The Winners and Losers From the South Carolina Republican Debate

By Adam Wollner, National Journal—

It was the Ted Cruz and Don­ald Trump show in North Char­le­ston.

After dir­ect­ing their harshest jabs of the pres­id­en­tial cam­paign at each oth­er this week, the Re­pub­lic­an poll-top­pers en­gaged each oth­er face-to-face on the de­bate stage Thursday night, spar­ring over Cruz’s Ca­na­dian birth­place and com­ments about “New York val­ues.” Ul­ti­mately, both can­did­ates were able to score points off each oth­er, and only fur­ther so­lid­i­fied their status as co-front-run­ners with the Iowa caucuses just over two weeks away.

While there wasn’t a clear-cut win­ner of the sixth GOP primary de­bate in South Car­o­lina, four can­did­ates de­livered strong per­form­ances, and three oth­ers un­der­whelmed. Here is Na­tion­al Journ­al‘s com­plete list of win­ners and losers:

WIN­NERS

CRUZ

After go­ing out of his way to avoid a food fight with Trump for weeks, Cruz clearly came pre­pared to con­front the real es­tate mogul head-on Thursday, par­tic­u­larly on the is­sue of his cit­izen­ship. Trump has re­cently ques­tioned wheth­er Cruz is eli­gible for the pres­id­ency giv­en that his moth­er was born out­side the U.S.

“Back in Septem­ber, my friend Don­ald had said he had had his law­yers look at this every which way and said there was no is­sue there,” Cruz said. “Since Septem­ber, the Con­sti­tu­tion hasn’t changed, but the poll num­bers have.” Trump was able to re­spond only by tout­ing his own poll num­bers.

Cruz also man­aged to de­flect an­oth­er line of cri­ti­cism: a New York Times story about his fail­ure to re­port a ma­jor bank loan dur­ing his 2012 Sen­ate bid. Cruz dis­missed the re­port as a “really stun­ning hit piece,” and the de­bate cut to a com­mer­cial break be­fore the mod­er­at­ors or his rivals were able to press him fur­ther.

TRUMP

Cruz may have got­ten the bet­ter of Trump dur­ing their ex­change about Canada, but Trump came out on top when the dis­cus­sion turned to New York. Earli­er this week, Cruz said Trump “em­bod­ied New York val­ues,” and Cruz fol­lowed up on Thursday by say­ing that “not a lot of con­ser­vat­ives come out of Man­hat­tan.”

Trump countered by prais­ing the way the city re­spon­ded after the 9/11 at­tacks. At one point, Cruz even ap­plauded Trump’s re­sponse. “I have to tell you, that was a very in­sult­ing state­ment that Ted made,” Trump said, seem­ingly catch­ing Cruz off guard. Bey­ond his ex­changes with Cruz, no oth­er can­did­ate was able to land a clean hit on Trump.

While this wasn’t Marco Ru­bio’s best de­bate of the race, the sen­at­or from Flor­ida logged a sol­id per­form­ance, yet again com­ing across as per­haps the most pol­ished can­did­ate on stage. He nearly stole the mo­ment after the back-and-forth on Cruz’s cit­izen­ship, say­ing, “I hate to in­ter­rupt this epis­ode of Court TV, but I think we have to get back to what this elec­tion has to be about.”

And to­ward the end of the de­bate, Ru­bio com­pletely un­loaded on Cruz, ac­cus­ing him of flip-flop­ping on im­mig­ra­tion.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate you dump­ing your oppo-re­search folder,” Cruz said.

“No, it’s your re­cord,” Ru­bio re­spon­ded, in a clip tail­or-made for cable news.

CHRISTIE

Early in the de­bate, Ru­bio came after Chris Christie with both bar­rels, claim­ing the New Jer­sey gov­ernor sup­ports parts of Pres­id­ent Obama’s agenda and has donated to Planned Par­ent­hood. Christie, however, re­spon­ded calmly and turned the tables by point­ing to Ru­bio’s past praise.

“I like Marco, too. And two years ago, he called me a con­ser­vat­ive re­former that New Jer­sey needed,” Christie said. “That was be­fore he was run­ning against me. Now that he is, he’s changed his tune. I’m nev­er go­ing to change my tune.”

Still, the flip-flop­ping charges Christie has re­cently faced won’t go away any­time soon. How he handles them will go a long way in de­term­in­ing his fate.

LOSERS

CAR­SON

As he deals with slip­ping poll num­bers and tur­moil among his cam­paign staff, Ben Car­son is in des­per­ate need of a turn­around. But that turn­around did not be­gin in South Car­o­lina. He man­aged to crack a few mem­or­able jokes—at one point, he said he could re­spond to a Jeb Bush an­swer be­cause he had cited “every­one” on stage—but again gave me­an­der­ing an­swers that were dif­fi­cult to fol­low and showed that he still has not mastered for­eign policy.

Car­son needs a strong fin­ish, if not a vic­tory, in Iowa on Feb. 1, and Thursday’s de­bate didn’t help his case.

BUSH

Thanks to his poor stand­ing in the polls, Jeb Bush was at the edge of the de­bate stage for this first time this cam­paign. And he didn’t do much to move back to­ward the cen­ter.

Dur­ing the last GOP de­bate in Decem­ber, the former Flor­ida gov­ernor earned ac­col­ades for at­tack­ing Trump, but this time around, his blows didn’t land with the same ef­fect­ive­ness. Bush re­peated that Trump’s pro­pos­al to bar Muslim im­mig­rants was “un­hinged,” but oth­er­wise only po­litely asked Trump to con­sider chan­ging his views.

Bush gave some de­tailed policy an­swers, but in an elec­tion cycle dom­in­ated by a real­ity TV star, they wer­en’t res­on­at­ing with the audi­ence. Simply put, the de­bate stage is not Bush’s best ven­ue.

KASICH

In the jumbled GOP es­tab­lish­ment lane, John Kasich may have done the least to break out from the pack. The Ohio gov­ernor didn’t make any mis­takes, but he didn’t have any mo­ments that out­shone the likes of Christie and Ru­bio, either. At one point, Trump in­ter­jec­ted dur­ing to say, “I’m lik­ing him to­night,” but oth­er­wise Kasich stayed on the side­lines dur­ing the de­bate’s most heated mo­ments. Over­all, he just didn’t have a very mem­or­able night.

FOX BUSI­NESS NET­WORK

After Fox Busi­ness Net­work won wide­spread praise from Re­pub­lic­ans and the me­dia for its hand­ling of the fourth Re­pub­lic­an de­bate in Novem­ber, the tide quickly turned against the mod­er­at­ors at the sixth de­bate. Early on, Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartir­omo framed most of their ques­tions in terms of Pres­id­ent Obama’s po­s­i­tion, which didn’t lend it­self to much room for dis­agree­ment among the can­did­ates. And throughout the night, they rarely fol­lowed up after can­did­ates dodged their an­swers.