RUTHFULLY YOURS

Plus Republicans want another great communicator and 26 states sue to stop the President’s so-called Clean Power Plan.
Peggy Noonan says it’s hard to see how the Jeb Bush campaign can work. “By hard I mean, for me, impossible,” says our columnist. “It‘s widely believed among high Jeb supporters” that Donald Trump “has kept Mr. Bush from rising. But Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, he was the revealer of the problem: Jeb just isn’t very good at this.”

Ms. Noonan adds that Mr. Bush is “not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party.” And he “was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness.”

Kimberley Strassel writes that on debate night, “An outsider race gave way to an insider breakout. Three insiders, to be precise: Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Ted Cruz.” A big reason why is that Republican voters want “a great communicator, an effective advocate for their cause. They haven’t had one since Reagan, and the Bushes and McCains and Romneys have highlighted how big a problem that is.”

British politics was thrown into turmoil this week when Parliament blocked David Cameron’s plan to reform family tax credits. There’s a warning here for conservatives elsewhere, especially American Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, about the dangers of social engineering through taxation.

At issue is a convoluted tax benefit developed by Tony Blair in 2003 that was supposed to reward low-income work and childbearing. Under 2015-16 rates, low-income families can receive up to £2,780 ($4,263) in refundable credits per nondisabled child and £3,140 per disabled child, in addition to a per-family credit of £545. The per-child benefits go down as incomes rise up to £35,000 a year. Low-income workers with or without children can also earn a working tax credit on incomes below £6,420. The credits now cost some £30 billion per year in lost revenue and refunds to lower earners.

In last night’s debate, Marco Rubio aptly described the mainstream media as the Democrats’ super PAC, but that didn’t hold him back from reentering the arena this morning. And, as day follows night, CBS’s Charlie Rose went after him, playing defense lawyer for Hillary Clinton. During the debate, Senator Rubio pointed out that last week’s Benghazi hearing brought Hillary Clinton’s lies into sharp relief. Rose tried to defend her, blathering about how the CIA’s understanding of the attack evolved, but Rubio would have none of it — explaining how Clinton knew it was a coordinated terrorist attack from the start, told her family and others that, and yet lied to the country, blaming the attack on an anti-Muslim video. Rose badgered Rubio, but the candidate calmly stood his ground, and was particularly good when Rose sought to brush him back by sternly warning that Rubio was making “a very serious charge” — it’s not a charge, Rubio said, “It’s the truth.” My inclination is always to ask why our candidates bother to go on these programs. But the fact that it’s very much worth your time to watch proves it was very much worth Rubio’s time to appear.

If there’s a consensus about Wednesday’s GOP debate, it’s that the CNBC moderators had a train wreck. Among the non-conservatives who thought the moderators were horribly biased and inept were HBO’s Bill Maher and Ron Fournier of the National Journal. But Ohio governor John Kasich said afterwards that he was “very appreciative of how they did their job.” Kasich “thought they did a good job” and said that the raucous, interruption-filled debate was “well controlled.”

John Kasich’s perception of the debate reality is worthy of Rod Serling’s old mind-bending TV show.

Every four years, one Republican presidential candidate attempts to first win “the media primary,” primarily by accusing other GOP candidates of “extremism” while at the same time flattering the mainstream media. In 2008, that candidate was John McCain — although his love affair with the media ended as soon as Barack Obama was his opponent. In 2012, it was former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who crashed and burned.

‘Ted Cruz is only going to be popular,” a lefty correspondent sniffs, “in those places where the Osmonds are still popular.” If that is true, then the news for Senator Cruz could not possibly be better, inasmuch as this puts Nevada into play: Donny and Marie signed up for a six-week stint in Las Vegas back in 2008, and extended, and extended, and will be performing in the showroom now named for them until the end of 2016, at least. Good tickets for the reliably sold-out show are $260 each — no laughing matter when one considers that the Osmond demographic includes some pretty large families. It can be hard to see it from Williamsburg or Petworth, but the culture isn’t (only) what the hipsters think it is. If Senator Cruz proves as popular as Shania Twain and NASCAR, he won’t just be president — he’ll be president-for-life.

And that is of some interest, given that Wednesday’s debate very much left the impression that this is a Ted Cruz–Marco Rubio race.

About those other guys . . .

Jeb Bush’s performance confirms an earlier judgment of him, that he was a pretty good governor a long time ago with no special oomph today, a decent man whose misadventures on the critical policy questions of immigration and education, along with his too-familiar surname, are like heavy boots on a drowning man. His strategy to push Senator Rubio to the side in order to be positioned in such a way that the bulk of the reasonable-to-just-short-of-howling vote should fall upon his head as fading reality-television grotesque Donald Trump enters the Norma Desmond stage of his campaign, leaving Senator Cruz to wage a pyrrhic campaign for the moonbats, was too calculated. It was so calculated, in fact, that Senator Rubio was able to deftly parry it simply by pointing out the calculation. Bush père screwed up by reading his stage directions aloud — “Message: I care” — whereas the (younger) younger Bush stood mutely by as Senator Rubio read aloud from his playbook. It was like watching the smartest kid in the fourth grade mangle his own name at a spelling bee.

Last night there was no more Trump L’oeil , and Dr. Carson’s civility was the antidote to the pseudo conservative buffoon. Among their supporters are many “independents”- who may identify with Republicans, but they do not vote in primaries. My bet is that registered Republicans who now cheer Trump and Dr. Carson will veer to either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

By most estimates they, and possibly Chris Christie were the stars in last night’s debate…..Stay tuned…..rsk

There’s no consensus on who won the latest Republican debate, but there was no question that CNBC was the big loser.

The Republican debate on CNBC was supposed to be about the economy; instead it became a debate about media bias as candidates fought moderators over dishonest questions and cynical attacks.

Instead of discussing the economic worries of a nation impoverished by two terms of the Obama Economy, Republican candidates struggled to talk about the concerns of working Americans while CNBC moderators dug up old discredited attacks from the CNN debate and fired gotcha questions at them.

Most observers would have said that there wasn’t much that could bring the Republican field together, but media bias did it. Candidate after candidate struck back at the moderators to thunderous applause from the audience. Instead of a debate between the candidates, the CNBC debate quickly became a pitched battle between the Republican contenders and the outnumbered Democratic moderators.

And by the end of the debate, CNBC moderators Becky Quick, John Harwood, and Carl Quintanilla had been outmaneuvered, beaten and humiliated by the Republican candidates in every round.

Boulder, Colo. — It was a new world order at Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate here in Boulder.

With just three months to go until the first GOP nominating contest, voters are beginning to get serious about making decisions, and candidates could not get by just introducing themselves. At this debate, they had to prove that they deserved to be on everybody’s short list.

For the first time, the outsider candidates — Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson — were largely sidelined in favor of people who conventional wisdom would say are the safer bets to win the nomination — specifically, Marco Rubio.

In previous debates, almost all the combat revolved around Donald Trump. His brash style and willingness to level uppercuts at his opponents — both on the stage and off —determined the questions, defined the narrative, and made him the most prominent voice in the debates. But the candidates descended on Boulder as the shape of the race is starting to change. Trump can no longer say he is leading in every single poll in every single state. Ben Carson has slid ahead in Iowa, and is taking up ground in national polls.