Posted on 08/07/2015 6:22:17 PM PDT by jimbo123
CLEVELAND. It was billed as The Donald Trump Show, and the Republican front-runner delivered. He mugged. He pouted. He projected outrage without being troubled by specificity or fact. When he got punched — and the moderators threw haymakers all night — he stuck out his chin and punched back.
Trump made it through the first Republican debate by avoiding the one mistake that could have seriously damaged his insurgent campaign: sounding like a professional politician. For that reason alone, he seemed to me the clear winner.
I watched the debate at the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland with a crowd of true-believer conservatives at a viewing party sponsored by the American Conservative Union. It might not have been a representative sample of Republican primary voters, and I should note that there was an open bar. So my observations should not be confused with actual political science.
That said, it was fascinating that Trump got the loudest cheers, by far, from the beginning of the debate until about three-fourths of the way through, when either exhaustion or the bar began to take a toll and the crowd’s attention seemed to wander.
Anyone who thought the Fox News moderators might go easy on the GOP field, or at least its leader, was mistaken. Yet when Bret Baier maneuvered Trump into acknowledging that he might run in the general election as an independent, there were oohs and aahs — but no catcalls. When Megyn Kelly pressed him on the crude and hurtful things he has said about women, Trump’s shrug — “What I say is what I say” — got a laugh, and his attack on “political correctness” drew applause. When Chris Wallace burrowed in on his four corporate bankruptcies, Trump’s explanation that he was just playing by the rules went over
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This contest has not been called :” Mr. Universe and the 9 dwarves.”
you obviously didn’t watch the same deme debate I did.
BTTT
BTTT
bump
Trump was Trump. The moderators crafted sleazy tabloid level snark and it backfired.
conservatives in this country are pissed off. Trump sees and feels it and he articulates it. He tell the power structure who gave us Romney, McCain, and Dole that we cannot afford a third Obama term in clinton. I think Cruz gets it but otherwise the rest of the group do not feel the seething rage.
Trump looked very Presidential.
Well the general electorate gave us eight years of Barak Obama and look what that gave us; a declining economy, a decline in international stature and racial strife that we haven’t seen since the 1960’s.
Hopefully the general electorate has learned something since 2012.
Eugene Robinson? “Double troll concern troll be trollin’”.
And the audience was made up of Gopee faithful attending a conference. Couldn’t have been better planned by Little Kim
That was his baptism by fire into the world of national politics. He survived. I’m sure he learned from it. Hopefully he uses what he learned to become a better candidate and to play a better game.
Let me guess as I see the author’s name ( a known liberal ):
Is it because Trump praised the Canadian and Scottish healthcare system as something that works well?
Yes, it was his first debate. He did fine and I think he will learn from it. Trump 2016
Did you know Jeb Bush polled 2% in the Drudge poll?
One America News Network is running this Gravis poll above.
This was no “debate”. The afternoon event could be considered one, barely.
I thought the reason that Trump was the clear winner, was the Rosie O’Donnell joke.
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