Trump Agonistes His competitors try to expose his weaknesses for the first time.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-agonistes-1456531598
The Republican presidential race entered its blitzkrieg phase Thursday as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finally turned their fire on Donald Trump instead of playing for second place. The brawling was entertaining if often ugly, but the debate was important in surfacing the vulnerabilities that Democrats are sure to exploit if Mr. Trump is the GOP nominee.
The debate marked the first competitive vetting of the businessman, who had remained untouched as the other candidates vied to become the last non-Trump standing. Or as Mr. Trump would put it, “losers.” Messrs. Rubio and Cruz had to take on Mr. Trump, and now we’ll find out if the New Yorker can take the same mockery he dishes out.
***Start with his policy knowledge, which is thinner than topsoil and not as rich. Mr. Rubio challenged Mr. Trump to go beyond his stock line that he’d replace ObamaCare by allowing competition across state lines, which is a good idea but hardly sufficient as a reform. Yet Mr. Trump couldn’t come up with another specific idea to expand private health coverage.
This is typical of Mr. Trump, who told us in November that the voters don’t care about policy details. But Americans want a President to know something about the biggest problems, and Hillary Clinton wouldn’t let him get away with a simple soundbite. The exchange revealed that Mr. Trump doesn’t like to work all that hard to learn anything new. He gets by on instinct and insult.
Speaking of which, in Texas Friday Mr. Trump took his attacks on the press corps to a new level by promising to change the libel laws. “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected,” he said, sounding like Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. READ MORE AT SITE
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