We begin with
Dana Milbank at The Washington Post, who looks at yesterday's main GOP debate through the prism of the GOP's 2013 "autopsy" report:
Maybe it’s time to exhume the body and have another look.
Back in 2013, the Republican National Committee “autopsy” of the 2012 election concluded that to win future presidential elections Republicans would need to be more inclusive of women, be more tolerant on gay rights to gain favor with young voters, support comprehensive immigration reform to appeal to Latinos, and stand strong against “corporate malfeasance.”
Well, the 17 Republican presidential candidates met in Cleveland Thursday night for three hours of debate and Americans saw candidates: opposing abortion even in cases of rape or incest or to save a mother’s life; comparing the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage to one supporting slavery; and talking about building border walls and denying “amnesty.”
The Daily Beast:
It was a debate unlike any other.
The GOP turned into the WWE—the first presidential contest that seemed to consciously imitate reality television. It was almost certainly the first presidential debate to include an explicit blowjob reference.
At the center of it all was The Donald.
Ten people were on the stage. Nine of them were running for president, with the man in the middle, the undisputed leader in the polls, still acting like an insult comic. While Trump didn’t dominate the debate as expected, he did his best to keep the substance to a minimum.
More reactions below the fold.
You can read the whole transcript of the FOX debate here.
Dante Ramos at The Boston Globe:
It was billed as the “happy-hour debate,” but, oh, the humiliation of it. The first formal debate of the 2016 presidential cycle, a 5 p.m. face-off on the Fox News Channel, featured seven candidates who polled too low to get into the main event in prime time. From the very beginning, moderators Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum put these junior-varsity White House hopefuls in their place. [...] To the extent that a debate built on borderline-contempuous questions could belong to anyone, it belonged to former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina.
Frank Buni at The New York Times praises the moderators' questions:
This was an inquisition.
On Thursday night in Cleveland, the Fox News moderators did what only Fox News moderators could have done, because the representatives of any other network would have been accused of pro-Democratic partisanship.
They took each of the 10 Republicans onstage to task. They held each of them to account. They made each address the most prominent blemishes on his record, the most profound apprehensions that voters feel about him, the greatest vulnerability that he has.
It was riveting. It was admirable. It compels me to write a cluster of words I never imagined writing: hooray for Fox News.
Did Fox take this combative approach because it was theatrical? Because it promised tension, promoted unease and was a sure route to reddened faces and raised voices?
Of course.
Meanwhile,
Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post agrees that the main debate questions were good but veered into ridiculousness at the end:
Once they were back: “An interesting closing question from Chase Norton on Facebook, who wants to know this of the candidates: ‘I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.’ Senator Cruz, start from you. Any word from God?”
Really? This was not some sort of elaborate set-up for Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” farewell? This was a real question during the first major primetime Republican debate? “Any word from God?” [...] Forget separation of church and state. We don’t even have separation of church and debate. At the rate we were going, I expected Donald Trump to fall to the ground and start speaking in tongues.
Lauren Weber and Christine Conetta at The Huffington Post call out the "happy hour debate" moderators for their questions and have a video highlight in case you missed it:
as we watched the so-called "kids' table" debate on Thursday night -- the forum held for the seven candidates who didn't poll high enough to make it into the main event -- we realized that some of the questions asked by moderators Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer were truly terrible. The questions were often poorly phrased, and many revealed the moderators' obvious political leanings.
From asking candidates whether Donald Trump was "getting the better" of them to posing leading questions about mosques requiring surveillance, absurdity reigned.
Will Leitch at Bloomberg on the pre-debate debate:
You couldn’t help but feel bad for all seven people on stage. A surprisingly large percentage of the questions from junior varsity moderators Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum were, in one way or another, how depressing it must have been for each candidate to be on the stage at this debate rather than that one. They asked Carly Fiorina how she felt losing by such a large margin to Trump. They asked Rick Santorum if “[his] time had passed.” Every question for George Pataki seemed to be said through a stifled giggle. The reaction shots of a non-existent crowd–and the total absence of applause–didn’t help. It reminded one of that April baseball game in Baltimore that had no fans in the stands.
This debate’s status as a consolation prize, a good-attendance-award, created a sense of kabuki that suffocated every question and every response; it felt like a dress rehearsal debate, cast with everybody’s understudies. The candidates were all incredibly nice to one another, and why not? What’s the point of attacking someone in 13th place? You can’t punch up when everyone on stage is already down. When you have a debate with no frontrunner–and therefore no one to take down–it takes most of the reasons for a debate to exist out of existence. Even the “your answer took too long” buzzer was a gentle beep rather than the aggressive, harsh, he-chose-poorly BUZZZZZ they’re bringing out for the later debate. If they go over time, why rub it in? They feel bad enough that they’re already here.
Jonathan Bernstein:
To the extent that Fiorina is the headline, however, that mostly means that Perry, Santorum and Bobby Jindal were not -- and they were the ones who might have capitalized on the opportunity, at least in terms of having a real shot at the nomination.
I just hope we get more policy questions in the main event.
Finally,
E.J. Dionne Jr.'s take:
I saw three shows tonight during Fox News’ Republican debate: The Trump Show, The Kasich Dissent, and Everybody Else. Among those in that last category, Jeb Bush had a good night, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had his moments, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) won more friends. [...] The underlying premises of the debate were so deeply conservative that I doubt any Democrats who watched were tempted to jump ship, and I am not sure how many middle-of-the-road voters were drawn the Republicans’ way, except by Kasich and possibly by Rubio. The debate was held on the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. This never came up. I wasn’t surprised. But I was disappointed.