Candidates take on Trump, aim for breakout performance at GOP debate

SIMI VALLEY, California —The top 11 Republican candidates met for the second presidential debate on Wednesday night, subjecting themselves and viewers to a three-hour free-for-all prime-time event that allowed the White House hopefuls to distinguish themselves on a wide variety of subjects.

The candidates jockeyed once again to deliver a breakout performance and land clean blows on their opponents as the crucial early nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire inch closer.   

The debate, hosted by CNN and the Salem Radio Network, and held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, did not generate the same fireworks as its Fox News predecessor, but nonetheless produced some memorable skirmishes and revealed substantive differences on policy issues. Here are some of the most revealing and memorable moments of the evening.

Donald Trump’s rivals took a more aggressive approach in attacking the GOP frontrunner, who has sustained his lead atop the polls despite running a decidedly unconventional campaign and a continuous stream of controversial statements. His rivals appeared to understand the stakes as they attacked Trump more directly—with varying degrees of success.

Asked to respond to Trump recently telling a Rolling Stone reporter, “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a fellow political outsider, responded quietly, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”

Trump added, to little applause, “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.”

Other candidates, meanwhile, targeted Trump for his inexperience and suggested he did not have the demeanor or temperament to be commander-in-chief.

“We don't need an apprentice in the White House. We have one right now,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “He told us all the things we wanted to hear back in 2008. We don't know who you are or where you're going. We need someone who can actually get the job done.”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also answered the charges Trump has leveled at him on the campaign trail in recent weeks more assertively, including Trump’s suggestion that Bush was beholden to the interests of his billionaire donors.

“People are supporting me because I have a proven record of conservative leadership,” Bush said. The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something — that was generous and gave me money — was Donald Trump. He wanted casino gambling in Florida.”

Trump disputed the claim: “I promise if I wanted it, I would have gotten it,” he said.  

Foreign policy dominated the bulk of the evening, with a clear fault line emerging in the presidential field, between those who wanted the United States to more forcefully exert its influence in the world and others who urged restraint and diplomacy to avoid becoming mired once again in foreign entanglements and wars.

Perhaps the contrast was the clearest when the candidates discussed the Iran deal. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said if elected president, he would rip up the “catastrophic” agreement on day one and that not doing so would be an abdication of his duties as commander-in-chief, a comment he has made in the past. Fiorina too said that unless Iran agreed to anytime, anywhere inspections of its nuclear facilities, she would purposefully stymie the lifting of sanctions by exerting the influence of the United States on the world financial system.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich took a different tack, saying the agreement with Iran should be given time to work and the United States should be working with its allies around the world to bring Iran’s nuclear program into line.

“We are stronger when we work with Western civilization, our friends in Europe, and just doing it on our own I don’t think is the right policy,” he said. “If they cheat, we slap the sanctions back on. If they help Hamas, and Hezbollah, we slap the sanctions back on. And, if we find out that they may be developing a nuclear weapon, than the military option is on the table.”

Trump, asked how he would handle Russian President Vladimir Putin moving to prop up the government of Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad in the country’s bloody civil war, the real estate tycoon answered, with characteristic vagueness, that he would use the power of his personality.

“I would talk to him. I would get along with him,” he said. “I believe — and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with.”

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky meanwhile maintained his non-interventionist stance, warning of the unintended consequences of getting entangled in wars in other countries as some of his rivals suggested they would send more troops to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL).

"If you want to send your sons and daughters back to Iraq, there are 14 other candidates for you,” he said. “There will always be a Bush or Clinton for you if you want to go back to war in Iraq.”

The candidates also spent time addressing hot-button social issues.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the recent arrest of Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, in Kentucky for refusing to sign marriage certificates for same-sex couples showed that religious freedoms, and particularly Christianity, were under attack.

“We made accommodation to the Fort Hood shooter to let him grow a beard. We made accommodations to the detainees at Gitmo — I’ve been to Gitmo, and I’ve seen the accommodations that we made to the Muslim detainees who killed Americans,” he said, referring to U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “You’re telling me that you cannot make an accommodation for an elected Democrat county clerk from Rowan County, Kentucky? What else is it other than the criminalization of her faith and the exaltation of the faith of everyone else who might be a Fort Hood shooter or a detainee at Gitmo?”

And although the issue of immigration did not play as big a role in the debate as it has in the rest of the campaign, Bush and Trump again parried on the subject. Bush said Trump’s plan was simply unfeasible.

“To build a wall, and to deport people — half a million a month — would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, Donald. Hundreds of billions of dollars. It would destroy community life, it would tear families apart,” Bush said. “And it would send a signal to the rest of the world that the United States values that are so important for our long-term success no longer matter in this country.”

Trump fired back, deriding Bush for saying that crossing the border illegally was "an act of love."

“He’s weak on immigration," Trump said. "He doesn’t get my vote.”