Fansided

Who won first GOP Primary Debate?

By Josh Hill

facebooktwitterreddit

The first GOP Primary Debate was on Thursday night, and it’s very clear who the winners and losers were from the event. 

After months of hearing the Republican candidates bicker back and forth from afar, the top presidential hopefuls were bickering in person at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

The top candidates gunning for the Republican nomination took questions from a Fox News panel that was actually pretty well informed and fired off some interesting questions. That might have actually been part of the problem, as the hard hitting questions — at least by Fox News standards — threw a lot of the candidates off track.

This was a brilliant move by Fox, as it’s the start of the weeding out of the less than intelligent candidates as the window locking paste eaters were identified. That doesn’t mean everyone who showed up to the debate lost ground in the presidential race.

John Kasich might have had the best night of all the candidates, as he was down to earth and really connected with the audience on both sides of the isles. Maybe this was the skinniest kid at fat camp mirage that these debates seem to throw at the world, but it was a pretty solid night for Kasich and it should further aid his rise to the top of the GOP polls.

His answer about accepting his daughters if they were gay, and the story he told about attending the wedding of a gay friend not that long ago and cherishing in their happiness was actually really refreshing to hear. It doesn’t fix all of the ideological flaws Kasich may have, but he stood out as the clear frontrunner — or at least the most intelligent — candidate on the night.

An underrated performer on the night was Ben Carson, who didn’t say much but managed to not totally put his foot in his mouth when he was talking. He was soft spoken — which was odd given the company he was in — and he gave informed, albeit misguided, answers.

Despite what you may have thought, Donald Trump actually didn’t lose, he learned a lot from the debate. He came out right off the bat with a brash and brazen attitude that immediately drew boos from the crowd. He attacked the candidates, he attacked Megyn Kelly and he managed to go full Trump in a big way.

But as the debate raged on, he learned to watch what he says — which is a brand spanking new concept for Trump. There were times that he actually didn’t make terrible sense, but that might have been the booze talking.

The real losers on the night were Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker. Time and time again they dodged the questions they were asked but weren’t brazen enough in not giving a sh– like Trump was to be able to play it off. Perhaps one of the most laughable moments on the night was when Huckabee was asked about transgendered soldiers in the military and he response went from paying for the surgeries for transgendered soldiers (which wasn’t the question) to talking about B-52 bombers that are in active service which are older than him.

Jeb Bush and Rand Paul didn’t stand out the way they may have wanted to, but they didn’t fall back in the race. They’ll have some serious competition though moving forward from John Kasich, who leapt ahead of both — and probably Trump — to take the lead in the GOP race.

This is just the first debate of many, and the caucuses haven’t started yet which means there is still a lot of time for candidates to rise and fall. But if there has to be a winner from this debate, it’s John Kasich who has hit the ground running on the campaign trail.

More from Miscellaneous