The unexpected death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia provided a somber start for Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, but a brief detente turned into a raucous slug fest when Donald Trump and Jeb Bush escalated their long-running feud.
Scalia, a favorite of the conservative movement, was found dead at age 79 at a ranch in Texas. President Barack Obama said late Saturday that he plans to nominate a successor and called on the Senate to act. Saturday night, the Republican candidates for president agreed that his nominee should never see the bench.
“I think he’s going to do it whether I’m OK with it or not,” Donald Trump said. “It’s up to (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell and everybody else to stop it. It’s called delay, delay, delay.”
Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said the next president should pick Scalia’s successor. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush were more tempered.
“It’s amazing, it’s not even two minutes after the death of Judge Scalia, nine children here today their father didn’t wake up,” Kasich said. “I just wish we hadn’t run so fast into politics.”
Saturday’s debate comes exactly a week before the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary, with much at stake. A Trump victory would make it two-in-a-row for the New York billionaire and polls show him with a double-digit lead.
The real race appears to be for second place, with Cruz, Bush, Rubio and Kasich in a free-for-all, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson a distant sixth.
Trump struck first. He went hard after Bush 25 minutes into the debate, first on how to handle the situation in the Middle East. When the crowd — or at least the Bush supporters in the room — booed, Trump declared, “that’s Jeb’s special interests and lobbyist talking. Jeb is so wrong. You’ve got to fight ISIS first.”
But the night turned bizarre when Trump was asked about his 2008 statement that then-President George W. Bush should be impeached for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Then Trump accused Bush of failing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks on New York, costing the country $2 trillion and thousands of lives in the war in Iraq.
He also managed to insult Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator — which also brought a chorus of boos. Graham and George W. Bush remain popular in the state. Graham has endorsed Jeb Bush and the former President Bush will campaign for his brother in Charleston on Monday.
The crowd rolled along the entire night; cheering and booing loudly enough to drown out the candidates at times.
“This is just crazy, huh?” an exasperated Kasich said at one point. “This is just nuts. Jeez, oh man. Being in Iraq, we though there were weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell said there were weapons there. But the fact is we got ourselves into the middle of a civil war.”
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, too, sought calm.
“Is that what you want? Want just happened?” he said after another clash.
The extended dispute between Bush and Trump threatened to overshadow other candidates’ moments. Rubio, for example, gave an incredibly detailed answer to what the first three foreign policy steps he would take as president. He said deal with emerging threats from North Korea and China, stopping ISIS and “rebuilding and reinvigorating” NATO.
Asked to describe a time when he handled crisis, Rubio said it was when Obama asked Congress to authorize use of force in Syria.
“It’s one of the hardest decisions you’ll ever make,” he said. But, he said, Obama’s plan was so weak, “I concluded that attack wouldn’t help the situation it would make the situation worse. It was a difficult decision to make and one we had only a few days to make it. It was the right decision.”
Cruz, who had few opportunities to shine in the first hour, landed a shot at Obama over how the president is fighting ISIS. America’s efforts are too limited and too small-minded, he said. Cruz also said he would not rule out the use of ground troops.
“If we need to be able to embed special forces to support our overwhelming air power … we can use them, but we ought to start by using our incredible air power advantage,” he said. “We’re not using the tools we have and it’s because the commander in chief is not focused on defeating the enemy.”
Like Bush and Trump, Cruz and Rubio returned to their familiar fight over immigration. Cruz accused Rubio of teaming with Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer to pitch a plan for amnesty for illegal immigrants already in the country. Rubio countered that Cruz first backed immigration reform before later opposing it.
“He either isn’t telling the truth then or he’s not telling the truth now,” Rubio said.
Back-and-forth they went, with Cruz accusing Rubio of going on Spanish-language Univision and saying “in Spanish” that he wouldn’t rescind Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
“I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish,” Rubio responded.
Cruz, who appeared stunned, said something back to Rubio — in Spanish.
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