It took the only girl in the class to stand up to the schoolyard bully. It wasn’t the fact that Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive, slapped down Donald Trump, the blustering Republican presidential frontrunner, however – it was way in which she did it.
In the second Republican presidential debate, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, one of the contenders struggling in a packed, noisy field of 15 candidates, bashed Trump for his “junior high” behaviour.
Trump’s attacks on his opponents and critics have won nothing but approval during the summer among voters who will over the first seven months of next year pick the ultimate Republican nominee.
“Are we not way above that?” asked Paul.
Trump was not. “I never attack him on his looks,” Trump fired back, “and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”
Asked about one of the reality television star’s most severe jibes when he insulted Fiorina’s looks in a recent interview (“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”), the businesswoman replied with an economy of words that put Trump in his place. “Woman all over this country heard very clearly what Mr Trump said,” she said, to the loudest audience hoots of the night.
Clear winner
Fiorina was commanding and measured throughout, the debate’s clear winner, delivering the same performance that made her stand out in the “under-card” debate of second-tier candidates last month.
She showed she deserved her spot on the main stage and left pollsters predicting a sharp increase in support among voters, possibly at the expense of another outsider, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson who failed to sparkle in the second debate in a row. Her emotional response on cutting funding for the Planned Parenthood reproductive health clinics (where a third of US abortions are performed) will appeal to many social conservatives among whom the laid-back Carson, now running second in the polls, has many fans.
Trump has made his bombastic, anti-establishment campaign all about him: his self-aggrandising swagger, his angry barbs against anyone who questions him, his billionaire outsider status and track record in business that would allow him to “make America great again”.
The thorn in the sides of the 12 politicians in the race with 30 per cent support in the polls started the debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in California in the same bile-filled spirit. His first contribution was to attack Paul for his 1 per cent showing in the polls.
The hands-off approach by the other candidates in the first debate in Cleveland last month was dropped in favour of assaults, notably from Paul, Fiorina, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Florida senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, all trying to move above single points in polls. Television news network CNN, the host of the debate, let the candidates go at it, encouraging the candidates to spar with each other by allowing any candidate to respond if they were criticised by another.
Walker landed one of the hardest blows on Trump, in response to a question about whether the other candidates were comfortable with the businessman having his fingers on the nuclear codes as president.
“We don’t need an apprentice in the White House – we have one right now,” he said. It was one of Walker’s few better moments as he faded, struggling to recover the frontrunner status he had in the spring.
As the three-hour debate turned to policy, Trump flagged, appearing to struggle for the first time since his startling surge to the top of the polls in the summer. Rubio and Fiorina excelled, showing a strong understanding of hot foreign policy topics such as an ascendant Russia and the chaos in the Middle East and displaying their credentials at least to be considered as vice-presidential nominees. For all Trump’s brickbats thrown at Jeb Bush being a “low-energy” candidate, it was the businessman’s batteries that ran low.
Humble pie
Asked what his Secret Service presidential code-name would be, Bush, showing an uncharacteristic funny side, said: “EverReady – it’s high energy, Donald,” which brought an outstretched hand of appreciation from Trump and a responding slap from his rival.
Trump said, tongue in check, his would be “Humble”.
Standout moments from the debate
The Donald trumped
The pugnacious businessman drew fire, refusing to apologise to Jeb Bush’s Mexican wife for drawing her into “a raucous political conversation” by saying that that the former Florida governor was weak on immigration because he had a soft spot for Mexicans.
Trumps remarks in a Rolling Stone magazine interview about Carly Fiorina's looks came back at him as the only female candidate deftly slapped down his insult with a comment that left Trump squirming and drew cheers. Bush humanised The brother of George W Bush, often wooden and awkward in the campaign, let down his hair by admitting that he smoked marijuana 40 years ago. "I'm sure other people might have done it and don't want to admit it. My mom's not happy that I just did," he said.
Bush even brought a cheer for the first time defending his brother’s war record against another Trump battering, saying the 43rd president “kept us safe”.
“More energy tonight – I like that,” Trump told Bush.
