So Who Won Tonight's GOP Debate?

The big question is who won? There is a clear media consensus right now that Marco Rubio won.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/republican-debate-cnbc-moderators-media-215316

This Atlantic piece asks who won and answers its own question with a huge glossy picture of Rubio.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/republican-debate-2016-boulder/412972/

I do agree with one media meme: the CNBC moderators clearly lost the debate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/republican-debate-cnbc-moderators-media-215316

 Ted Cruz really set the tone with a bromide against the allegedly unfair moderators that the audience clearly loved.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/asked-about-debt-ceiling-deal-rubio.html

After this the balance of power was clearly on the caniddates' side against the moderators.

As usual the only thing that ever unites the GOP is opposition to something else. So the media were the fall guys this time. Cruz came up with an interesting test of fairness: he claimed that none of the moderators were interested in voting GOP.

“How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?” Cruz asked, saying that the moderators of the first Democratic debate on CNN went easy on the candidates from the other party.

“That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and nobody watching at home believes any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary.”

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/asked-about-debt-ceiling-deal-rubio.html

So is that the new rule-the Ted Cruz rule, where all moderators have to vow to vote GOP?

As for which candidate won, the media narrative is that Rubio hit a home run. I am naturally skeptical of the media narrative as I feel like every step of the way in this GOP primary the press has mostly told us what they think should happen and usually what has actually in fact happened has been quite different.

I actually thought Jeb did a good job hitting Rubio on his absenteeism in the Senate.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/rubio-on-not-doing-his-senate-job-no.html

Here is Josh Marshall:

"As I said in my previous post, this was a pretty poorly run debate. But that's media criticism. The real question is how it will affect the race. Jeb Bush needed to get back into this campaign. And he absolutely didn't do that. I thought his attack on Marco Rubio was pretty strong. But after that, I'm not sure what happened to him. Maybe he took a nap. I'm not sure. It's really hard to see how he can hold on to any level of confidence from establishment Republicans at this point. He just doesn't seem to have it in him. Not that he was a leader of the pack in the first place. But he really needed to change the equation. He didn't."

"I think Trump was basically fine, not good or bad. Carson was somewhat more coherent than in past debates."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-initial-thoughts-on-the-debate

Well what I had noticed was that the audience wasn't on Jeb's side when he went after Rubio but seemed to really like Rubio's response.

Politico has this:

"Bush lectured Rubio that if he wanted to continue skipping votes he should “just resign and let someone else take the job.”

“Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term,” Bush said. “And you should be showing up to work.”

"Rubio was ready, dismissing Bush as a political opportunist turning on an old friend. “Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you,” he said.

"It was the end of discussion. The mentor had gone after the protégé but came away bruised."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/republican-debate-boulder-2016-215265#ixzz3pvPhESkn

So this is probably why Jeb shrunk after this. I am still a little skeptical that Rubio was this great; I think the media is just figuring that if Jeb is in trouble-and Josh is not the only one who thinks tonight more or less finishes Jeb off-then process of elimination means it's going to be Rubio.

Josh's thought process more or less mirrors mine on Rubio too.

"The final thing is Marco Rubio. He seemed on the defensive and without terribly good answers to the senate absenteeism charges. As I've said, I think Rubio is really the one to watch simply by a process of elimination. I didn't think he came off that well. But the audience didn't seem to agree with me. He kept getting ovations from the audience. I'm curious to hear what people think about how he did."

Again, I tend to think that the fix was in with that audience-in the last debate they were cheering Jeb, this time they focused on building up Rubio.
This bothers me as it's just the media presuming that The Party Decides and so at it decides it must be Rubio if it's not Jeb. I think the party usually decides but it may be different for the GOP this time.

Nate Silver finally gave voice to this view today.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-republicans-really-are-in-disarray/

Basically my premise has been and I'm happy Nate is finally voicing this possibility is that usually the party decides but this year's GOP is having a much harder time deciding than usual.

However, even though I'm skeptical of the Rubio surge, I did see that Howie Carr was very positive about Rubio tonight. This is significant to me as Carr is a good bellwether for the hard core Right wingers. Carr thinks that the Cubans-Rubio and Cruz-stood out

https://twitter.com/HowieCarrShow

It will be interesting to see if Carr's is the common view. I do see that Coulter still is much more in love with Trump. She also called out the GOP media bashing as 'boring' and just copying her boy Trump.

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter

As a matter of fact, I was just on Coulter's page and RT a bunch of her lines. She pointed out that GOP media bashing was ridiculous-CNBC was no different than Fox or CNN.

She also answered Rubio's tweet that HRC was discovered to be a liar by pointing out that he himself tonight was revealed a liar.

So we;ll see if Rubio really did as well as media narrative this time bearing in mind that they've been wrong on every GOP debate till now.

I have to admit though that if this really is the last stand of Jeb-and boy I hope it is!-then by definition Rubio should see a hike anyway as presumably he would be the second choice of most of Jeb's supporters.

In this case you could see a race between Rubio and two outsiders-Carson and Trump-and one kind of hermaphrodite-Ted Cruz who's kind of bot an insider and outsider of sorts.

I agree with most of Josh Marshall's analysis but not on Kasich:

"Finally, Kasich was great. Actually knows what he's talking about, has a decent argument about his record in Ohio and called out the nonsense a lot of the other candidates are spewing. But let's get real: this is a GOP primary race. I can't really see him getting into the top tier."
I felt like Trump totally owned him on fracking and Lehman Brothers;. After that we didn't hear much from him. And what we did wasn't terribly compelling. He's also for a balanced budget amendment which hardly makes him a breath of fresh air in this field.