Free Republic

"If he hadn't inherited $200 million, you know where [Donald] Trump would be? Selling watches in Manhattan." It was Marco Rubio's big moment, the one that was supposed to damage the GOP front-runner. It wasn't a bad line. The zinger illuminated that Trump wasn't self-made. It made him seem like the avatar of New York's worst values--a street hustler from pre-Giuliani Times Square. Rubio's riposte got a laugh, but that was it. But he administered his blow too quickly, after a dizzying oppo dump of Trumpian facts--bankruptcies, lawsuits against Trump University, hiring illegal workers and so on. Like a hormonal...

Wolf Blitzer and his fellow moderators questioned the winner of the past three nominating contests over everything from his unreleased tax returns to his horrendous polling numbers among Hispanics. Trump, though, remained largely calm throughout the night, giving nearly as good as he got during two-plus hours on the Houston stage. He didn't win every individual skirmish, but with more likely victories awaiting him on Super Tuesday, he won enough to leave Texas in the same position that he arrived: as the clear front-runner.

With New Hampshire in the dust and the 2016 presidential campaign moving southward to the Palmetto State, MSNBC's Chris Matthews tonight sought to paint conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz as a latter-day Richard Nixon ginning up a bag full of "dirty tricks" for the February 20 South Carolina contest. Dipping out of live coverage of a Donald Trump campaign rally in Pendelton, S.C., Matthews wondered if the GOP frontrunner was "sort of priming the pump now for some dirty action by the Cruz people?" "I think he should be, if he's not already," Trump campaign correspondent Katy Tur answered. "The...