Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Again though, not unprecedented.
What's the precedent?
Making someone who skipped out on some activity or job earlier have to do it later while those who already did it once get to sit and watch is pretty common. Both you and I mentioned a missed school assignment/homework. If you have siblings, I'm sure your parents at some point made the one who slacked off and didn't get their chores done when everyone else was working have to do it later, while the rest got to play or watch TV. I'm not speaking specifically of debate procedures, but general life. It's a pretty normal consequence for failing to do something when everyone else had to do it.
Quote:
And, regardless, saying "Debates have been poorly done or used as a chance to go after a single candidate before" doesn't excuse it now.
Again though, it's not about whether I agree or disagree with the method (I don't). It's that the other leading candidates all had to face this last time, but Trump wasn't there. So they decided to do the same thing to Trump that they did to the others. Right or wrong, that is "fair". I don't recall you getting all bent out of shape when they did this to other candidates last time, so I suspect this isn't so much about the method itself, but the appearance of Trump being singled out by it this time around. To which, my response is the same as the kid having to be the only one in the class to stand up and present his assignment today because he wasn't there when the whole class did it yesterday: That's the price for missing the initial assignment date.
Trump's a big boy. I think he can handle it. And again, I suspect that they discussed this with Trump prior to the debate and got his agreement to it as part of a condition for attending, because he didn't seem to have the same problem with it that you are having. Maybe that's a clue that it's not really a big deal.
As to the debate itself, I agree that I don't think Rubio won any points, but I think he did score some damage on Trump. How much that actually hurts Trump is pretty hard to tell. As I've mentioned many times, Trump seems to be immune to things that would normally be killers for a candidate. Personally, I thought that when Rubio said that all Trump does when asked to provide substance is attack the person asking while not actually providing any substance was a pretty good hit given that Trump proceeded to do just that exact thing like 2 or 3 times in a row after that. IMO though, the biggest one was when he was asked about whether he expected soldiers to carry out illegal orders. His answer made me think he doesn't understand the difference between Commander in Chief and Dictator in Chief.
I'm sure his supporters just thought he looked tough though.