Rubio pounds Trump at Houston debate. Cruz, Kasich, Carson left on the sidelines

Some credit Aesop and his “Fox and the Lion” fable with first coining the phrase: “familiarity breeds contempt.”
I’m guessing you didn’t know that they held Republican presidential debates back in Ancient Greece.
A better Aesop fable in honor of Thursday night’s gathering in Houston, the tenth such GOP debate dating back to August?
It’s not “The Trumpeter Taken Captive.” If you tuned in to Thursday night’s debate hoping to see Donald Trump get his comeuppance: close, but not quite.
A better choice: “The Frightened Hares,” given the Republican establishment’s growing panic over the very real prospect of Trump actually winning the party’s nomination.
A few observations:
Did Trump Lose Ground? In a word: no.
Let me amend that: not with the people who believe Trump’s word is gospel – and the other candidates are Judases.
From the time he first latched on to illegal immigration and changed the dynamics of this race, it’s been clear that Trump knows how to speak to the fed-up side of the GOP electorate – more so than any other candidate still alive in the race.
The base-thumping approach was on full display in Houston. Trump took swipes at debate moderators (“I don’t believe anything Telemundo says” … “Very few people listen to your [show]”, he told talk radio’s Hugh Hewitt). Trump promised to add 10 feet to his border wall when told former Mexican President Vicente Fox said his country wouldn’t pay for it. He said he’s trim back government (no more Common Core) and crack down on fraud and waste. Trump generally stood his ground and pushed back when pushed by the moderators or attacked by his fellow debaters – and that was often.
The establishment hates the man’s style and antics, but the one-third-plus of the primary electorate that’s propelled Trump to the front of the multi-candidate pack – and won’t be leaving him anytime soon – adores the show. Which is why Trump likely will fare well on Super Tuesday, despite spending a great deal of time on the defensive and on the bad side of some pretty nasty put-downs.
Rubio Going After Trump. I was in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, listening to well-heeled Republicans carp that none of the candidates had torn into Trump. Which is kind of ironic, given that there’s nothing stopping individuals of means from doing the job (look no further than the Ricketts family of Chicago Cubs’ fame).
Rubio must have heard the griping, as he went right after Trump on the get-go. It began with allegations of Trump hiring foreign workers for his Palm Beach estate. After that: construction labor forces, Trump-signature products manufactured overseas, the lawsuit over the entity formerly known as Trump University. And on it went, throughout the night.
Rubio’s use of “Now he’s repeating himself”, after having the same words drilled into him in New Hampshire by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: the best sound bite of the evening.
This tactic will get Rubio a lot of air time between now and Super Tuesday. It’s also a second-guesser’s delight, as the cling-free Trump has been the Teflon Don of this field.
On Bruising – And Not Much Cruz-ing. “Consistent. Conservative. Trusted.” That's the Texas senator’s campaign slogan.
But on Thursday night, Cruz seemed consistently missing from the action. Part of it had to do with Rubio and Trump noisily locking horns. But having to ask Wolf Blitzer for a chance to weigh in on Obamacare? It seemed . . . well, kind of weak for a debate champ on his home Texas turf.
Cruz did have a strong moment when given the chance to talk about the Supreme Court – not a surprise, as that’s the constitutionalist’s sweet spot. But it wasn’t until 90 minutes into the debate that he really got into it with Trump over taxes and who’s better qualified to question Hillary Clinton’s ethics come the fall.
If Thursday night was closing the deal in Tuesday’s Texas primary, Cruz failed at the task.
What About Kasich and Carson? In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, one of the great rock anthems of the 1960’s, runs slightly over 17 minutes. That’s about the same stretches of silence from Dr. Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
To be fair, both gentlemen brought this on themselves – just as they have in previous debates.
Kasich has fashioned himself as the take-the-upper-road guy in the GOP field – he won’t butt in on any crosstalk.
Carson decided months ago that he’d speak only when spoken to.  Yes, the retired neurosurgeon had a valid complaint when he pointed out to Hewitt that he was left out of the tax-reform discussion. And he scored the other big sound bite of the night, underscoring the fact that he was going unnoticed amidst the food fight: “Can someone attack me, please?”
But that’s been Carson’s stage problem all along: he refuses to accept that debating is not a passive undertaking — sometimes the gifted hands have to do some shoving.
A final thought:
Presidential campaigns and their debates are a lot like criminal trials – long, drawn-out proceedings, trying to keep order in the court, a little perjury tossed in here and there, and way too many lawyers offering way too much in the way of tortured logic.
At this point, with only two scheduled GOP debates remaining (March 3 in Michigan; March 10 in Florida), the Republican field should be approaching its closing arguments.
Instead, what went down in Houston felt more like jury selection for the non-Trump candidates as they continue search for a sympathetic jury of their peers (ok, maybe I need to stop watching “The People vs. O.J.”).
The 150-minute debate in Houston underscored how the situation is driving mainstream Republicans nuts. Trump gets attacked all night long – in the process, giving Hillary Clinton’s oppo team writer’s cramp as it races to jot down the many vulnerabilities – yet he seems impervious to attacks personal, professional and policy-wise.
That Trump 757? It’s more like a white Bronco.
And no one can figure how to get it off the freeway.

Rubio, Cruz tag-team Trump at fiery GOP debate

Marco Rubio, joined at times by Ted Cruz, launched a battery of attacks against Donald Trump at a rowdy Republican debate Thursday, assailing his business record and even trying to turn the tables on the primary front-runner after he teased the senator over his infamous debate “meltdown” earlier this month.
Both Rubio and Cruz fought hard to throw Trump off his stride as the field charges into the all-important Super Tuesday contests. Rubio, in particular, was unrelenting in keeping the pressure on Trump Thursday night, going so far as to claim if Trump hadn’t inherited money he’d be “selling watches in Manhattan.”
“I took one-million and I turned it into 10 billion dollars,” Trump countered.
The front-runner stood his ground and cast the attacks as a desperate attempt to take down No. 1, at one point mocking Cruz’s criticism by saying, “Swing for the fences.” In an unruly debate where the moderators often lost control, Trump responded to many of the attacks with his trademark barrage of insults.
“This guy’s a choke artist. And this guy’s a liar,” he said, pointing to Rubio and then Cruz.
Rubio got some of the biggest applause of the night, though, for his response when Trump mocked him for repeating himself on stage weeks ago against then-candidate Chris Christie.
Rubio said Trump was doing the same thing as he described his plan to remove “lines around the states” to increase competition among health insurers.
“Now he’s repeating himself,” Rubio said.
Trump said he watched Rubio “repeat himself five times four weeks ago.” But Rubio swiftly shot back, “I saw you repeat yourself five times five seconds ago.”
At the CNN-Telemundo debate in Houston, Trump continued to tout his polling successes, and claimed he’s growing the Republican Party.
“We are building a new Republican Party. A lot of new people are coming in,” Trump said.
But his Senate candidate rivals did all they could to raise questions for the American people about Trump’s record as they head into Super Tuesday and try to prevent him from locking down the nomination next month.
Rubio mocked Trump’s past company bankruptcy filings. Cruz suggested Trump had something to hide in his still-unreleased tax returns (though Trump indicated he’d release them after his audit is over).
And both candidates cited the ongoing fraud case against the former Trump University, as well as decades-old allegations that he hired illegal immigrants from Poland for a project in New York.
“I‘m the only one on the stage that’s hired people. You haven’t hired anybody,” Trump told Rubio, calling his allegation on illegal immigrant hiring “wrong.”
But Rubio stood by it, and Cruz backed him up. Rubio later said Trump “lied about the Polish workers.”
“Thirty-eight years ago,” Trump said.
“I guess there’s a statute of limitations on lies,” Rubio said.
According to press reports from more than 25 years ago on the case, Trump at the time claimed he didn’t knowingly hire undocumented workers. As for the fraud case, Trump downplayed it and said he’d eventually win.
The chaotic battle Thursday among the top three candidates often sidelined the other two, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
The fighting even prompted Carson to plead at one point, “Could somebody attack me, please?”
Carson’s most-memorable, and strangest, line may have been when he said of vetting a Supreme Court nominee that he would look at the “fruit salad of their life.”
Kasich cast himself as the best candidate to take on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“Executive experience really matters,” said the only governor remaining in the race.
Immigration was a top topic, as most the candidates talked tough on border security in Texas, the biggest delegate prize in next week’s contests.
Trump, for his part, doubled down on his promise to build a U.S.-Mexico wall if elected, responding to comments by former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who said Mexico will not pay for the “f------ wall.”
Trump said at the debate, “I will, and the wall just got 10 feet taller, believe me.”
Rubio again used the issue to bring up the illegal hiring case. “If he builds the wall the way he built Trump Towers, he’ll be using illegal immigrant labor,” he said.
“Such a cute sound bite,” Trump responded.
Cruz also went after Trump, when the front-runner said Cruz should be “ashamed” for failing to get any support from his fellow GOP senators.
“If you want to be liked in Washington, that’s not a good attribute for a president,” Cruz said.
He, too, challenged Trump’s record on immigration.
“Anyone who cared about illegal immigration wouldn’t be hiring illegal immigrants,” Cruz said.
And Cruz challenged Trump when he claimed he doesn’t want “socialized medicine” but would also not allow people to “die on the streets.”
“So the government pays everyone’s health care,” Cruz said.
“Call it what you want,” Trump later said.
The debate in Houston was their last before more than a dozen states hold contests on Tuesday, when nearly half of the delegates needed to win the nomination are on the line. Anything close to a sweep by Trump would be devastating for the other remaining contenders.
The front-runner’s momentum has only intensified this month with three straight primary and caucus wins, and he’s threatening to knock down his rivals, one by one, in each of their home states in March.
Kasich’s campaign, despite performing poorly in the South Carolina and Nevada contests, issued a defiant call earlier Thursday for Rubio to drop out – citing his shaky numbers in his home state. The state is considered a must win for the Florida senator, but a new Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump leading Rubio 44-28 percent among primary voters there.
Though the insults and put-downs rendered foreign policy discussions few and far between Thursday night, Trump also took heat for saying he doesn’t want to take “big sides” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because he wants to be able to negotiate a deal.
Cruz accused him of wanting to stay “neutral” and Rubio said it’s not a deal “when you’re dealing with terrorists. “
“Marco is not a negotiator,” Trump said.

Megyn Kelly Cartoon

Absent Donald Trump steals Texas town hall spotlight

Donald Trump skipped a Republican presidential town hall in Texas hosted Wednesday night by Fox News nemesis Megyn Kelly, but still made his presence felt by bashing his GOP rivals on Twitter.
“Ted Cruz is lying again. Polls are showing that I do beat Hillary Clinton head to head,” the billionaire tweeted while the Texas senator was onstage.
Trump then proceeded to re-post several tweets from fans that blasted other GOP hopefuls, whom he trounced in the Nevada caucuses Tuesday night.
“A vote for @tedcruz or @marcorubio is a vote for corruption, special interests and lobbyists. Trump for POTUS!” one of the retweets read.
Earlier this week, Trump’s camp said he couldn’t make the “Face-to-Face” event at the Queensbury Theater in Houston because of a “conflicting campaign conflict,” Kelly said.
“They were very polite and cordial,” added a smiling Kelly, with whom Trump has feuded.
Cruz and Ben Carson appeared onstage at the town hall, fielding questions from Kelly and an audience of Texas voters. Marco Rubio and John Kasich took questions via satellite.

Donald Trump to Skip Fox News' Town Hall Event With Megyn Kelly

All of the other major GOP candidates are attending the event.

Donald Trump will not be a part of the Fox News town hall hosted by Megyn Kelly on Wednesday.
The GOP presidential frontrunner had a prior commitment that could not be changed on short notice, according to a Trump campaign spokeswoman.
"The campaign has a previous engagement in Virginia and then New York, which could not be rescheduled," Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in an email to The Hollywood Reporter. "Given this was just proposed at the last minute, it was not possible to change our plans in order to attend."
The two-hour voter summit taking place in Houston, The Kelly File: Face to Face With Candidates, will feature the four additional remaining Republican candidates, according to Fox News. Those men are Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich, who will join the event via remote. Audience members will pose questions to the candidates who will be onstage one at a time, according to the network.
Trump has been critical of Kelly in the past and was vocal about his opposition to her moderating the second Fox News debate because he claimed she was biased against him. He ended up skipping that event. However, his campaign said Monday he "looks forward to participating in the next Fox News debate," which will be held March 3 in Detroit.
Trump currently has two victories under his belt so far this campaign season. The billionaire businessman finished first in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. He came in second to Cruz in Iowa during the first caucus of the season.

Lynch confirms career Justice Department attorneys involved in Clinton email probe

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed to Congress Wednesday that career Justice Department attorneys are working with FBI agents on the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices and the handling of classified material.
Legal experts say the assignment of career Justice Department attorneys to the case shows the FBI probe has progressed beyond the initial referral, or "matured," giving agents access to the U.S. government’s full investigative tool box, including subpoena power for individuals, business or phone records, as well as witnesses.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that career lawyers were involved, but Lynch's comments are the most expansive to Congress.
"If the FBI makes the case that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and put America's security at risk, will you prosecute the case?” Republican Congressman John Carter asked Lynch during a budget hearing.
"Do you know of any efforts underway to undermine the FBI's investigation? And please look the American people in the eye and tell us what your position is as you are the chief prosecutor of the United States," Carter pressed.
Lynch replied, "...that matter is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they'll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate,"
She confirmed that the FBI criminal investigation is ongoing, and no recommendation or referral on possible charges had been made to her.
"I am not able to comment about the specific investigation at this time. But what I will say is again that this will be conducted as every other case. And we will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as to how to best handle it. And I'm also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all."
The White House has been criticized for its public comments, including those of President Obama, that the transmission of classified information on Clinton's unsecured, personal server did not jeopardize national security.
Last month, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Clinton was not the target of the FBI probe, and it was not "trending" towards Clinton.
During congressional testimony in December, FBI Director James Comey was asked by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, “Does the President get briefings on ongoing investigations by the FBI like this?” Comey replied, “No.”
National Security Defense attorney Edward MacMahon, who routinely handles classified information as part of his case work, said "Lynch appears to be sending a message that there is no need for a special prosecutor because she has assigned career Justice Department lawyers, and not political appointees, to work with FBI agents on the Clinton matter."
MacMahon who recently represented CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted of leaking intelligence to a New York Times reporter and is now serving a three- and-a-half-year prison sentence, said the pairing of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys generally reflects the fact that the investigation has moved beyond an initial inquiry.
“As a general matter, a U.S. attorney is assigned as an FBI investigation progresses. The partnership with the U.S. attorney allows the FBI to use the investigation tools of the U.S. government, including subpoenas for evidence, business or phone records, as well as witnesses. And you need (a) U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury.”
It is not publicly known whether any of those actions have been taken.  But an intelligence source close to the FBI probe said the career professionals at the bureau "will be angry and walk off if no indictment recommendation is followed through."
At least 1,730 Clinton emails contain classified information, and the rest held by the State Department must be released by the end of the month based on a federal court imposed timetable.
One of the newly declassified 2012 emails sent four days after the Benghazi terrorist attack, includes highly sensitive information about the evacuation of Americans from Tunisia.
The email included a rare redaction for intelligence called the B 1.4 (g) exception which pertains to “vulnerabilities or capabilities” to “national security including defense against transnational terrorism.”
The email chain was forwarded, on Sept. 16, 2012 at 8:12 a.m, from Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills' government account to Clinton’s unsecured personal server. One of the emails early in the chain was sent by Denis McDonough, then Deputy National Security adviser. His address is redacted citing “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and could also be a private account because other government accounts on the email chain are not redacted.

Obama reportedly considering Nevada Gov. Sandoval for Supreme Court nomination

President Obama reportedly is considering nominating Nevada Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to the Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. 
The nomination of a Republican would be seen as an attempt by Obama to break the Senate GOP blockade of any of his choices. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said his 54-member GOP caucus is opposed to holding confirmation hearings or vote on Obama's pick, insisting that the choice rests with the next president.
The White House's consideration of Sandoval was first reported by The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The Post reported that Senate Republicans reaffirmed their vow to not consider any Obama nominee, regardless of party affiliation.
"This is not about the personality," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the paper. McConnel said in a statement to the Post that whoever replaces Scalia "will be determined by whoever wins the presidency in the fall."
Mari St. Martin, Sandoval's communications director, said Wednesday that the governor hasn't been contacted by the White House.
"Neither Gov. Sandoval nor his staff has been contacted by or talked to the Obama administration regarding any potential vetting for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court," she said.
Sandoval met with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday in Washington while he was in town for a meeting of the National Governors Association.
Before Sandoval, 52, became the state's first Hispanic governor, he was the state's first Hispanic federal judge. He supports abortion, a position that might assuage some Democrats nervous about the nomination of a Republican. But liberal groups swiftly came out against the idea.
"Nominating Sandoval to the Supreme Court would not only prevent grassroots organizations like Democracy for America from supporting the president in this nomination fight, it could lead us to actively encouraging Senate Democrats to oppose his appointment," said Democracy for America.
Limited to two terms, Sandoval's final term as governor expires in early 2019. He announced last year that he would not seek Reid's seat, in this November's election, a race in which Sandoval would have been a strong favorite.
"My heart is here. My heart is in my job," Sandoval said at the time.
On Wednesday, Obama laid out his wish list for a Supreme Court nominee, writing in a post on "SCOTUSblog" that his ideal nominee should "approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand."
Obama also wrote that an ideal high court judge should view the law "not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times," a possible rebuttal against Scalia's doctrine of constitutional originalism.
A White House official told Fox News Wednesday that an invitation has been extended to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, for a consultative meeting on filling the vacancy. Grassley's office said he has received the invitation and it is "under consideration."

Rubio and Cruz say they'll stop Trump, Kasich and Carson vow to stay in race at Fox forum

Donald Trump's Republican rivals tried to present themselves Wednesday night as the ideal candidates to block the real estate billionaire's path to the GOP nomination and then beat Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the general election. 
Speaking at a special forum in Houston hosted by Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on Republican voters Wednesday to unite around his campaign, saying that his was "the only campaign that can beat Donald [and] has beat Donald," a reference to his win in last month's Iowa caucuses.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson shrugged off calls for them to quit the race, with Kasich saying he would beat Trump in a head-to-head contest.
At one point, Kasich sparred with Kelly, who said Republicans "see you, even though they like you, struggling to get above bottom rung [and] question whether you're stealing votes from candidates who could actually win."

"I'm husbanding my resources," Kasich responded. "The people calling for me to get out are the people who are inside the Beltway ... I'm certainly not listening to a bunch of lobbyist insiders."
However, Kasich said that Trump would likely keep his run of victories going over the next couple of weeks, but claimed that the Republican Party's proportional system of delegate allocation would keep his campaign viable.
Carson noted that only a small fraction of the current delegates had been awarded through the first four contests, saying "We have a long way to go." Carson later encouraged an audience questioner to "stop listening to the pundits and listen for yourself. Look at the candidates running ... and you can see how consistent they are."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has finished second in each of the last two nominating contests, acknowledged that Trump was "the frontrunner and I'm the underdog, but I've been an underdog my entire life." Rubio added that his campaign "would not allow the conservative movement to be defined by a nominee who isn't a conservative."
Rubio also took a shot at Trump, though he did not mention that candidate's name, for his remarks on Muslims.

"When you're president, you have an enormous megaphone," Rubio said, "You get to set the tone and agenda for the entire country. We already have a president that's incredibly divisive. We should not be pitting and dividing Americans against each other."
The forum was held six days before a dozen states hold primaries and caucuses as part of Super Tuesday, during which 595 delegates will be awarded.
"I think he's got a fairly low ceiling," Cruz said of Trump, who won Tuesday's Nevada Republican caucuses for this third straight convincing victory. "In the head-to-head polls, Donald consistently loses to [Democratic frontrunner] Hillary [Clinton]. I consistently beat Hillary."
"And if Donald does win the general election, who knows what the heck he'll do as president?" Cruz asked.
Cruz reserved his strongest language for Planned Parenthood, which he referred to as a "criminal enterprise" and the reason "millions of young boys and girls have never breathed a breath of fresh air."
He repeated his vow to order a Justice Department investigation of the healthcare provider "on day one" of his presidency and took another shot at Trump for saying that Planned Parenthood "does do wonderful things" during a debate in South Carolina earlier this month.
"There are a lot of things Donald has said that I disagree with," Cruz said, "and that is very near the top."
Carson got one of the biggest reactions of the evening when he explained his comment earlier this week that President Barack Obama was "raised white."

"He was raised by his white grandma in Hawaii in a very affluent area [with] a private school [education] and spent his formative years in Indonesia with his white mother," Carson said. "Now, if that's a typical black experience ..." as the audience broke out laughing.
Carson went on to call the media firestorm over his remarks "ridiculous analysis" designed "to ridicule me and divide wedges."