WASHINGTON — A lot happened during Wednesday night’s prime-time, three-hour debate among the 11 front-running Republican presidential candidates. But the morning after, a collection of political analysts and observers told WTOP they had very similar takeaways: It was a good night for Carly Fiorina, and a bad one for Donald Trump.
Andrea Mitchell, host of “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC, said the abrasive appeal of the billionaire developer leading the GOP field didn’t translate in front of a more sedate, establishment-Republican crowd. She dubbed the night, “The beginning of the Trump collapse,” also calling Fiorina “the star of the night.”
Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza added that “you could make the argument that she’s won both the debates that have been held in this race.”
Glenn Thrush, of Politico, said that the attitude of the other candidates toward Trump was very different from that of the previous debate held in Cleveland.
“The first debate, everyone was sort of apprehensive and kind of held their fire on him,” Thrush said. This time, however, the gloves started to come off.
“Every single other candidate on that stage had a more serious approach to the issues than (Trump) did,” Thrush said.
THE FIREWORKS CAME when Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive whose recent polling surge got her into the main-stage debate, addressed Trump’s recent criticism of her looks.
“I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” she said, receiving an ovation from the audience.
Charlie Mahtesian, senior politics editor for Politico, said Fiorina’s performance, which also included a pointed mention of Trump’s bankruptcies, could offer a playbook for the GOP candidates going forward. He called her “the one person who taught the Republicans how to take on Donald Trump … go head-to-head with him and win.”
Trump answered Fiorina’s response to his comments about her looks by saying, “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.”
“I love the way … that his idea of cleaning that up is telling her, ‘No, you’re not ugly; you’re beautiful’,” Thrush said. “(Trump) still thinks he’s on ‘The Apprentice,’ and that he’s still judging everybody.”
Steve Roberts, ABC News political analyst, calls Fiorina “the clear winner” of Wednesday night’s debate. She offered specific recommendations behind her general policy preferences, whereas “Trump is all about attitude.”
Roberts found Fiorina “far sharper on the issues” than neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who currently comes in second in most polls, or Trump.
Fiorina’s strong comments about Planned Parenthood, currently the target of a defunding effort in Congress, might be off-putting to a general election crowd, Mahtesian said. But he notes that it is early in the campaign. “We’re still talking about the Republican base.”
Dan Balz, chief correspondent of The Washington Post, agreed that Fiorina “had a very good night.”
DESPITE THE LENGTH of the debate, which would seem to give everyone on the crowded stage a chance to shine, the analysts agreed that it wasn’t a good night for the bottom-of-the-pack candidates.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, for example, went without a question for 45 minutes.
“Several of the fringe candidates really faded into the woodwork,” Roberts said. He found Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also “particularly ineffectual. … He really has one thing to say, which is, ‘I stood up to the unions in Wisconsin; elect me president.’ And that’s not a platform.”
Cillizza agreed, saying that Walker “was someone who needed … to be in the main conversation, and he just wasn’t.”
The one bottom-of the pack candidate who really helped himself, Roberts said, was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who occasionally took on Trump and “tried to turn this debate around and saying, ‘What I really care about are ordinary voters, not this Washington insider talk’.”
Thrush called Carson, who has recently surged into the No. 2 spot among the crowded field, “an outsider (who) doesn’t come with all the baggage and bombast that Trump does.”
He saw tweets that said Carson seemed like he was on Xanax. But he told WTOP, “People like Xanax.”
MSNBC’s Mitchell, on the other hand, felt that Carson is beginning to fall based on “the commander-in-chief questions.”
She added that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who tangled with Trump over the presidential legacy of his brother, President George W. Bush, “finally managed to show that he’s more aggressive, without getting nasty and getting down to the level of name-calling.”
She deemed the night “probably a lifeline” for Bush’s sagging campaign.
ABC News’ Roberts, however, felt Bush “continues to flounder, continues to be pretty low-energy … not even in (Fiorina’s) class when it came to forcefulness.”
“It wasn’t a knockout performance,” Mahtesian said of Bush. “But he lived to fight another day.”
IN THE END, nearly all the analysts who spoke to WTOP Thursday morning predicted that the fall of Trump was imminent.
Roberts likened Trump’s popularity to “a summer fling: ‘He’s a celebrity. He’s amusing. I want to shake his hand because I want to shake Kim Kardashian’s hand.’ But when you start evaluating him through a different lens: Can he really be president? Can he keep us safe? … Those questions are going to gain more traction, I think.”
“When a debate goes on for three hours,” Balz said, “… they have to get into the substance.” And when that happened and there was no one to counterpunch against, “Trump kind of faded away.”
Trump’s return to political gravity has been predicted for a long time, though, Cillizza warns.
“He seems to gain ground (after) things that normally would hurt people.”
Mitchell agrees, issuing a caution for all her fellow analysts and political enthusiasts everywhere:
“Up until now, frankly, we’ve all been wrong at analyzing this extraordinary election.”
