[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

No question.

[McGruff]

I agree. His smackdown of the moderators was epic.

[samtheman]

It’s so obvious even the leftists get it right.

[McGruff]

While Cruz waited for Trump to flame out,

Bwahh! Zach did you see any of the polling after the debate. Trump's numbers were YUUUGE.

[nathanbedford]

If the analysis is right it is no less right because it is uttered by the Huffington Post. Here is a reply I posted along the same lines on another thread:

Bush made his attack on Rubio based on cold calculation and nothing less.

Bush had almost exclusive access to the tens of millions of establishment Republican K St. lobbyists, Wall Street crony capitalists, Chamber of Commerce cheap labor greedy contributors. His lackluster performance on the stump made so painfully and embarrassingly obvious by his debate performances as well as his one-on-one interviews, have caused these very calculating fatcats to reach the unavoidable conclusion, Jeb Bush will not win.

So they cast about for a replacement and saw that Chris Christie had been ruined by Bridge Gate so he was dismissed as the wrong horse. They look at Governor Kasich of Ohio and they see an erratic individual, good for their issues, even soft enough on immigration, compliant enough on supporting Obama care but with deficiencies in the charisma department, so they know he will not present a coherent, effective candidacy which has been clearly confirmed by his weak polling numbers. Carly Fiorina, while brilliant on her feet, has a timebomb in her biography which simply cannot be diffused and, besides, it is not clear how reliable she would be. In other words, it is not clear whether she would be an honest politician in their eyes, one who when he [or she] is bought, stays bought.

All eyes now turn onto Marco Rubio who has demonstrated he has all the qualities they need: a willingness to betray the people who put him in office and the debating skills necessary to sell the deal.

Jeb Bush's advisers, if not Jeb Bush himself, were smart enough to see the obvious and knew that all the money with which the Bush campaign and the Bush family intended to win this election in an air war with Hillary, were about to cut off the financial tap and they understood immediately that Rubio must be destroyed or their campaign was over.

The Bush campaign understood that before they could beat the insurgents for the election they had to maintain their exclusive hold on the establishment and the establishments money as a base from which in Mitt Romney style they could finance television blitzkrieg and when the primary elections when they got expensive. Marco Rubio threatened all that.

So Bush took his only option, to attempt to destroy Marco Rubio in the debate while he could still draw down on his relationship with the Republican establishment's fatcats. Bush failed, he blew it, the attack backfired, Bush is finished, and Marco Rubio becomes the anointed as well as the financially supported darling of the Republican establishment.

For reasons which I have posted before, that means this race ultimately will be Rubio vs. Cruz.

[PROCON]

[liberalh8ter]

Why is it not okay to call illegal immigrants rapists and criminals when both have proved to be true yet HuffPo has no problem accusing white conservatives of being racist and of waging a war on women; both untrue.

[SparkyBass]

[Hostage]

> “Cruz trounced the outsider candidates, ....”

What ?????????

Let me check the source .... oh, it’s HuffPo. That explains it. They have a low-IQ reporting staff.

Ted never trounced the ‘outsider candidates’. He trounced the media and his did fantastically well in doing so.

I see Ted picking up Rubio’s support and a few others when they drop out. I see him solidifying support at the 15% to 18% level, enough for Donald Trump to pick him as VP.

[cripplecreek]

On twitter even uber Lefty Patton Oswalt said “I hate him with the power of 1000 revving chainsaws but Ted Cruz is 100% right”.

[rrrod]

Debate win...Cruz..Rubio...Trump.

[ScottinVA]

Without a doubt. He and Rubio cleaned up Wednesday night.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Debate? The goal is to win the nomination.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

I continue to be ^amazed^ at the media.

Trump is running very few adverts explaining his brand because the media keeps giving him FREE AIR TIME. This is a brilliant strategy, in my opinion.

Correspondingly, the media can’t help themselves because Trump is running in front and they MUST report.

Media! Y’all have been (and are being) played by A New York billionaire, real estate mogul and capitalist; all of the things you hate.

Haters gotta hate.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

while getting a lot of press clips about reading Green Eggs and Ham.

I've heard this from Republican friends, virtually word for word. I try to stay calm, but it really pisses me off.

I watched about 8 hours of his filibuster and he was completely coherent throughout --a truly astounding oratorical feat.

During his speech he mentioned how he read "Green Eggs and Ham" to his daughter, and read a portion of it. The Left made it out like he was using the old tactic of reading from the phone book.

It's bad enough that liberals lie, but worse when OUR SIDE repeats the lies.

[RayChuang88]

When Ted Cruz specifically denounced the tone of the questioning by the moderators in the CNBC debate, it completely flustered the moderators and they never recovered from that experience. And it was a devastating attack, because Cruz showed the Left-leaning bias of the mainstream media out in the open.

In short, the American public will start to view the likes of the New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and so on with increasing skepticism. And that becomes bad news for Hillary Clinton, because she can't hide behind a discredited MSM....