Frank Newport:
Overall, the preliminary evidence suggests that a trio of lesser-known candidates came out of the GOP debate in significantly better positions than they went in with -- Fiorina, Kasich and Carson. Paul, Santorum and Perry limped out of the debate in worse shape. And Trump's position, in the minds of Republicans nationwide, didn't move.
Slate:
According to Jenna Johnson in the Washington Post, [Carly] Fiorina received a question from a mother of five who said vaccines went against her religious beliefs because they were manufactured from cells of "aborted babies." Fiorina responded, “When in doubt, it’s always the parent’s choice," meaning that all parents should decide for themselves if their unvaccinated child should have the opportunity to transmit a disease to an infant, elderly person, or otherwise immunosuppressed person. "We must protect religious liberty," she added.
Amber Phillps:
So the political science seems pretty decided on this issue too. Christie, Paul and Carson all calculated the political costs of questioning vaccines to please the very limited number of vaccine skeptics wasn't worth it.
Fiorina sought to cover herself by saying that schools could refuse vaccinated children. And that's certainly a key bit of nuance that she could emphasize if she is pressed on this issue. If unvaccinated children aren't in school, she could argue, the risk of communicable diseases spreading is less of an issue.
She could also note that many states have laws allowing for some degree of religious and philosophical exemptions from vaccines.
But she's already taking heat for her comments -- from fellow GOP 2016 contenders like George Pataki, the former New York governor:
If past is prologue, it's probably best Fiorina just drops this.
Jill Lawrence:
President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are sitting in a conference room, trying to get to yes. But one of them is not trying very hard.
"I believe in winning. I'm very good at winning. And I just proved it by winning the presidency," the real-estate magnate and onetime reality TV star tells Merkel. “Before I won, we were losers. We had stupid leaders, stupid politicians. I’m going to make America great again. Losing is over. America is back. I’m in charge.
“I know how to fix Greece. One word. Casinos. Vegas on the Aegean. And that Iran nuke agreement you and my loser predecessor negotiated – it’s a DISGRACE. I wrote The Art of the Deal. This is not the art of the deal, this is the art of a person that has no idea what he's doing. I want it FIRED.” (Snaps his fingers in her face).
Merkel has prepped by reading the new president’s books and his tweets. “I’ll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition,” he has written. And "If someone screws you, screw them back." And “WINNING TAKES CARE OF EVERYTHING!”
She is not surprised and has readied a response, which is to stand up and walk out of the room. The president turns to an aide in frustration. “She was very angry. I don’t know why. I cherish women.” He pauses. “She likes neck massages, right? Maybe I should have gone with that?”
You may have caught on that the preceding paragraphs are parody. But they are parody that hews closely to Trump’s actual words.
But why stop with Merkel? Follow the Donald through the ages via
John Flowers:
So this is, maybe, a week after the Ides of March. I’m in Rome. I got a new coliseum there. Great coliseum. I build a lot them. Make a lot of money. Very successful.
So I’m in Rome. And Brutus and his cabal ask me to say a few words about Caesar. Really, begging me to say something about him. And Brutus is an honorable guy. So, I’m like, “Sure. Whatever.”
But then right before my speech, Brutus comes up to me — he’s real nervous, Brutus — and he says, “Whatever you do in your speech, don’t blame me for Caesar’s death.”
I think, “That’s odd.” But, whatever. Brutus is an honorable guy.
So I deliver this speech. Great speech. Tremendous speech. It’s about Caesar. He’s dead. Lot of emotions. Really brings down the house. I get rave reviews for the speech. Rave reviews. Everybody loves it.
But then, weeks later, the media is saying I said these things that I never said. Awful things.
Simon Maloy:
Half a year ago, while speaking at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Jeb Bush made a show of distancing himself from the Bush family foreign policy legacy. “I am my own man,” he said, “and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences.” It was transparent nonsense at the time he said it – Jeb was a fervent Iraq war supporter and his foreign policy team is built from the same neoconservative chuckleheads who shepherded George W. Bush into the Iraq catastrophe. But the Bush Doctrine still retains its well-earned political toxicity, and Jeb had to say something to at least give the impression that he wouldn’t be a replica of his brother on the world stage.
In the months since making that declaration, though, Jeb has shown no indication that his foreign policy preferences are substantively different from those of George W. Bush – he’s still defending the Iraq war, he wants American combat troops to fight in Iraq, he’s pushing regime change in another Middle Eastern country (Syria), and he favors a hardline posture on Iran that eschews diplomacy in favor of isolation and tough talk.
And now we can add torture to the list of Bush-era policies that Jeb might bring back. “I don’t want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement,” he said when asked if he’d undo Barack Obama’s executive order banning “enhanced interrogation methods” – the gross bureaucratic euphemism for torture techniques approved by his brother. “This is something that I’m actually struggling with because I’m running for president … and when you are president your words matter.”
This is interesting, and not just because one of the non-Trump favorites for the Republican nomination can’t give a straight answer on whether he’d return the U.S. to its morally repugnant days of torturing detainees. There’s a real divide emerging within the Republican presidential field over the use of torture.
With advisors like Paul Wolfowitz, what could go wrong?
Philip Bump:
That said, there's a difference between supporting the war at its outset or not thinking it's a mistake now and saying that it was a "good deal" or embracing Wolfowitz. (After critique from former Obama administration official Dan Pfeiffer, Bush adviser Tim Miller pointed out that Obama had also said that Hussein's being gone was a "good thing.") There is no chance that the Bush campaign hasn't polled on this repeatedly themselves, and crafted messages that they think will work with the electorate. You can see a flash of it from that debate: "Here's the lesson that we should take from this," Bush said, "...Barack Obama became president, and he abandoned Iraq."
Maybe Bush is still trying to work those tested messages into his normal conversations on the trail. Or maybe the polling suggested that, at least to get him on the stage at next year's convention, shying away from his brother's legacy isn't really as big a deal as we might think.
Run on the war,
George Jeb!
Juan Cole:
Jeb Bush very unwisely went after Hillary Clinton last night on the grounds that her Iraq policies gave us Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). Bush may think he is cleverly pulling a Karl Rove, attacking his opponent on her strong point (foreign policy), as Rove swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. But this isn’t 2004, and virtually no one is excited about having more Bushes in the White House (apparently a third of Republicans want Trump and like 12 percent want Bush, despite his advantage in name recognition). The fact is, every time Jeb Bush says “Iraq,” he loses more votes.
One of the arguments Mr. Bush made was that while his brother, George W. Bush, didn’t get everything right, he did have a brilliant moment with the 2007 troop escalation or “surge,” which put the world right. Then that horrible Obama crew, including Mrs. Cinton, came along and screwed things up by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011.
First of all, saying that W. didn’t get everything right in Iraq is like saying that Custer didn’t get everything right at the Little Bighorn. Bush’s Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history. Didn’t get everything right, indeed.
Second, Jeb Bush’s narrative about the “surge” is mythical history unconnected to reality. See my Engaging the Muslim World for the real story.
In brief, here is what happened.
David Frum:
“Will you take away my health insurance?”
That question does not get asked often at Republican presidential forums. Yet it will be the most decisive question in the 2016 presidential election.