RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s hard to see how Jeb Bush recovers from his self-inflected wound at Wednesday’s CNBC Republican debate in Boulder when he went after Marco Rubio just after the young senator had hit one out of the park. Rubio was defending himself from an editorial in the Sun Sentinel calling on Marco to stop “ripping off” the public and quit the Senate for non-attendance while campaigning. Rubio responded that John Kerry and Barack Obama had been even more truant while running for president and the paper had not only ignored that, but given these men their endorsement. It was an example of liberal media bias at its most obvious. The crowd erupted in its first ovation of the night. Advantage Rubio.

Clueless, Bush jumped in as if nothing had happened, taking the paper’s side and schoolmarmishly doubling down on Marco. He got his head handed to him by Rubio (politely) and the audience. It was so mishandled on Bush’s part, such an obvious case of self-sabotage, it left you wondering whether Jeb really wants to be president. You didn’t have to be a Freudian to think his unconscious had gotten the better of him — well, unconscious mixed with envy mixed with entitlement mixed with who knows. During the break you heard what Ross Perot famously called ”the giant sucking sound,” but this time it was of pledged Bush supporters calling their bundlers.

There was a disturbance in the force last night at CNBC’s Republican debate, and it left no doubt of who won and who lost. The loser was CNBC, and the winners were all ten Republican candidates – in varying degrees, of course. (More on that later). And there is no doubt when this shift in the axis happened.

Everything changed when Ted Cruz dressed down Carl Quintenilla and John Harwood – two of CNBC’s far-left commentators – and literally mocked their absurd line of questioning.

Cruz did not just criticize the questions; he made sport of them. He demonstrated just how infantile most of the CNBC crew was (Tea Party originator Rick Santelli not included). Cruz flat-out embarrassed them, and they knew it.

After the crowd stopped roaring in approval of Cruz’s protest, which took a while, the rest of the Republicans followed the Texas senator’s lead, and there was almost no Republican-on-Republican crime after this exchange. In fact, we then saw numerous examples where Republicans made it clear that any of the ten on the stage would be far preferable to what we have now, and to Hillary Clinton. These comments were met with loud approval from the audience every time. Meanwhile, Quintenilla was literally booed loudly three times.

Later in the night, Chris Christie embarrassed the mods again with his fantasy football reply, as did Mike Huckabee by turning a gotcha question related to Donald Trump into praise of Trump. I have my problems with Christie and Huck overall, but both are demonstrably nimble on their feet.

The Republican presidential campaign is still in its early innings, and a good thing too. This means that Wednesday’s unsatisfying debate is likely to be forgotten by most voters long before they cast a vote. With that said, some impressions.

• Wasn’t the Republican Party supposed to pick moderators who had some acquaintance with Republicans? We have many friends at CNBC, but the three debate moderators lost control of the proceedings from the start and never regained it. There is no surer applause line at a GOP debate than to attack the media, and the moderators walked into the trap with tendentious questions based on liberal talking points.

• Jeb Bush should fire whoever advised him to go after Marco Rubio on the trivia of his Senate absenteeism. The attack was clearly planned because Mr. Bush did it even after Mr. Rubio had received applause for rebutting a hostile question on the subject from a moderator. Mr. Rubio counterpunched and easily won the round. Mr. Bush’s proposals for economic growth are the most thorough and thoughtful in the field, but he is oddly inept at debating. He should have spent his precious time making the case against Hillary Clinton and for his agenda.

Imagine 4.9 million new jobs. Imagine, instead of President Obama’s income stagnation, average wages rising 12.2% over the next decade. Capital investment rising 43.9%. And Americans at every level of the economy enjoying double-digit increases in after-tax income.

Imagine exports and manufacturing jobs booming. The trade deficit falling as the tax bias against American-made goods is eliminated. Imagine a 10% income tax. Every American filing his or her taxes on a postcard or an iPhone app. And abolishing the IRS as we know it.

All of this is possible if we learn from the past and follow the example of what works.

In July 1981, Democrat Tip O’Neill, who was then House Speaker, drew a line in the sand: He was going to stop the Reagan tax cut, and he had enough Democrats to do it, with a 20-vote cushion. But President Reagan took his case to the people. Calls and letters flooded Congress, the speaker’s 20 Democrats jumped ship, and Reagan signed the tax cut into law.