Absent the nasty, puerile tone of the previous Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump didn’t feel compelled to again defend the size of his manhood at Thursday’s much more substantive throw down in Florida.
[...] with a comfortable lead in the polls, the front-runner cut the insults, barely raised his voice and encouraged the GOP to embrace these millions of people that now for the first time ever love the Republican Party.
[...] the gentler tone of the debate enabled the billionaire developer who has never held public office to continue to avoid describing with much specificity the policies he’d pursue as president.
[...] his opponents desperately challenged him to provide something beyond platitudes on issues like trade, where Trump has proposed a 45 percent tariff on goods imported from China “if,” the New York developer said, “they don’t behave.”
“We’ve got to get beyond rhetoric of ‘China bad,’ and actually get to how do you solve the problem,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Because this solution would hurt jobs and hurt hard-working taxpayers in America.
The stakes are high as Republican voters in two swing states that will be pivotal in the general election — Ohio and Florida — will cast ballots Tuesday.
If Trump wins Florida, where he leads in the polls, not only would Sen. Marco Rubio likely slink out of the race after the ignominy of losing his home state, Trump would snag all of its 99 delegates in the winner-take-all contest, making stopping him difficult.
The campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich — which has yet to win any of the 24 GOP caucuses or primaries — faces a similar existential crisis if Kasich loses his home state Tuesday.
[...] Rubio made a winking allusion to Trump’s small hands that led Trump to respond with an anatomical reference previously unheard at a presidential debate.
When CNN’s debate moderator Jake Tapper pressed Trump about whether he meant all 1.6 billion Muslims, Trump — who has proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S. — replied, “I mean a lot of them.”
Speaking of problems of hate, an ongoing series of violent events at Trump rallies escalated when a white Trump supporter sucker-punched an African American protester at a rally this week in Fayetteville, N.C., as law enforcement officers were escorting the activist from the arena.
Tapper pointed out that Trump has said things like “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and “in the good ol’ days, they’d have ripped him out of that seat so fast,” and “knock the crap out of him, would, you?”
The civil, virtually insult-free tone of Thursday’s debate was a boon to Trump, enabling him to remain vague without much fear of being called out:
[...] that deficit is based on individuals and companies making investments and buying products, not the Mexican government.
“If they say no,” Woodward asked Trump during an interview on MSNBC, “would you be willing to go to war to make sure we get the money to pay for this wall?” Trump didn’t respond directly.
