OANN has released a post debate poll of debate “Winners and Losers” (available here). Overall the majority saw Donald Trump as the biggest winner followed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Results below:
The same polling showed the biggest loser to be Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and John Kasich respectively.
Having sat through both the under card debate and the prime-time debate I would disagree a bit with the polling on the losers. Lindsey Graham and George Pataki were the biggest losers of the first debate their unbridled, and often emotional, instability was on full display.
The problem for all the prime-time debate participants going into the debate was they had assumed the positions of Donald Trump – and it was glaringly obvious, often quite funny.
Back in late September Trump took the bold position of stating he would in no-way accept any Syrian refugees, and he matter-of-factly stated he would “send them back”. Trump even when specific and stated: “I’m putting them on notice right now, if I’m elected President, we will send all the Syrian refugees straight back”.
This early Trump position drew widespread condemnation from corporate media, professional politicos, pundits and the apoplectic leftists. Then came the Paris Terror Attacks.
Lickety-split Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and the rest of the field stated they too would block Syrian refugees. Jeb evolved saying his position would be only to take the “Christian” Syrian refugees – *Note* that means banning non-Christians, ie. Muslims.
Then came the San Bernardino Terror Attacks – And now all of a sudden Trump is not only supported by the majority of Republican voters, his strong position was now supported by the wider U.S. electorate.
It was obvious during the start of the debate the entire field was tenuous about Trump because they had, in essence, now evolved to his exact position. Trump won the policy debate in the court of public opinion before the televised CNN debate even started.
So the debate immediately turned to who was going to be “next best”, and we saw Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and iSnarly all vying for that position.
There is no more visible a disconnect between the U.S. electorate and the global elites who believe they still are in retention of power than this tweet from Rupert Murdoch:
Bush giving much his best performance yet. Actually most scoring very well.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) December 16, 2015
Meanwhile Frank Luntz focus group laughs at little Jeb!
