Donald Trump has said he won’t appear in Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate because Megyn Kelly is mean to him, a refusal Ted Cruz apparently sees as a chance to score macho points while reducing the primary to a battle between himself and Trump:
"I’m happy to go an hour and a half mano a mano, me and Donald with no moderators any time before the Iowa caucuses," Cruz said on The Mark Levin Show Tuesday. Cruz said Trump can name his own moderator and Levin offered up his airwaves.
"The fact that Donald is now afraid to appear on a debate stage, that he doesn't want his record questioned ... that reflects a lack of respect for the men and women of Iowa," Cruz said.
Blah blah blah posturing obligatory “you’re fired” reference and Manhattan reference and so on. “Donald is a fragile soul,” apparently. Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was not going along with Cruz’s effort to elevate himself to the status of Trump’s one true competitor:
“Well, look, he’s not the only one. We’ve had calls from many debates, from many of the candidates now, to say look, why would we participate in the Fox debate as well? I think what you’re finding out, once again, you have the candidates reacting to the only true leader in this race, which is Donald Trump," Lewandowski claimed. "He leads, and all of a sudden everyone realizes that, hey, maybe it’s not the best idea to be involved in these debates, maybe we should leave as well. So I had a number of calls yesterday with some of the other campaigns who said hey, can we come and join you in raising money for the Wounded Warriors and the veterans, because, you know, Fox isn’t going to be fair to you, what makes them think they’re going to be fair to us?”
Cruz wants it to be himself and Donald, but in response he got quite the stiff arm saying “nope, it’s Donald and everyone else, and you’re part of the everyone else.” As a side note, Cruz is not exactly dispelling the increasingly widespread take that his problem as a candidate is that he’s such a jerk that he has no allies. His efforts to taunt Trump into debating him reek of all the negative things that people are saying about his personality.
And yes, we’ve really reached the point where Fox News—Fox freakin’ News—is not reliably partisan enough for leading Republican candidates. They are now holding out for even easier, more slanted questions than they can get from the giant mouthpiece of the right.