Grading the GOP Candidates, Round 5

A tag-team match between proponents of an America-first foreign policy against hawkish advocates of regime change and nation building dominated the conversation in the Tuesday night GOP debate in Las Vegas.

The evening produced less Trump-bashing than previous debate-night affairs. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas dominated much of the contest, battling as if the race were already a two-way contest.

CNN produced a night more focused on policy than the previous slugfest the network hosted.

Here’s how the candidates fared:

Sen. Ted Cruz
Final Grade: A

Cruz deployed debate skills honed through a career in law to command the stage and lay out justifications for his candidacy, not only for the primary but for a general election matchup with Hillary Clinton.

Cruz linked ordinary Americans’ frustrations with political correctness to intelligence failures under President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton’s stewardship. “Political correctness is killing people,” Cruz thundered, going on to cite the Obama administration’s reluctance to monitor social media accounts or pursue possible radical ties because of its hypersensitivity to profiling.

Cruz: ‘I’ll Build a Wall'[lz_jwplayer video=”nxphAD06″ ads=“false”]

That narrative is tailor-made to wield in a fight for Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin voters against Clinton, who has been pushed to the Left by her Democratic challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and has embraced the forces of radical political correctness.

Speaking in broad strokes on his vision for an American-first foreign policy and filibustering his way through questions that put him in danger, Cruz seemed like a candidate ready for his moment.

“I introduced legislation that I believe is more narrowly targeted at the actual threat,” Cruz said, highlighting three pieces of legislation he filed to back up Republican governors opposed to forced settlement of Syrian refugees in their states.

Cruz has emerged as a national party leader on the issue, putting sensible legislative proposals forward as the media and Establishment hammer Trump for his rhetoric on banning all Muslim immigrants.

“We will build a wall that works, and I’ll get Donald Trump to pay for it,” Cruz said, in a lighthearted jab that nevertheless seemed to mark the official start of his march on Trump’s supporters.

In a back-and-forth with Rubio, Cruz hammered his fellow senator for “Alinsky-like attacks, like Barack Obama,” referring to Rubio’s super PAC ads attacking Cruz for voting to end the National Security Agency’s mass bulk data collection.

Cruz went on to draw a tangible distinction from the foreign policy supported by both Rubio and Clinton, which prioritizes regime change and nation building over killing terrorists and putting the interests of Americans first.

Gov. Chris Christie
Final Grade: A-

After Christie’s performance in the Tuesday prime-time debate, it is hard to remember that only weeks ago the New Jersey governor was forced to swallow his pride and take the stage alongside the likes of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former New York Gov. George Pataki in the undercard debate.

Christie finally began to lay out a narrative case for his candidacy as a D.C. outsider armed with executive experience.

Christie: ‘Eyes Glazing Over'[lz_jwplayer video=”E3QHRkpO” ads=“false”]

“This is what it’s like to be on the floor of the United States Senate,” Christie chided Cruz, Rubio, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul after a tense exchange among the three over NSA surveillance. “This is the difference between doing something … and being one of 100 debating it,” he said.

Lumping all three senators together, and working to define them all as products of Washington, is a smart strategy for Christie, who needs most of all to sink Rubio to earn a shot at winning the GOP’s New Hampshire primary.

“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now,” Christie thundered in one of the strongest hawkish lines of the night.

Look for Christie to continue to attempt to outgun Rubio on rebuilding the military and intervention abroad to win over the Establishment-linked neoconservatives.

Sen. Rand Paul
Final Grade: A-

No doubt feeling the heat of having barely made the prime-time debate stage at all, Paul mustered everything he had for one of his strongest nights of the contest to date.

Amid strong, though misleading, rhetoric from Rubio on NSA surveillance rollbacks endangering Americans, Paul put Rubio on the defensive by shifting the discussion to immigration and savaging Rubio’s weakness on the border.

“I’m great and strong on national defense, but he’s the weakest of all the candidates on immigration,” Paul said, bringing the fight to the Florida senator.

“Marco has more of an allegiance to Chuck Schumer and to the liberals than he does to conservative policy,” Paul declared in a stinging moment for Rubio, who suffered five comparisons to incoming Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer from Paul and Cruz throughout the night.

Paul also whacked front-runner Donald Trump more skillfully than in past debates, suggesting support for Trump’s notion of targeting terrorist families would mean totally giving up on Americans’ belief in the Constitution.

Paul’s performance was excellent, though his campaign has been on life support, and his path to the nomination seems long lost.

Sen. Marco Rubio
Final Grade: B+

With the skill of a veteran politician, Rubio repeatedly steered the debate conversation back to the issue of NSA bulk surveillance, an issue the Rubio campaign has targeted as a weak-point for Cruz.

But Cruz was well-prepared to deflect Rubio’s criticism on the issue, and Paul took Rubio on directly for suggesting the program meaningfully increased the security of Americans while saying Rubio was weak on the security of American borders.

Cruz, Rubio Spar Over Immigration[lz_jwplayer video=”anSRWQv2″ ads=“false”]

Rubio also continued his effort to obscure his weakness on amnesty by suggesting Cruz supported past measures offered as amendments during the Gang of Eight fight to increase legal immigrant visas. Rubio earned big applause lines for tough, hawkish talk on ISIS, and, along with Cruz, looked like a contender with the political skill to remain in the top-tier of contention.

Donald Trump
Final Grade: B+

Trump had fewer back-and-forth brawls with other contenders than in past debates, but nevertheless took inevitable heat from candidates looking to bring down the front-runner. Trump came off the winner of most of the exchanges, easily swatting away canned lines from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on his judgment and even complimenting other candidates on the stage.

Trump Slams CNN[lz_jwplayer video=”NdEdf43z” ads=“false”]

“We’re not talking about isolation, we’re talking about security,” Trump said to his opening question from moderator Wolf Blitzer on his Muslim immigrant ban suggestion, defining his comments in the vein of an Americans-first security policy.

Trump hit all his important notes.

“They shouldn’t be using the word mastermind,” Trump later said, slamming the media for its coverage of terrorists. “These are thugs, these are terrible people.”

Gov. John Kasich
Final Grade: C

Kasich early on took the initiative in slamming President Obama and left-leaning European leaders for gleefully flocking to France for a climate summit but refusing to tackle head-on the growing threat of terrorism.

But after a strong open, the Ohio governor largely faded in a contest dominated by Cruz, Rubio, Paul, and Christie. Kasich dug his own 2016 grave in previous debate performances panning conservative positions on illegal immigration, and he did not do enough Tuesday night to be uniquely remembered, let alone break-out.

Dr. Ben Carson
Final Grade: C-

Carson came into the debate Tuesday desperately needing to stop the bleeding of his campaign. He largely failed.

Though there were moments when Carson appeared to speak with knowledge on matters of foreign policy, the subject matter of the debate was ill-suited to a Carson comeback. The pediatric neurosurgeon gave a very disjointed answer at one point, comparing the mercy of operating on a child to bombing innocent civilians. It came off as nearly pure rambling.

“We need to think about the needs of the American people” before solving problems in the Middle East, Carson said, joining in with the America-first candidates but not coming off as their champion.

Carly Fiorina
Final Grade: D

After several presidential-class performances in the early debates, a series of lackluster performances have likely relegated Fiorina to irreversible drop-out watch.

Fiorina’s strongest lines of the night came when tying her experience as a technology CEO to a call for private industry to get involved in stopping terrorism. Fiorina said security agencies missed the Boston bombers and San Bernardino shooter because the “government is woefully behind the technology curve.”

The performance did not contain any glaring errors, but it failed to remind voters of any narrative justification for her candidacy.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush
Final Grade: D

This was Bush’s moment to assert his viability in a race increasingly focused on terrorism and foreign policy. For weeks, the Bush campaign raised expectations for Jeb coming out of the last CNN contest.

Bush was completely outshone in hawkish Establishment posturing by fellow Floridian Rubio, and he was largely a non-factor in heated cross-stage exchanges on NSA surveillance and the merits of regime change.

“We need to get the lawyers off the back of the war fighters,” Bush said early on, previewing a night full of canned hawkish lines that paled compared to the war drums of Rubio.

To raise expectations high — only to inevitably disappoint — seems to be the operating strategy of the Bush campaign, and it may be time to recognize that it is not going to work.

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