With Donald Trump still atop most polls but Ted Cruz rising, it was inevitable: They were going to have to stop being so nice to each other. As Trump said after the debate, “I guess the bromance is over.” The two not particularly nice guys had largely taken a hands-off policy to each other, if not to other candidates, throughout the Republican presidential primary race, but at Thursday night’s debate, they battled sharply on two key topics … and each came away with a victory and a loss.
Cruz was the clear winner of the birther battle:
“The Constitution hasn’t changed, but the poll numbers have,” Mr. Cruz said. “Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa.” Mr. Cruz added that the law was on his side, noting that Senator John McCain, while born in the Panama Canal Zone, was eligible to run for president. By Mr. Trump’s standard, Mr. Cruz asserted, Mr. Trump himself might not be eligible to run for president because his mother was born in Scotland.
“But I was born here — big difference,” Mr. Trump said. [...]
“I’m not going to take legal advice from Donald Trump,” he said to laughter. And he offered to make Mr. Trump his running mate, so he could assume the presidency if a theoretical legal challenge against Mr. Cruz’s eligibility were successful.
But Trump got the upper hand on New York values, responding to Cruz’s “Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro- gay marriage, focus[ed] around money and the media” with a surprisingly effective invocation of 9/11:
"When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York," he said, provoking even Cruz to join the audience in applauding. [...]
"We rebuilt downtown Manhattan and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made," Trump said.
Cruz, a guy who usually has an answer to everything, had no comeback for that one. There’s a little over two weeks and one more Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses, so these two should have plenty of chances to keep battling and insulting. But in a weird way, Trump and Cruz both won: by making their rivalry the story of the debate, they showed that they are the dominant forces in this race and everyone else is just trying to catch a little of their glory.