THE third televised Republican primary debate, held in Boulder, Colorado, on October 28th, was supposed to be about the economy. Yet it featured hardly any discussion of America’s big economic problems, its shortages of skills, poor education standards or rotten infrastructure; nor, for that matter, of its economic strengths. It was a ragged, ill-focused affair, in which the 11 participants traded mostly incredible tax-cutting pledges, bickered with one another, and griped about the moderators, who were representing the organiser, CNBC, and excruciatingly disorganised. Messy stuff, from which most of the candidates emerged more or less where they had started out—with a few important exceptions.
Two match-ups had dominated the run-up to the debate. First, that between the two front-runners, Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon and braggart, and Ben Carson, a soft-spoken neurosurgeon who holds some eye-wateringly right-wing views (he recently suggested the Holocaust would not have happened had Nazi Germany had looser gun laws). This duel probably ended in a draw. Mr Trump provided a couple of the debate’s more comical moments: including a flamboyant dismissal of John...Continue reading
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