USA | No breakouts in Republican hopefuls’ debate

Republican presidential candidates John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul

Marco Rubio emerged unscathed. Ben Carson defended his integrity. Donald Trump flashed his dominant personality. And Jeb Bush avoided disaster.
Mission accomplished.
Aided by tentative questioning, the Republican Party’s top presidential candidates executed their strategies with little resistance in Tuesday night’s (yesterday in Macau) prime-time debate. Yet with no breakout moments — good or bad — the muddled status quo continues in the Republican Party’s unruly 2016 contest, with time running out to change voters’ minds heading into the holiday season.
That’s good news for leading outsiders Trump and Carson, who have surprised the political world with remarkable staying power atop national polls. It’s also good news for a surging Rubio, who entered the night with a target on his back and avoided any stumbles.
The status quo is not as good for Bush, the onetime establishment favorite now clinging to his political life.
The former Florida governor lived to fight another day after Tuesday’s performance. But he was overshadowed at times by another pragmatic-minded executive, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who stepped on Bush’s opportunities and gave nervous supporters another reason to question Bush’s New Hampshire-focused comeback attempt.
If Bush did well Tuesday night, however, Rubio did better.
Bush and the rest of the field completely ignored questions raised this week about Rubio’s use of a Florida Republican Party credit card during his time in the state legislature. The Rubio campaign had released two years of spending reports just days earlier.
And none of the candidates — or moderators — engaged Rubio when the discussion shifted to immigration, considered a key vulnerability among conservatives who oppose Rubio’s plan to give immigrants in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship.
As the Rubio-Bush dynamic continued unchanged, so did the standing of Carson and Trump.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, entered the night with a plan to defend his record more aggressively. He had faced intense questions about his personal story in recent days, but was given a free pass on the issue Tuesday night.
“People who know me know I’m an honest person,” Carson told the debate audience, flashing humor as he thanked moderators for “not asking me what I said in the 10th grade.”
But Carson struggled at times to demonstrate a command of policy — stating erroneously, for example, that Chinese troops are in Syria. But such mistakes have mattered little to conservative supporters who blamed the media for his recent challenges.
Trump, whose tell-it-
like-it-is personality is perhaps his best asset, entered the night having been at or near the top of the polls for several months. He did little to change that, occasionally jabbing his rivals and appealing to hardline conservatives who support his plan to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally.
He also backed off his criticism of Bush and Rubio almost completely. On the eve of the debate, he called Rubio “a lightweight” on Twitter and attacked his immigration plan. Trump avoided both topics Tuesday night and instead endorsed Rubio’s plan to strengthen the nation’s military.
The absence of a game-changing moment deepens the sense of uncertainty over the Republican Party’s 2016 field. With the next debate set for Dec. 15, the candidates won’t have another prime-time opportunity to reach voters for more than a month.
And it will only get harder to get voters’ attention with the holiday season rapidly approaching and television airwaves getting filled with conflicting campaign ads. Steve Peoples, Washington, AP