This presidential nominating cycle, certainly on the Republican side, is not following any sort of rulebook. And so it’s inevitable the bible of the nominating process from a political science point of view is coming under fresh scrutiny, as I explained today at the Washington Monthly:

Regular readers know I enjoy expressing irreverent thoughts about The Party Decides, the 2008 tome by political scientists Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller that is often quoted like Holy Writ by academicians and even some journalists as the final work on presidential nominating contests. That’s not because I don’t respect the authors and the scholarship involved in this book, or doubt that it captures some important insights about the interplay of party elites, candidates and primary voters. It’s more that I think the small sample involved, the close cases treated as not so close at all, and above all, some of the simplistic interpretations being made of the data make the book and its expositors valuable but not definitive. Perhaps the most annoying thing about the usages of the book (I won’t attribute it to the authors) is the insistence on bean-counting elected official endorsements as the be-all and end-all of who’s where in the Invisible Primary and who’s going to win once voting begins. I know a lot of political practitioners, and none of them place that high a value on accumulating such endorsements unless they happen in an early primary or caucus state.
But now comes Vox‘s Andrew Prokop with a skilled deconstruction of the idea party elites control presidential nominations, which is obviously looking pretty dubious this year as three candidates virtually no elected officials or organized constituency groups are going to endorse–Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina–continue to dominate the field. Not only have party elites failed to get behind a single candidate; they have so far signally failed to veto a candidate they have clearly and mightily sought to destroy, namely Trump.
Prokop backtracks to earlier nomination contests and concludes the domination of party elites is mostly clear in cycles when the nominee was pretty obvious, and that voters may have independently played a stronger role than later acknowledged in breaking ties. The party as defined by elites did not, after all, “decide” the Democratic nomination in 2004 and 2008, and arguably not the 2008 GOP nomination either. And there have been a significant number of cases–the 1984 Hart challenge to Mondale, the 2000 Bradley challenge to Gore, and even the 2012 Santorum challenge to Romney–where some relatively small changes in single-state primary outcomes might have changed everything, regardless of what “the establishment” wanted.
In defense of the “party decider” faction, they do generally adopt a definition of “elites” that’s broader than what journalists tend to assume; they include organized constituency and ideological groups like the antichoicers and the Club for Growth on the Republican side and unions on the Democratic side. And it’s possible their basic theories will be confirmed by this year’s Democratic contest, where Hillary Clinton is rolling up indicia of elite support rare for a non-incumbent, or even the GOP contest, where a late decision by elites to get behind a single candidate like Rubio or Bush could still have a big impact.

But it doesn’t look like one of those years where any analyst, academic or journalistic, ought to feel very smug in making predictions.

From Tina Nguyen’s article, “Pope Francis’s Visit Spells Trouble for Republican Presidential Candidates” at Vanity Fair: “Steven Krueger from the nonprofit group Catholic Democrats sees the Pope’s visit as an opportunity for Democrats to win back the consideration of white, moderate Catholics. The Democrats have been steadily losing this demographic since the 1970s. After the days when John F. Kennedy won upwards of 70 percent of the Catholic vote…shifting economic interests (Catholic families assimilated into the American mainstream, becoming wealthier) collided with the rise of cultural liberalism, driving more conservative Catholics towards the G.O.P. Karl Rove further locked up the white Catholic vote in the late 90s, when he began a robust Catholic outreach program that helped George W. Bush reach the White House, carrying 52 percent of the Catholic vote in 2004. (In 2000, he narrowly lost the Catholic vote to Al Gore.)…”But I only think that will happen if the Democratic Party undertakes a robust state-based outreach effort and does not allow the [Republicans] to declare the Republican Party as the party of faith,” Krueger added…Through 2012, the Catholic vote was evenly split between parties–until it is separated into the white and Hispanic vote. On that front, Krueger says the G.O.P. should be alarmed. In his estimation, Republicans need to lock up 40 percent of the Catholic Hispanic vote in order to win the election, and an effort that certainly won’t be aided by Francis’s decision to deliver all but 4 of his 18 U.S. speeches in Spanish.”
For more on the political ramifications of the Pope’s visit, see Patricia Miller’s “The GOP’s absurd anti-Pope crusade: The bizarre spectacle of Republicans turning on a religious leader” at Salon.com and Brian Porter-Szucs’s “Why Pope Francis Makes Republicans Squirm” at Newsweek.
In his New York Times op-ed “Hurricane Trump,” Thomas B. Edsall provides a revealing analysis of the GOP candidate’s unexpected success. Dems should read the whole thing, but here’s one of the juicier paragraphs: “It’s a collective middle finger to the establishment,” a Trump supporter told the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “Trump has never lied to me whereas all of the other Republican politicians (like McConnell & Boehner) have,” wrote another reader, who added, “Nobody fights for my side. Trump fights. Trump wins. I want an Alpha Male who is going to take it to the enemy.” A third Trump loyalist wrote: “This is a guy who isn’t afraid to abuse the abuser. He has and will continue to humiliate the establishment politicians who try to stand up to him by exposing them for who they are.”
“Since 1947, there have been 11 official recessions, totaling 49 recessionary quarters. Of those 49 quarters, just eight occurred under Democratic presidents, compared to 41 under Republicans. So, over the past 65 years, quarters in recession were about five times more common under a Republican president than under a Democratic president…Looking at how many recessions started under Republicans, the difference is even more stark…Of the 11 recessions since 1947, nine under Republicans, compared to just two under Democrats.” according to Politifact.
At Brookings Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais lay bare the utter cluelessness of the GOP presidential wannabes regarding the aspirations of ‘Millennials,’ as revealed in last week’s CNN debate. Among the authors’ observations: “Seventy percent of Millennials favor same sex marriage; Mike Huckabee has based his entire candidacy in opposition to the idea and no other candidate was brave enough Wednesday night to say they agreed that same sex couples should be permitted to marry legally. Sixty-eight percent of Millennials are in favor of legalizing marijuana; no candidate was willing to come close to saying the idea might have merit;…Instead, Jeb Bush in the best Boomer presidential candidate tradition apologized for using the stuff when he was young, chalking it up to youthful indiscretion, and Governor Chris Christie asserted that maintaining pot’s illegality was so important as President he would go against traditional Republican deference to state’s rights and assert federal law supremacy over state law to prosecute offenders. Like old people out of touch with what is happening in the world around them, the candidates kept on talking about repealing ObamaCare; meanwhile, fifty-two percent of Millennials approve of the program…The Millennial generation favors “win-win” solutions that avoid direct and, especially military, confrontations with America’s global opponents, something which all those in the debate outside of Rand Paul either didn’t care about or didn’t know…No one thought to ask the generation most likely to be sent into future combat what it thought. When Pew did so in July they found a plurality of Millennials (43%/39%) supported the agreement.”
Winograd and Hais also note that Millennials are undaunted by the GOP’s favorite neo-McCarthyite boogeyman word, “socialism,” most recently parroted disparagingly by Ben Carson. Win or lose, Sen. Bernie Sanders deserves great credit for his uncowed example as a deeply patriotic American who openly advocates the principles of democratic socialism. Says Sanders: “So what democratic socialism means to me,” he said, “is having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country. And it is making sure that all of our people have health care as a right, education as a right, decent housing as a right, child care as a right. That’s what I believe…Is it a society where the government owns every mom-and-pop store?” he asked. “Of course not. You have all kinds of capitalist entrepreneurship going on, a lot of wealth being created. But what else do you have? … An effort to make sure that all people benefit from the wealth that’s being created. So you have a much more equitable distribution of wealth and income.”
At The Fix Chris Cillizza does a GOP lapdog imitation, beating up on Hillary Clinton about her – gasp – emails. He links it to a dip in her approval ratings in the polls, without presenting a particle of cause-effect evidence. If a sophomore in any decent Journalism school wrote such a screed, a “D” grade would be generous.
Don’t expect email scandal-mongers to say much about this CNN/ORC poll showing a substantial uptick in public support for Clinton’s candidacy.
While the spectacular tanking of Scott Walker can be interpreted as a defeat for the Koch brothers, here’s a reminder that their political tentacles extend far beyond presidential politics. At HuffPo Seth Shulman, editorial director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, exposes a Koch brothers-funded study at the University of Kansas which “raises questions about the political strings attached to the many millions of dollars the Koch brothers are known to have spent in the past decade at colleges and universities around the country.” Shulman spotlights testimony by the executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the University’s School of Business, urging the Kansas state senate to repeal the state’s renewable energy standard, and the good work of Students for a Sustainable Future in using an open records request to reveal the Koch Funding of the “research” behind the testimony. The student group is part of “a national student movement at dozens of campuses around the country to “UnKoch My Campus.”

Many political observers were surprised by Scott Walker’s rapid decline and sudden departure from the field of GOP presidential candidates. As for the why of Walker’s flunk, here are some of the more interesting insights:
At The Washington Monthly TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore writes:

…What made Walker exciting to a lot of conservatives earlier this year was that unlike Bush and Rubio he offered a plausible electability argument that depended on the party moving hard right and confronting its enemies with the full power of its base’s hatred rather than compromising or “reaching out” to this or that constituency of looters and loafers. This is something conservatives badly want to believe in. But as the Invisible Primary proceeded, other candidates emerged who offered competing and more viscerally appealing models for winning a general election without compromise…
…Walker became exposed as a career politician (he has indeed been in public office since he was 24) whose heroic story of standing up to the unions grew smaller and smaller as other candidates made the contest about an apocalyptic challenge to all the godless liberals and all of those people, and also to the hated GOP Establishment that kept compromising with the former and sucking up to the latter.

Other writers have cited reports of Walker’s bloated campaign staff and limited cash resources to pay them. GOP strategist Ed Rogers says he is “mystified” by Scott Walker’s sudden withdrawal. NYT columnist Frank Bruni cites Walkers one big cause, union-bashing, as inadequate for building popular support. Rachel Maddow called Walker “the black hole of charisma.” And WaPo editorial writer Stephen Stromberg observes,

…It would be a mistake to just blame Trump for Walker’s political demise. Even the relatively mild scrutiny applied to Walker’s run revealed him for what he really is: a man who has not thought much outside of his narrow experience and who fumbled when reporters asked him to do so. The result was a candidate who was intellectually and strategically adrift. He didn’t seem to know how he felt on a range of issues, and, in the absence of sincere positions, he didn’t seem to know how far right he wanted to run. All of this made his bluster about being a “fighter” who is “unintimidated” seem embarrassingly inappropriate…Walker didn’t need Trump to fail. He didn’t just have bad luck. He couldn’t be any more than he is: walking proof that a combative style, a hard ideological edge and identity-based pandering can’t always make up for cluelessness.

Kyle Kondik explains at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Walker did not have any out-and-out terrible moments: There isn’t a Rick Perry “oops” on his presidential scorecard or, for our older readers, an equivalent of George Romney’s “brainwashing” on Vietnam in the 1968 Republican contest. Rather, it’s been death by a thousand cuts for Walker…Earlier in the cycle, we thought the best-case scenario for Walker would be that he could unite both the conservative grassroots and the establishment, becoming an outsider-insider candidate, or “a consensus choice whose nomination would avert a GOP identity crisis,” as we described it in August 2013. Unfortunately for Walker, there does seem to now be a consensus among both GOP insiders and outsiders: Walker didn’t suit either camp.
…Still, running as an outsider might have been a decent approach for Walker, particularly if he could have won Iowa, where he was leading the polls into the summer. But then: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina happened. Walker could claim to be an outsider against the likes of a Jeb Bush, but that trio of candidates with zero elected experience made him seem like an insider by comparison, given that he’s spent almost his entire adult life in elective politics at the local and state levels.

It was probably sound media strategy for Walker to quit this early, since the Pope’s visit will diminish coverage of Walker’s failure, enabling him to fade away more quietly instead of being repeatedly branded as poster-boy for ineffectual campaigning. Progressives can hope that he is finished in national politics, but his early quit may allow him to survive and emerge in some form at a later time.
Walker is not alone in being caught unprepared for the Trump phenomenon. Walker may have been well-positioned on the issues spectrum to serve as a ‘consensus’ candidate uniting GOP factions. But Walker and his fellow candidates could not predict that a media-savvy carnival barker would steal the show. I’m wondering if the Walker campaign’s internal poll analysis indicated that his support among Republican blue collar voters was zilch, and Trump had a lock on that pivotal constituency.
As for which Republican candidate will benefit the most from Walker’s withdrawal, it’s just guesswork. But the problems revealed by Walker’s departure give Democrats another reason for optimism about 2016.

The following article excerpt from democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
In Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Jeb Bush made the outrageous statement that his brother George W. Bush “Kept us safe”.
Here is a news flash for Jeb: George W. Bush did not begin his term on September 12, 2001. The worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor occurred on his watch. And it occurred after he had systematically ignored intelligence warnings – before 9/11 – that Osama Bin Laden “was determined to strike the U.S.” and that his terrorist network might try to hijack planes to do it.
In fact terrorism was a low priority for the Bush Administration before 9/11. And just six months after 9/11, when asked about apprehending the mastermind of those attack, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.”
Instead his administration was busy cherry picking intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
The Iraq War did anything but “keep us safe.” It was based on false “intelligence” that Saddam Hussein had non-existent weapons of mass destruction. It cost over 4,000 American lives and maimed or injured tens of thousands more. It cost America trillions of dollars. Worst of all it served as a recruitment tool for Al Qaida and other terrorist networks around the world.
In fact, rather than “keep us safe,” a 2006 intelligence report concluded that the War in Iraq “made the overall terrorism problem worse”. It also kicked over the sectarian hornet’s nest in the Middle East and created the conditions that spawned Al Qaida in Iraq that ultimately turned into ISIL (there was no Al Qaida in Iraq before the invasion).
Of course you can understand why Jeb Bush insists that his brother “kept us safe”. He has surrounded himself with many of the very same foreign policy advisors that presided over the worst foreign policy record in half a century.
They are the same crowd that most recently tried and failed to sink the six-nation agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without a war.
After a while it gets sickening to listen to their attempts to rewrite history and posture as tough foreign policy geniuses when in fact they conducted a foreign policy that put America and our interests at more risk and sent thousands of young men and women to their deaths in an unnecessary elective war.
But the thing that is most galling is their refusal to take any responsibility for allowing the nation to be subjected to the worst attack on the homeland in 70 years.
It is simply outrageous that the Bush crowd would have the audacity to say they “kept us safe” after presiding over the 9/11 debacle – and the inept, ineffective, ideologically driven response that followed.
The Republicans have been fixated for years on the tragic death of one American Ambassador and his aides in Benghazi – even though he was knowingly taking risks to advance America’s foreign policy goals in Libya and there is not one shred of evidence of official wrong doing.
Can you imagine the investigations and vicious smears of Democrats that would have ensued had Al Gore been President at the time of the 9/11 attacks?
Democrats did not use those horrible attacks to their political advantage.
But the chutzpa required for Jeb Bush to argue that George Bush actually kept America safe is simply beyond the pale – and can’t be ignored.
Of course it wasn’t just Bush’s failed defense and foreign policies that left everyday Americans less secure. His trickle down economics lead to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression; cost 8 million Americans their jobs; and did economic damage that, years later, has just begun to heal.
George Bush left President Obama an economy that was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office in 2009. And the collapse of the financial markets on Bush’s watch whipped out $2 trillion in retirement savings.
Is that what he means by “keeping us safe”.
George Bush sped up climate change with an energy policy written in secret by Dick Cheney and representatives of the Oil companies.
And who can forget how he kept the people of the New Orleans and the Gulf Coast “safe” when they were struck by Hurricane Katrina. Over a thousand Americans died because the levies failed in New Orleans and the Bush Administration’s response was infamously inept.
“Keeping us safe?”

…The evidence is clear. The best ways to keep America truly safe are never to forget just what George W. Bush did to America — and to keep Jeb Bush and the entire Bush gang a “safe” distance away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the levers of American political power.

Nate Silver has some insights about the “poll-deflating feedback loop” phenomenon, which afflicts many presidential candidates, most recently Hillary Clinton and possibly Scott Walker. It has to do with “self-reinforcing cycles of negative media attention and declining poll numbers.” Clinton is experiencing her share of it, with “a total of 29 days of negative coverage in just over seven weeks” and a slew of downward-trending polls. It’s a serious problem for her campaign, though not a fatal contagion, as Silver explains. “In the assessment of betting markets, she’s still a reasonably heavy favorite for the Democratic nomination. That’s my assessment too,” notes Silver, who then provides a half-dozen ways she could rebound.
Further, Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post, “Hillary Was the CNN Debate’s Real Winner–Seriously” offers one of the more perceptive takes on last week’s big GOP presidential debate. Among Tomasky’s observations: “She is still the overwhelming favorite to be the Democratic nominee. She still leads the Republicans in a strong majority of the general election head-to-head matchups. And that’s after two horrible media months in which, by Silver’s count, she has endured 29 negative news stories while enjoying just one positive one. All that, and she’s still mostly ahead…And being the Democrat, she has the Electoral College advantage that any plausible Democrat has these days because the GOP has just positioned itself too far right to win states that it regularly won back in the Nixon-to-Bush Sr. era…” Tomasky also has well-crafted zingers about the lack of serious policy proposals among the GOP field.
For one-liners that sum up the GOP debate, it’s hard to top NYT columnist Paul Krugman’s “the only candidate who seemed remotely sensible on national security issues was Rand Paul, which is almost as disturbing as the spectacle of Mr. Trump being the only voice of economic reason.”
No telling how long the Fiorina bump will last in the polls. But Dems will have no problem shredding her policies or disparaging her “accomplishments,” as have NYT columnists Timothy Egan and Charles M. Blow.
I didn’t think this was possible. Has any heavily-promoted presidential candidate ever tanked so badly?
Jim Rutenberg reports on “The De-Reaganization of the Republican Party” at The New York Times Magazine — “The dissonance between the Republican Party’s pious exaltation of Reagan the man and its break with much of his policy record.” But it’s hard to imagine any of the Republican nominees making a big break with Reagan’s core policies, such as union-bashing, tax cuts for the rich and a bullying foreign policy, regardless of what they say.
In “GOP wants to broaden appeal; will candidates get in the way?,” AP’s Kevin Freking and Julie Pace pinpoint the GOP’s dilemma, with an apt quote from Republican strategist Steve Schmidt: “Of course it’s worrisome if you have a party that’s perceived as anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-gay, intolerant of Muslims.” Schmidt, like all other GOP strategists, candidates and pundits, dodged referencing the Republicans’ relentless efforts to disenfranchise as many African Americans as possible.
For an excellent update on Hispanic electoral activism and a moving tribute to influential voter empowerment advocate Willie Velasquez, read “Latinos are fighting Republican racism by registering voters” by Denise Oliver Velez at Daily Kos.
New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait explains why Jeb’s “He kept us safe” comment is an exceedingly generous gift to his adversaries in both political parties.

A lot of the hype over Carly Fiorina’s performance at the CNN Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night was emanating from Republican elites frantic for anyone or anything to end Donald Trump’s momentum. So there’s been a palpable sense of anticipation of data to show that, as one Politico article this morning put it, the “Trump fever has broken.”
Well, the first poll is in, and it is helpfully limited to people who actually watched the debate. I discussed the results at <Washington Monthly today:

[T]here now is some “new data,” but it’s not going to much cheer the Trump-hating Republican Establishment.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina won Wednesday’s second Republican presidential debate, according to voters who watched the Simi Valley showdown polled by Morning Consult.
It was a performance that vaulted Fiorina into the top tier of a crowded field. A plurality of 29 percent of registered voters who watched the debate said Fiorina won, just higher than the 24 percent who said real estate mogul Donald Trump came out on top. Seven percent said retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson won the debate, while 6 percent each chose former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

But here’s the catch:

Trump continues to lead the Republican primary field. Thirty-six percent of registered voters who watched the debate said they would choose Trump, compared with 12 percent for Carson and 10 percent for Fiorina. Rubio placed fourth, at 9 percent, followed by 7 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 6 percent for Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

So Carly’s boom really just means that now 58% of respondents support a candidate with zero experience in public office. And that’s among the people who actually watched the supposedly Trump-destroying debate.
We’ll see what later polls say, but for the present the idea things are about to return to normal and voters will sagely choose between “real candidates” Bush and Rubio and Kasich looks no closer to reality than before.

Nice work, RNC.

From William Galston’s Wall St. Journal column: “What It Will Take to Win in 2016
Democrats have some advantages, but history favors the Republicans“:

Some basics favor the Democrats. Relative to 2012, the share of the electorate commanded by minority voters–principally Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians–will continue to increase. This shift will be especially pronounced in states such as Florida and Nevada, where large numbers of Hispanics are reaching voting age. Millennial voters (young adults of all hues) will also increase as a share of the electorate, and they tend to favor Democrats as well.
In these highly polarized times, party identification does more to shape voting behavior than it did decades ago, and recent studies show that the Democrats have retained their advantage. To be sure, as the share of the electorate that regards itself as independent surges, both parties continue to decline. But most self-professed independents lean toward one party or the other and vote accordingly, and true independents constitute at most 15% of the electorate. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey gave the Democrats a six-point edge (42% to 36%) once leaners are taken into account.

But Galston also notes that “the Democrats’ advantage in the vital Midwest–home to six of the 11 states decided by single digits in 2012–has disappeared.” Further, “Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz has shown that candidates vying to succeed incumbent two-term presidents of their own party face an uphill climb–all else being equal, a penalty of between four and five percentage points relative to the incumbent’s second-term share of the vote.”
Galston also warns that President Obama’s ‘approval drag’ effect is a significant problem: “On average, a five-point increase in public approval will increase his would-be successor’s share of the popular vote by 0.9%. Mr. Obama’s rating, which topped 50% in the concluding days of his re-election campaign, is now hovering around 45%–a modest but potentially significant drag on the Democratic nominee’s prospects if not reversed.
But Democrats have reason to hope that the economy will break their way in the months ahead, according to CBO growth projections of 3 percent for 2016, especially if it produces an employment uptick. A woman nominee and disgust with Republican voter suppression and immigrant-bashing could give Democrats the edge they need with key constituencies, adds Galston.
“…If heads ultimately dominate hearts in both parties,” concludes Galston, “the 2016 election will be closely contested. However, “if the GOP selects a nominee who can appeal to Midwestern voters, the Democrats’ “lock” on the Electoral College could go the way of its Republican predecessor in 1992.”
Galston’s cautiously optimistic assessment for Democrats makes sense. But it is tempered by a significant concern about growing Democratic weakness in the midwestern states with respect to the electoral college. An extra effort on the part of the national and state Democratic parties in those states, along with well-targeted contributions to GOTV in the midwest, just might make a pivotal difference in 2016.

Last night I live-blogged that endless GOP presidential debate at the Washington Monthly, and then had to make sense of it all in a column for TPMCafe, wherein I concluded the main event left things essentially where they had been with perhaps Fiorina replacing Carson as the red-hot outsider:

Like a really brutal boxing match between equals, the CNN Republican presidential debate was long and bloody and not terribly conclusive.
For the second time in two debates, the moderators had a big impact. But while the Fox debate revolved around a network decision to demolish (or at least rein in) one candidate — Donald Trump — the CNN debate was skewed heavily by a format that began nearly every question with a quote from one candidate about another, and then allowed follow-up by the candidate quoted. This naturally favored the more combative and quote-worthy candidates, and also guaranteed another Trump-heavy debate.
The candidates who had been on the receiving end of the most errant Trump snarks — about Fiorina’s experience and Jeb’s wife — had a great opportunity to make hay, and Fiorina took full advantage of it.
Her deftly delivered line about women hearing exactly what he said after he tried to spin it away (which managed also to underline a criticism Trump had made of Jeb Bush for dissing women’s health care services) was the line of the night, and was probably only partly offset by the back-and-forth with Trump about her, er, ah, interesting business career. I couldn’t really tell whether Fiorina’s rapid-fire detail on national security issues came across as showing her policy chops or mixing up a word salad.
Beyond that, the constant opportunities to get drawn into murky and divisive sniping made it difficult to name “winners.” The losers were mostly the poor schlubs — Huckabee, Paul, and to some extent Walker — who apparently hadn’t criticized other candidates enough to get equal air time.
But then there was Ben Carson, the candidate who came into the debate with a big upward arrow next to his name.
On the positive side, he managed to get through the debate without so much as once saying the words “political correctness” or muttering darkly about Alinskyites destroying the country. Indeed, the only discussion involving him and conspiracy theories cast him as the defender of traditional medicine against the vaccinations-cause-autism people. On the other hand, he almost certainly hurt himself with his conservative following by confirming and then defending the rather shocking news that he advised George W. Bush in the days after 9/11 to try diplomacy rather than war. Another low moment for Carson was Trump having to remind him that progressive taxation was not some sort of new-fangled “socialist” idea.
The rest of the candidates were largely up and down. People who aren’t tired of the patented Rubio Second-Generation rap or the Cruz I’ll-Fight-For-You rap may have been impressed by those two, who are simply good public speakers (though I wonder who advised Rubio to rant about our “left-wing government” and “The Left” so much). Jeb Bush probably thrilled people who like him already, and annoyed people who don’t; his spirited defense of his brother’s Iraq policies just reminds people of W.’s worst moments and his own confusion over them.
Above all, I don’t think this debate did much to solve any of the Republican Party’s problems. Did it “take down” Donald Trump, as so many hoped? I don’t think so, despite the bountiful opportunities the other candidates — at the earlier “J.V.” debate, where the first four questions were about Trump, as at the main event — had to do so. Did it “winnow” the field? Nobody did that badly, and the candidates with the least steam, like Mike Huckabee, are already committed to a living-off-the-land county-by-county effort in Iowa. Did the “uprising” on behalf of “outsider” candidates with dubious qualifications abate? Probably not; whatever ground Carson lost was probably gained not by the “experienced” pols but by Fiorina, whose background remains a real time bomb that only Trump has tried to exploit.
Should the “outsiders” fade, moreover, this debate did little to help build an “Establishment” consensus behind a candidate prepared to move into the lead just as people start voting. Indeed, an Establishment candidate long left for dead, Chris Christie, may have revived his extremely limited prospects with a good performance tonight. So the long slugfest may have resolved nothing.

Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking on the now-mature Invisible Primary, and as the days get shorter the initiation of the real thing in Iowa gets closer. Better get it in gear, GOP party elites, if you want to clean up this mess.