Wall Street Journal
By Gerald Seib
February 25, 2016
Eight
months after Donald Trump declared he was running for president, six
months after the first debate and two weeks after Mr. Trump began
reeling off three primary-season
victories—Sen. Marco Rubio decided to go after him Thursday night.
Having
waited that long to launch an attack, Mr. Rubio brought it on with not
just two barrels but an Army brigade’s worth of barrels. He said Mr.
Trump’s tough immigration
stand is hypocritical because he once hired illegal Polish workers and
was called out in court for doing it. He said he succeeded in business
only because he got a giant jump start from his rich father, and
otherwise would be selling watches on the streets
of Manhattan.
Donald
Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio spar over details of Trump's proposed
health-care reform, which includes "removing lines around states" to
allow for increased competition
among insurance companies. Photo: Getty
He
called Mr. Trump soft on support for Israel, soft on defunding Planned
Parenthood and unreliable on judicial confirmations, soft on Obamacare
and lacking any health-care
plan of his own.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz joined in as well, and Mr. Trump fired back with typical full force.
The
more telling point is that any of this fusillade could have been
unleashed at any time in recent weeks. But it wasn’t. It came in
Thursday’s night debate, for two
reasons. First, both Messrs. Rubio and Cruz badly need to turn the race
into a two-man fight, between one of them and Mr. Trump. Second, they
need to move fast before they lose that chance.
The
tenor of the debate, in fact, was the clearest sign that both Messrs.
Rubio and Cruz, and many other Trump foes in the party, have concluded
in recent days that they
have waited too long in trying to take him down. The assumption of many
in the Republican establishment has been that he would self-destruct in
a backlash against his angry tone, his harsh critiques of other
Republicans, his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his
unorthodox approach to campaigning.
That
hasn’t happened, of course. In fact, other campaigns operated under the
mistaken belief that they could bide their time, slice each other up
for the right to emerge
as the lone alternative to Mr. Trump, and then consolidate a
considerable anti-Trump vote on the way to the nomination. That is why
Messrs. Rubio and Cruz have spent much more time attacking each other in
recent weeks than they have in addressing the man who
was emerging, clearly, as the front-runner.
That
phase of the campaign ended Thursday night, starting almost from the
outset, with Mr. Rubio’s charge that Mr. Trump’s anti-illegal-immigrant
stance was undercut by
a long-running public and legal controversy in New York over the hiring
of illegal Polish workers on a Trump project. (Mr. Trump testified that
he didn’t know the workers were illegal.)
Mr. Trump responded to this attack with aplomb: “I’m the only one on the stage who has hired people.”
But
the tone was set, and Mr. Rubio remained in attack mode. Mr. Cruz
joined in, but his line of attack was less incendiary, and somewhat
different.
While
Mr. Rubio tried to portray Mr. Trump as unreliable and dishonest, the
Cruz attacks asserted, by and large, that Mr. Trump isn’t a true
conservative. But that may
miss the broader point of the Trump phenomenon. Mr. Trump isn’t a
conventional conservative and doesn’t really pretend to be.
And
there is little sign that the people supporting him really care. They
are following him for reasons other than ideological purity. So it isn’t
clear that attacking
him on ideological grounds will do much to shake the faith of people
who are drawn to his unconventional mix of views in the first place.
In
fact, in one sign that Mr. Trump may be looking past such primary
attacks toward a general-election audience, he offered positive words
about the Planned Parenthood
organization, which has become a favorite target of GOP conservatives
but is popular with many moderate women. Though Mr. Trump said he would
defund the organization because of its abortion activities, he said
“millions and millions of women….are helped by
Planned Parenthood.”
In
any case, two things became clear Thursday night. First, the
attack-Donald season is now in full swing. Earlier in the day Thursday,
the conservative Club for Growth
released a new television ad that will start airing in some of the 11
states where Republicans vote next Tuesday, charging that Mr. Trump has
“a long liberal record of support for higher taxes, national health care
and government bailouts.”
Second,
Mr. Trump won’t take it lying down. He belittled Mr. Rubio at the
debate as a man with no experience in the real world and a “choke
artist” for his past debate
performances, and Mr. Cruz as a typically slippery politician. In fact,
Mr. Trump closed out the debate by declaring his foes to be all
political talk and no action.
Only
a few days remain before those Super Tuesday primaries. If Thursday
night’s performance is any guide, Mr. Rubio will spend those days
attacking Mr. Trump. And if
history is any guide, Mr. Trump will be launching a ferocious
counterattack.
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