First, I didn't watch: I read thread by thread Freepers' comments. So I think I have a good grasp of who did what. I wanted to see if that lined up with what people actually saw. So far, it does.
Second, everyone agrees Cruz was head and shoulders above everyone in terms of content and mastery of the issues from a Constitutional standpoint. It seems Rubio, Huckabee, Christie, and Fiorina had some very good moments. Trump's best sections, of course, were on immigration and on Jeb/Paul bashing. Carson agreed with him on the vaccines.
To me all that is irrelevant, because if I'm Trump's campaign manager---and it's still September---you still don't have the "world" watching and no great performance will save you and no bad performance will kill you. (Witness the rebirth of Rubio, whom I left for dead three months ago).
Instead, if I'm Trump's manager, I'm telling him, "Cement the idea of inevitability. Grow your lead." Now, some of you would say, "Well, if he didn't do great, how could he grow his lead?" Easy.
His ONLY close competitor was Ben Carson.
How did Gentle Ben do last night? Consensus seems to be he lost some ground, looked tired, non-energetic, not crisp in answers, not motivating, did well (obviously) on the vaccine question. Trump did not attack him, and even high fived him.
Watch Carson's poll numbers dip. Trump's will stay about the same. The number 2 competitor, and the only close competitor, falls back. Two of the dwarves (Rubio and Fiorina) will gain, maybe move to low double digits. Cruz will gain, likely to about 10% where I think he will plateau.
That is because unlike Rubio or Fiorina, the GOPe will NEVER back him as the "anti-Trump." So they will dump money and publicity into Rubio and Fiorina (my guess is that, unable to make a clear decision, they will dilute their efforts and both will hover at 10-15%).
Mission accomplished for Trump. He gets at least another month with double digit leads over #2 . . . whoever that is next.
That’s a pretty fair analysis.
Nice summary, and a good take at the real strategy that is underway.
To me, Jeb is toast, and Donald was doing a mini audition of who would be on the undercard.
Seems to me he likes Cruz and his standup character, and doesn’t discount the others Carson, Rubio as potential running mates.
For football fans
Chiristie is his fullback, opening up up the holes when the opposing D comes with the blitz. He’ll fake a missed block by taking Donald on indirectly so not to make it so obvious that’s his role. e.g. We don’t need to talk about you two Donald & Carly
Carson didn’t sound “Presidential” compared to the others.
Rubs and FiFi did pretty well.