>And so when Trump and Cruz win a debate, Clinton implicitly wins the debate as well. She's getting exactly the Republican primary she wants, and it shows no signs of getting worse for her anytime soon.</p>
<h3>Loser: Marco Rubio</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="GOP Presidential Candidates Debate In Las Vegas" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zy9NqHQ9aSrwbQYTT2v9FdrRpn4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5310165/501505460.jpg">
<cite>Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Not a great night for Marco.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pundits have been <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/16/9548305/marco-rubio-trump">expecting Marco Rubio to break out and become the Republican frontrunner</a> for most of the primary cycle at this point. Once Jeb Bush began floundering, badly, Rubio seemed naturally positioned to pick up establishment Republican support, and given that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/23/9352273/party-decides-trump-sanders">the party elites allegedly decide nominations</a>, that ought to be enough to give him the nod.</p>
<p>But it just. Keeps. Not. Happening. Rubio's seen some modest polling growth but is still a distant third to Trump and Cruz in Iowa and a distant second to Trump in New Hampshire. And <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9910868/can-marco-rubio-win">his campaign strategy looks like a disaster</a>. He has fewer New Hampshire staffers than Trump, Bush, or Carson. He's spent less time in that state than any major candidate save Carson. Privately, local activists grumble that Rubio's not doing much to solicit endorsements.</p>
<p>Rubio's doing ads, and some argue that his lack of ground game isn't important. Maybe. But if national TV exposure is supposed to save him, then Rubio's going to have to start doing better in debates than he did Tuesday night. His scuffle with Cruz only served to emphasis his own key weakness: immigration. And both Cruz and Paul got in some shots at Rubio for his opposition to the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/2/8714649/senate-usa-freedom-act">USA Freedom Act</a>, which bans mass collection of customer data such as phone records. A Rubio-aligned Super PAC has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/marcorubio-backer-behind-new-anti-ted-cruz-ad-216180">run ads attacking Cruz</a> for supporting the USA Freedom Act, saying Cruz voted to "weaken national security."</p>
<p>Cruz called the Rubio camp attacks <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/6/6829675/saul-alinsky-explain-obama-hillary-clinton-rodham-organizing">"Alinskyite,"</a> in a conscious nod to the late community organizer who's become a key villain in Tea Party mythology. It's exactly the kind of attack that plays well to a conservative cable news audience, which has heard Fox News anchors rail against Saul Alinsky for years. Paul smartly pivoted to immigration immediately, further emphasizing Rubio's main weakness: "Marco has opposed at every point increased security — border security for those who come to our country":</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S9LN56_0agY" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Cruz and Paul intended to depict Rubio as a heretic, one who's particularly unserious on immigration. They also wanted to defuse one of his apparent key advantages: his reputation as a hardcore hawk on national security. Cruz and Paul accomplished those goals, while Rubio came out looking less like a consensus conservative pick and more like John Kasich: an establishmentarian whom base voters can't trust.</p>
<h3>Loser: Jeb Bush</h3>
<p>In a sense, every day that Jeb Bush continues to pretend that he might be president is a day he's losing. But this was a particularly sad showing. Bush clearly thought that attacking Donald Trump as unserious, as a "chaos candidate" who'd be a "chaos president," was what he needed to do to make inroads. His campaign even blasted out a precooked "chaos candidate" meme during the debate:</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jeb has a page up on Trump as "chaos candidate" <a href="https://t.co/Ffv2kz0g1f">https://t.co/Ffv2kz0g1f</a> <a href="https://t.co/i86viSChc8">pic.twitter.com/i86viSChc8</a></p>
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) <a href="https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/676965080341331969">December 16, 2015</a>
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<p>It <em>sort of</em> worked the first time, but the second time Bush tried to tell Trump he couldn't "insult his way" to the presidency, Trump saw the situation for what it was: an opportunity to insult this whiny, entitled WASP who thinks the presidency is his birthright and that Trump, and implicitly his supporters too, are unserious and unworthy of influence. So Trump pointed out that he's beating the living shit out of Bush under every conceivable metric and left it at that. He even added some sarcastic mocking of Bush's macho posturing: "Oh, I know. You're a tough guy, Jeb. I know."</p>
<p>Here's how that all came across to Luntz's focus group:</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">My <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GOPDebate?src=hash">#GOPDebate</a> focus group's words to describe Jeb Bush: "weak," "desperate," and "whiny." It's over for him. Sorry.</p>
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/676965120472387585">December 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>
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<p>"Weak, desperate, whiny" basically covers it.</p>
<h3>Loser: Ben Carson</h3>
<p>Carson briefly looked like a serious threat to Trump, but since October he's slid back from first place in Iowa to fourth. Media attention has moved on to Ted Cruz. One of Carson's main appeals — his perceived honesty relative to a field of career politicians and, y'know, Donald Trump — collapsed when it became clear that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/6/9685574/ben-carson-west-point-politico">Carson's been fibbing about at least some aspects of his biography</a> for years. And with his initial rise looking like a fluke, it's unclear what he could do to get back on top.</p>
<p>His appearance Tuesday night didn't seem like the kind of thing that could halt that slide. His answer on North Korea was unintentionally hilarious, the remarks of someone clearly out of his depth:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>BLITZER: Dr. Carson, what would you do about Kim Jong-Un?</p>
<p>CARSON: Well, I definitely believe that he is unstable, and I do, in fact, believe that China has a lot more influence with him than we do. But we also recognize that North Korea is in severe financial straits, and they have decided to use their resources to build their military, rather than to feed their people and to take care of the various humanitarian responsibilities that they have.</p>
<p>We can capitalize upon that. You know, we should use our economic power in lots of different ways. I think we can use that in order to keep Putin contained, because he is a one-horse show. Energy. And we have an abundance of energy, but we have archaic energy exportation rules. We need to get rid of those, allow ourselves to really make Europe dependent on us and other parts of the world dependent on us for energy. Put him back in his little box where he belongs.</p>
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<p>In other words, Carson would handle Kim Jong-Un by legalizing oil exports and weakening Vladimir Putin. If you're confused, join the club:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Dr. Carson, how would you deal with North Korea?" "We need to drill for oil." "Thank you, Dr. Carson." <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GOPDebate?src=hash">#GOPDebate</a></p>
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) <a href="https://twitter.com/michaelianblack/status/676971184324526081">December 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
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<p>Carson also stumbled when Hugh Hewitt asked him the most obvious possible question you could ask Ben Carson: What, exactly, about being a successful pediatric neurosurgeon prepares you to be commander-in-chief, "to command troops from Djibouti to Japan, troops from Afghanistan to Iraq, to be in charge of the men and women watching on Armed Services Network tonight?"</p>
<p>Carson explained that he deserves to be president because he once ran a scholarship program:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CARSON: Well, you know, there's a false narrative that only the political class has the wisdom and the ability to be commander-in- chief. But if you go back and you study the design of our country, it was really designed for the citizen statesman.</p>
<p>And we need to be talking about where does your experience come from? You know, and I've had a lot of experience building things, organizing things, you know, a national scholarship program.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That wasn't even the most bizarre answer he gave all night. That would be his explanation of how defeating ISIS is like taking a tumor out of a child's head:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>HEWITT: We're talking about ruthless things tonight — carpet bombing, toughness, war. And people wonder, could you do that? Could you order air strikes that would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands? Could you wage war as a commander-in-chief?</p>
<p>CARSON: Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them we're going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor. They're not happy about it, believe me. And they don't like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me.</p>
<p>Sometimes you — I sound like him. [gestures at Trump].</p>
<p>(APPLAUSE)</p>
<p>You know, later on, you know, they really realize what's going on. And by the same token, you have to be able to look at the big picture and understand that it's actually merciful if you go ahead and finish the job, rather than death by 1,000 pricks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the moment, Carson fared all right with the audience, which thought the Trump nod was funny and booed Hewitt when he tried to ask a follow-up clarifying Carson's thoughts on civilian casualties. But it didn't do anything to rebut the idea that this is a candidate who's seriously out of his depth on foreign affairs and national security, who thinks in pat parables and folksy anecdotes but who's not actually fit to command the military.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10274602/republican-debate-winners-losersDylan Matthews2015-12-15T23:50:02-05:002015-12-15T23:50:02-05:00Republicans are trying to beat Trump with wishful thinking, and it's not working
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<p>If <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> hadn't been leading national GOP polls for months, one could be forgiven for seeing him as a loser in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas">the Republican debate in Las Vegas</a>. The main policy ideas he articulated were either nonsensical (<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10259820/donald-trump-gop-debate-internet">shutting down "areas" of the internet</a>) or morally abhorrent (killing the relatives of terrorists). He didn't talk that much, he chewed up a lot of his time in a petty personal feud with <a href="http://www.vox.com/jeb-bush">Jeb Bush</a>, he displayed a lack of knowledge of "nuclear triad" jargon, and he deviated from key elements of Republican Party ideology. But it's December now. We saw the Summer of Trump turn into the Autumn of Trump, and in the latest polls <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html">Trump's overall lead was higher than ever</a>. Everything that's powered his rise was still intact throughout the debate, and nothing happened to stop his momentum.</p>
<p>Most strikingly of all, his main rivals for the nomination didn't even <em>try</em> to stop him. As conservative pundit Matt Continetti put it, "The Republican candidates won’t attack Trump because they genuinely do not understand him or his meteoric rise to the stratosphere of American politics. They’re afraid of the consequences — are they misjudging the moment? Do they need his supporters? Will they be missing a witty comeback when Trump insults them mercilessly?"</p>
<p>That leaves them dueling with each other and sort of vaguely assuming that Trump will collapse the way Ben Carson did. In August or even October, that might have been a reasonable assumption. But from the standpoint of mid-December, it's nothing but a vague hope. Trump is in a position right now to win by not losing, and by that standard, boy, did he win.</p>
<h3>A fear-centric debate plays to Trump's strengths</h3>
<p>Establishment Republicans expressed early hope after the terrorist attack in Paris that the return of national security as a first-tier political issue would help pop the Trump bubble. After all, Jeb Bush and <a href="http://www.vox.com/marco-rubio">Marco Rubio </a>— with their close ties to the group of national security experts who let Osama bin Laden get away and then launched and lost a war in Iraq — were clearly the serious foreign policy candidates in the race.</p>
<p>It didn't happen — at all. Instead, the increased focus on security only helped Trump. He had branded himself through years of birtherism and anti-immigrant demagoguery as <em>the</em> candidate of xenophobia. The threat of terrorism set into motion a process of <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/10/9881876/trump-muslims-ethnic-outbidding">"ethnic outbidding"</a> that Trump was perfectly positioned to win.</p>
<p>The entire tenor of the debate — almost obsessively focused on ISIS to the exclusion of all other issues — played perfectly into the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that has boosted Trump.</p>
<h3>Trump's rivals didn't attack him</h3>
<p>The toughest blows landed against Trump, by far, came from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who rightly pointed out that his ideas entail "getting rid of the First Amendment" and shredding the Geneva Convention.</p>
<p>Fortunately for Trump, Paul is a total non-factor in the race, and none of the other candidates pursued this line of attack. Jeb Bush, who's also sunk to a point of deep marginalization, also went after Trump, arguing that "you can't insult your way to the presidency," only to be <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10264898/donald-trump-jeb-bush-insult">buried under a barrage of insults</a>.</p>
<p>Trump's main rivals at this point are Cruz, Rubio, and Chris Christie, and none of them had much of anything to say about him. Recent elite buzz that's <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/10/9886152/donald-trump-fascism">compared Trump to a fascist</a> was nowhere to be heard from anywhere on the stage. Rather than challenge Trump, the main contenders echoed him. Ted Cruz argued that "political correctness is killing people." And in a contest to be the least politically correct, Trump is winning in a landslide.</p>
<h3>Trump says things no other Republican will</h3>
<p>Speaking of the cycle of Middle Eastern wars inaugurated under George W. Bush, Trump asked a rather profound question: "What do we have now?"</p>
<p>"We have spent $3 trillion and probably much more," he <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10296032/donald-trump-gop-debate-iraq-war" target="_blank">continued</a>. "Thousands and thousands of lives; we have nothing. Wounded warriors all over the place, who I love, we have nothing for it."</p>
<p>This is a far cry from GOP orthodoxy, and frankly not even something mainstream Democrats will acknowledge. Indeed, coming from a mainstream Democrat it might strike many as excessively unpatriotic. But Trump's visceral connection with the anxieties of older white working-class Americans allows him to give expression to certain unpleasant thoughts without ever raising the specter that he might be less than fully nationalistic. He later elaborated on the theme in a passage that echoed elements of John Kerry's 2004 campaign, but delivered in a world that knows much more certainly that the Iraq War was a fiasco:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems, our airports and all the other problems we have we would have been a lot better off I can tell you that right now. We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East but to humanity, the people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away and for what? It's not like we had victory. It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Remarkably, nobody really challenged him on this premise. The current polling frontrunner said the main foreign policy undertaking of the previous Republican administration was a multitrillion-dollar waste, and none of the Republicans onstage wanted to argue that he was wrong.</p>
<h3>The stop-Trump effort is composed of wishful thinking</h3>
<p>Trump as the GOP nominee would be a disaster for Republican Party elites on an almost unimaginable scale. The party line continues to be that it won't and can't happen.</p>
<blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Again: Trump will not be the nominee. But he just isn't going to fall much in a world where Rubio + Cruz aren't going after him.</p>
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) <a href="https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/676980069076717568">December 16, 2015</a>
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<p>But for Trump to lose, someone has to actually beat him. And for someone to beat him, someone has to attack him — and persuasively. As of right now, only Jeb Bush is really trying, and there's nothing persuasive about his efforts.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10270608/trump-won-debateMatthew Yglesias2015-12-15T23:49:06-05:002015-12-15T23:49:06-05:00The GOP debate, in one tweet
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<p>For someone who follows US foreign policy, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10219954/cnn-republican-debate-2015-las-vegas" target="_blank">Tuesday night's GOP debate</a> was almost physically painful to watch. This tweet, from New York Times Magazine contributor Ana Marie Cox, perfectly summarizes why:</p>
<blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">This wasn’t a "foreign policy" debate, or even a "national security" debate. It was contest about who could tell the scariest story.</p>
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) <a href="https://twitter.com/anamariecox/status/676975933635624960">December 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words: The debate was more than two hours of scary rhetoric and fearmongering, with pitifully little policy substance to back it up.</p>
<p>"We need to rebuild our military, to destroy ISIS before it destroys us," Jeb Bush declared. "America has been betrayed," Chris Christie announced. "America's influence has declined while this president has destroyed our military," Marco Rubio exclaimed.</p>
<p>And those are all quotes from the opening statements! The entire debate was filled with hyperbole designed to convince the audience that the candidates understand the fact that foreign news today seems very scary. (The reality, incidentally, is that America is <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8716261/gop-primary-threats">safer than it almost ever has been</a>).</p>
<p>And when the candidates got away from fearmongering, and talked about actual policy substance, the debate was very often a nightmare. A few examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ted Cruz said we should "carpet bomb" ISIS, but clearly didn't know what that meant. And in fact, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10262644/ted-cruz-isis-gop-debate">his whole ISIS answer made no sense</a>.</li>
<li>Ben Carson's plan for dealing with <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10266898/ben-carson-north-korea-gop-debate">North Korea</a> was bizarrely focused on Vladimir Putin: He proposed to put the "one horse show" (his term for Putin) "in a box" by doing something to energy exports to Europe. He never explained what that had to do with North Korea.</li>
<li> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10259820/donald-trump-gop-debate-internet">Donald Trump</a> called for America to shut down "areas" of the internet "where we are at war with somebody." Nobody, probably including Trump, knows what that means.</li>
</ul>
<p>Things like this don't happen, as Cox said, in a meaningful debate over foreign policy. But in a night where substance was secondary, and fear came first, policy incoherence was almost beside the point.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10270134/gop-debate-cnn-december-one-tweetZack Beauchamp