OnSaturday Republican Debate Turns Into a Live Night Fight

Verbal punches were thrown, and the New Hampshire audience booed as though they were at a bare-knuckle brawl during ABC’s Saturday-night Republican debate. Marco Rubio was on the receiving end of some of the most punishing blows. The debate began like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, with Ben Carson jamming up the entryway to the stage by refusing to take his place at the podium. Donald Trump added to the logjam, reducing Jeb Bush to squirming his way around Trump and Carson. Why did this happen? Apparently Carson didn’t hear his name called, and ABC’s bumbling at getting the men out of the cattle chute was certainly a funny way to start things off, lending the proceedings a clownish tone.That tone changed abruptly once everyone was finally coaxed into their spots, however. After Rubio dodged a question about his experience in the Senate by bringing up President Obama and batting him around, Chris Christie chastised Rubio, calling Rubio’s spiel a “memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is [and it] doesn’t help one person.” How did Rubio respond? By repeating the same 30-second speech, nearly word-for-word. Remarkably, Rubio did the exact same thing a few minutes later. The effect was to leave a viewer thinking Rubio is either obsessed with his Obama rhetoric, or that he was at a loss as to how to improvise clear answers. For a man who, going into this debate, was seen as an up-and-coming challenger to frontrunners Trump and Cruz, the debate represented some fizzled steam. Trump was booed by the audience when he tried to stop a Bush criticism of him. “Let me talk — quiet,” commanded Trump, putting a finger to his lips as one might shush a noisy child. The crowd did not like that condescending move. Trump, ever-unpredictable, responded with something I haven’t seen before: He attacked the studio audience, suggesting that the hall was full of “donors” who were unhappy that he, Trump, doesn’t take donations. So the audience booed that. It was a crazy-fox strategy: risk alienating the relatively few people in the auditorium in order to regale the millions watching at home. Not sure how that plays to New Hampshire citizens voting on Tuesday.The tumult of the debate was due solely to the candidates themselves; the debate’s primary moderators, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, were mostly tedious questioners, too often quoting one candidate’s accusation against another, and asking for a response. Why couldn’t Muir and Raddatz come up with their own accusations? And while there were current issues that could have been raised for discussion at some length — the Flint, Mich., water crisis, for example — the moderators reached for a different kind of water issue: the use of waterboarding. All this did was provide Trump an occasion to puff up and deliver a bellicose, “I’d bring back waterboarding, and I’d being back a helluva lot worse than waterboarding!” This was moderating in a manner that enlightened no one.By any measure, you’d have to say that John Kasich, Christie, and Bush helped themselves the most this night, launching pointed rejoinders at frontrunners Trump, Cruz, and Rubio, garnering more spontaneous applause than those three governors have attracted in any debate to date. By the end, as the candidates milled around the stage hugging their relatives and signing autographs, Rubio looked a bit dazed, as though he’d been sucker-punched. Thus the debate began in confusion and ended in bafflement.