Live Blog: Detroit Hosts 11th Republican Debate
Four Republican candidates remain in the presidential race. (Fox News)
6:49: Kasich supports a broad coalition on the ground and in the air is Syria and Iraq—and eventually Libya.
6:46: The other candidates are calling on Trump to take his conversation with the NY Times public instead of off-the-record. Previously in the evening, Trump said he wouldn’t do that because he had too much respect for what off-the-record means to reporters – leaving journalists everywhere scratching their heads.
6:40: Trump has changed his mind on H1B visas. Now, he’s in favor of them.
6:34: Trump reiterates he’s building a wall and Mexico is paying for it.
6:32: Trump and Kelly have a cordial exchange. “You’re looking well,” he tells her.
6:31: Trump said he supported Clinton in 2008 – and gave her a check – as a business decision.
6:24: Cruz is abolishing the IRS.
6:22: Trump is abolishing Common Core.
6:17: Trump wants to make it clear that he only got $1 million from his dad to start his business.
6:16: Rubio calls on Trump to move all of his clothing manufacturing out of China and, of course, Mexico.
6:15: Asking for a friend? Kasich says people want to know why he never gets any time in the debates.
6:03: As expected, Ben Carson is a no show, all but admitting that he’s finally called it quits.
5:53 p.m. PT: Welcome to the 11th of the 13th Republican debates. Each of the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls will make his cases for the party’s nomination. Once again the field has narrowed, with Ben Carson all but dropping out of the race after failing short on Super Tuesday, leaving Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and, of course, Donald Trump to take the stage at Detroit’s Fox Theater.
If the night goes anything like expected, viewers can expect to see two debates – one that pits the candidates against each other and one that pits Rubio, Cruz and (potentially) Kasich against the frontrunner Trump, who has many in his party’s establishment turning against him.
Earlier in the day both of the party’s previous candidates publicly criticized the billionaire. The Associated Press reported:
In an extraordinary display of Republican chaos, the party’s most recent presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, lambasted current front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday, calling him unfit for office and a danger for the nation and the GOP.
“His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader,” Romney declared. He called Trump “a phony” who is “playing the American public for suckers,” a man whose “imagination must not be married to real power.”
…
The GOP’s 2008 nominee, Arizona Sen. McCain, joined in, raising “many concerns about Mr. Trump’s uninformed and indeed dangerous statements on national security issues.”
This comes on the same day that long-time conservative commentator and former Nixon and Ford speechwriter Ben Stein publicly declared that should Trump win, he would seriously consider voting for a Democrat for the first time.
Expect the GOP’s conflicted – even contentious—feelings about Trump to be brought up in Detroit. Other topics will likely touch on American industry, the economy, issues tied to the complex race relations in the U.S. – tied both to the event’s location and the Trump campaign’s tie to the KKK. That is, of course, if the moderators can keep candidates on top, something even they believe will be a challenge.
And speaking of moderators, this is Trump’s return to a Fox News debate after skipping the previous Fox News debate over a dispute with Megyn Kelly.
—Posted by Eric Ortiz
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/live_blog_detroit_hosts_11th_republican_debate_20160303/
