Republican presidential candidates engaged in a much more subdued debate last night, refraining from their usual arsenal of snipping and insults and giving them a chance to showcase their substantive policy proposals. Those proposals were just as extreme as you would expect. We begin today’s roundup with Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein:
The circus was not in town. No personal insults, no demeaning taunts, no candidate bragging about his ... well, you know. Instead, thanks in part to some solid questioning from Jake Tapper and CNN's other moderators and a strategic recalibration from Marco Rubio after his collapse in recent primaries and caucuses, we had what passes for a serious policy debate on the Republican side.
It was not impressive.
Donald Trump either knows nothing about government and public affairs, or is playing a character who knows nothing. In most cases, his answer to everything is that every deal the United States government has ever made on anything is a disaster, and he would make much better ones. What was wrong with the old ones? What would the new ones consist of? How would he get there? He has nothing, because of course there is nothing; it's just an empty boast. When he tries to talk about specifics, he gets lost, changes the subject -- usually to himself -- or just flat out lies.