GOP candidates joust over foreign policy, immigration

“I just wish we hadn’t run so fast into politics”, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said.

Forget the governors’ alliance. Trump did tell CNN over the summer that he supports Planned Parenthood for providing other services, like contraception, but called the group “an abortion factory”. All those debate-stage friendships are over.

The Republican debate in South Carolina Saturday on night was far below what I’d hoped for as a debate coach, so the grades generally reflected that this time. That came from Donald Trump, on the defense all night, some of his biggest battles yet happening last night on the debate stage.

“I want to tell you: they lied”, Trump said.

When Trump talked about how President Ronald Reagan’s positions evolved, just like his, Bush countered, “He was a conservative and he didn’t tear down people like Donald Trump is. He’s a nasty guy”.

Rubio also had words for Ted Cruz, saying that there is a pattern of deceit on everything from Rubio’s record to the rumor of Ben Carson withdrawing in Iowa. He had a poor exchange on immigration with Cruz that somehow ended up with Cruz speaking Spanish. “You are the single biggest liar”. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to emerge from SC as the clear challenger to Trump, who won the New Hampshire primary, and Texas Sen. Today the spotlight belongs to Marco Rubio, who’ll appear on all five shows – the full Ginsburg – to try to undo the damage from the debate malfunction heard ’round the world.

Cruz then spoke in Spanish.

“He went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind president Obama’s illegal exclusive amnesty on his first day in office”, Cruz said of Rubio.

“[My] mother was the strongest person I know“, Jeb Bush shot back, along with many other forceful retorts to Trump.

“For a number of weeks, Ted Cruz has just been telling lies”, Florida Sen. While Cruz has been against an explicit path to citizenship for people in the country illegally, he did introduce legislation in that 2013 bill that proposed eventual legal status for millions of people. The knock apparently stuck, as Rubio stumbled to a fifth-place finish three days later in New Hampshire.

Cruz started a rumor that Carson had dropped out of the race, and the other candidates defended him as a point of sympathy. It was Christie’s battering that led the Florida senator to stumble in the last debate. – I mean, leaving. now, I have to say he made a mistake getting in.

If Jeb Bush’s campaign ends in SC, he’ll end it fighting on principle. When the crowd jeered, Trump brushed them off as “lobbyists”.

In this January 12, 2009, file photo, President George W. Bush gestures during a news conference at the White House.

There’s just something about SC – maybe it’s the bad-karma ghost of John C. Calhoun (the ideological godfather of secession) – that just brings out the snarling mean in conservatives.

While discussing America’s war policies, Trump lashed out at former President George W. Bush’s decision to launch the Iraq War, accusing the former administration of lying by claiming that there were weapons of mass destruction when there were none.

“I’m sick and exhausted of Barack Obama blaming my brother for all the problems that he’s had and frankly I could care less about the insults Donald Trump gives against me”, Mr Bush said.

“While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe”, Bush said.

As ever, Trump’s comment bore only a passing relationship to the truth. “I lost hundreds of friends”, he continued amid the catcalls.

“The World Trade Center came down under your brother’s reign”. “He kept us safe”. Trump versus the specter of George W. Bush. Trump versus a hostile audience that booed him, and booed him, and booed him again. But Trump didn’t seem to mind. Jeb Bush responded with some fire this time, and both Sen. The former Florida governor said there should be “consensus orientation on that nomination” ” but added that he didn’t expect Obama would pick a candidate in that vein.

Bush, revived by a stronger-than-expected showing in New Hampshire, showed more spark than he had in past debates.

“What I’ve been watching here, this back and forth, and these attacks, some of them are personal”, Kasich said.

Hours after the news broke that Scalia had died, the fight over when to replace the conservative judicial figure quickly took shape as a defining issue of the 2016 presidential race.

Each party formally announces their presidential candidate at conventions in July, four months before the presidential election.