
If you chose to watch the Super Bowl instead of the Republican debates this weekend, don’t feel bad. In fact, you’re in the majority. According to CNN, 114.4 people watched the Super Bowl, while Variety reports that only 13.2 people watched the Republican Debate.
Even though there were far more people interested in Panthers vs. Broncos than Bush vs. Trump, the debate was actually pretty important too. This was the highest watched Republican debate this year and happened right before the New Hampshire primary.
Hang around for a few minutes to catch the highlights of the Presidential Game this weekend.
1. Band of Brothers: The Governor’s Alliance was strong. While The Governor’s Alliance sounds like the title of a political thriller novel, in this case it refers to the alliance between Governors Christie, Kasich and Bush. These candidates know that there most likely will not be enough support from the primaries for all three of them to continue on in the primaries. Therefore, they spent most of the debate defending each other while attacking others. Bush took on Trump, and Christie went after Rubio, while Kasich did a nice job emphasizing his role as the House’s lead budget-writer during the surpluses of the 1990s. Bush even endorsed construction skills of his Governor Brothers, saying that, “I trust Kasich and Christie to build the roads in their states.”
Not a bad showing from any of them, but is it too little too late? We will have to wait and see.
2. Rubio repeated himself three times and made everyone uncomfortable. So far, Rubio has been a very strong debater and even his competitors have lauded his impressive speaking skills. His stronger than expected third place finish in the Iowa Caucus has him in a good spot to contend for first place in the primaries. Due to Trump’s unpopularity and Cruz’s hard stances on issues, many see Rubio as the most electable candidate.
Which is exactly why his performance on Saturday night was so shocking. Attacks from Christie apparently threw him off so much that he ended up repeating a memorized block of speech about Obama-not once, not twice, but three times. Yes, that is right. Americans had to suffer through their television screens as Rubio repeated the exact same paragraph three times!
Thanks to this very conspicuous slip up, Rubio has now been dubbed “Marcobot” by the Guardian and a Twitter page called @RubioGlitch has been created, to the enjoyment of over 2,000 followers. Only time will tell if this will blow over or affect Rubio’s poll numbers in New Hampshire.
3. Jeb Bush tried really hard. Jeb Bush is going for broke in New Hampshire after gaining a mere 4.1% of the votes in the Iowa Caucus. He did a solid job of explaining his positions on issues like abortion, (anti-abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother), the draft, (women should be able to be drafted, but we won’t have another draft) and veterans, (we need reform to help them). If people actually listened to him, they might find that he has a lot of solid policies. However, despite his attempts to gain air time by attacking Trump, he was mostly trampled over again, which leads to…
4. Donald Trump bullied Jeb Bush again. It really would be impossible to make this up. Here are actual quotes that Trump has said about Jeb Bush:
“How can I be tied with Jeb Bush? He’s terrible.”
“Wow, Jeb Bush, whose campaign is a total disaster, had to bring in mommy to take a slap at me. Not nice!”
“Jeb, Jeb — he wants to be a tough guy. He wants to be a tough guy tonight…and it doesn’t work very well with him.” (said Saturday)
The crowd finally got sick of it and booed Trump when he literally shushed Jeb as he tried to talk. It will be interesting to see how Saturday Night Live is going to top reality this time.
5. Cruz apologized to Carson for accidentally saying Carson was out of the race. There has been bad blood between Cruz and Carson since Cruz’s campaign team sent out an email the night of the Iowa Caucus suggesting that Carson was about to drop out of the race. Many have claimed that Cruz’s high poll numbers during the caucus are not legitimate because this move took votes away from Carson. Cruz claims that his campaign team simply “passed on a CNN news story that CNN broke.”
Carson referenced this event during Saturday night’s debates, saying that “people have to decide whether this kind of behavior is acceptable to them.” He added that,“I’ll tell you what it tells me, it tells me a lot about character.”
Cruz responded to these statements with an apology. “Ben is a good and honorable man, and Ben and Candy have become friends. He has an amazing life story that has inspired millions, including me,” Cruz said. “When this transpired, I apologized to him then, and I do so now. Ben, I’m sorry.”
Is it too late now to say sorry, Ben?