14 Politics Election 2016 A Republican Debate Divided: the Leaders and the Rest As Trump and Cruz face off, five others jockey to be an alternativeBy Gerald F. Seib
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-republican-debate-divided-the-leaders-and-the-rest-1452832473
There wasn’t one Republican presidential debate going on Thursday night in South Carolina, but rather two. And in that sense, the debate neatly and succinctly summarized this year’s unusual race.
The first debate was between the two unlikely front-runners, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. After months of dancing around each other—and in some cases essentially supporting each other—in crystallizing antiestablishment anger, the two now know they are fishing from the same pond with less than three weeks to go before voting begins. And they conducted themselves accordingly.
The night’s second, parallel debate involved the other five aspirants on the stage— Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie and John Kasich—who seemed uncertain whether their mission was to go after the two top dogs or emerge from the rest of the pack as the alternative to them. By and large, they chose the latter course.
“The Constitution hasn’t changed,” Mr. Cruz said. “But the poll numbers have.”
For his part, Mr. Cruz embraced anew his assertion that Mr. Trump embodies “New York values,” which, he said, are “socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage.” To a conservative debate audience in the conservative state of South Carolina, he added: “Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan.”
In response, Mr. Trump artfully embraced the post-9/11 spirit of New Yorkers and earned a round of applause from that same South Carolina audience.
Meantime, the other candidates—and they did, indeed, seem to be the others—appeared to think they could stand out most not by fighting with those two but by going after the enemies in the other party: President Barack Obama and leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Their subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle message was that they each have the advantage in the race that really matters, which is the one against the Democrats in November.
Thus, Mr. Rubio, a Florida senator, engaged in an intense fight with Mr. Cruz on immigration–but spent more time attacking the president’s policies in the war on terror.
Mr. Christie, the New Jersey governor, labeled the president “a petulant child” and said hearing him extol the nation’s advances in his State of the Union address amounted to listening to “story time with Barack Obama.”
Mr. Bush did say Mr. Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. would create a foreign-policy disaster. But he also played to the traditional pro-military sentiment of South Carolina by charging that Mr. Obama has “gutted” every weapon system. He charged that Mrs. Clinton would be a “national-security disaster” and would have to shuttle between the White House and the courthouse because of the investigations into her handling of sensitive information in a private email account as secretary of state.
Mr. Carson, for his part, urged everybody to “look at the big picture here.”
As the debate performance suggests, the primary race heading into the stretch run before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses has morphed into a shape that would have been unimaginable at its outset. It once seemed likely that Messrs. Trump and Cruz at this point would have been engaged in a multisided struggle to become the alternative to some more conventional, mainstream Republican front-runner.
Instead, everyone else is in a multisided struggle to determine who will be the alternative to them.
ENLARGE In that environment, the questions hovering over the field are different than they were at any of the previous debates. And the challenges facing the field, on this week’s debate stage and beyond, are different than expected. Can they convince Republican voters that they are simply better prepared than is Mr. Trump for the demands of a general-election campaign, to say nothing of the presidency itself?
And can they somehow convince Republican voters that Mr. Cruz isn’t likable enough and broadly appealing enough to really take on Mrs. Clinton?
The shape of the race can change rapidly and dramatically in just over two weeks when voting begins, of course. But on Thursday night, the widely differing and wholly unexpected imperatives facing Messrs. Trump and Cruz on the one hand, and the rest of the crowd on the other, were on full display.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
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