...Jeb Bush’s performance may have been stronger than previous debates, and his willingness to attack at Trump like Grant at Cold Harbor will no doubt win the gratitude of the establishment. But it didn’t seem like a turnaround moment for Bush, who’s still seeking mojo. Carly Fiorina has also largely disappeared from view since dominating the first two rounds of debates, and offered her shakiest performance so far. In support of a call for tighter, modernized Patriot Act, she told a meandering, incomprehensible story about helping the NSA after September 11, when she was CEO of HP. Later, she insisted that Silicon Valley executives would happily assist the government in surveilling terrorists—a bizarre statement, given that the executives themselves have clearly disagreed with that approach.
Ben Carson was hardly present. Having bragged early on that he was ready for tough national-security questions, he quickly punted. Given a chance to weigh in on whether Cruz or Paul was right about surveillance, he sheepishly shrugged, “You’ll have to ask them.” Later, asked whether he’d be willing to launch bombing campaigns that might kill children, he delivered a rambling answer that began with recounting brain surgery on kids and concluded by saying that killing people with bombs might be better than the alternative.
And how about Trump? No one save Bush was willing to attack him; Cruz conspicuously passed up a chance, a kindness Trump repaid in kind by reversing his suggestion that Cruz didn’t have the judgment to be president. (Keep in mind, Trump never reverses himself.) He offered plenty of nonsensical statements—a proposal to somehow shut off parts of the Internet, and doubling down on punishing terrorists’ families. In line with his past defense of progressive taxation, he sometimes sounded like a liberal Democrat, bemoaning the trillions spent on Middle Eastern wars that could have been used to build infrastructure in America. (A wall, perhaps.) At times, the audience in Las Vegas even booed him. Five debates in, Trump doesn’t make any more sense than he did at the start, but it remains impossible to turn away from him. So far, Republican primary voters can’t or won’t.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... as/420657/