Live updates: Republican presidential debate

SOCIAL STUDIES | A fun GIF from our analytics partners at Zignal Labs shows the emojis included in tweets about the various candidates:

SOCIAL STUDIES | The most social moment of the debate on Facebook was when Ted Cruz criticized the questions being asked by the moderators, according to the social network.

A Facebook spokesman said that the top five issues discussed during the debate on the site were: 1. Taxes; 2. Social Security and Medicare; 3. Super PACs; 4. Jobs and Employment; and 5. Climate Change.

The top candidates discussed during the debate on Facebook: 1. Cruz; 2. Donald Trump; 3. Ben Carson; 4. Marco Rubio; and 5. Jeb Bush.

The most engaged states on Facebook during the debate: 1. West Virginia; 2. Virginia; 3. Tennessee; 4. South Carolina; and 5. Kentucky.

By Michael Smith

Commentators, many of them in the media, piled on CNBC anchors for their handling of the debate. They bashed the questions by moderators Carlos Quintanilla, Becky Quick and John Harwood, and the fact the debate began late.

They also blamed the Republican National Committee and Chair Reince Priebus for the way the debate was managed, predicting “serious blowback.” Politico reported that Jeb Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz got in a “heated debate” with a CNBC producer while the debate was ongoing.

According to the publication: “Diaz was complaining about speaking time allotments. ‘It’s a poorly managed debate,’ said a Bush campaign staffer.”

Priebus took to Twitter immediately following the debate to bash it, perhaps also trying to insulate himself from further criticism.

He followed up by pledging better procedures for future face-offs:

SOCIAL STUDIES | From The Post’s Michael Cavna:

Chris Christie speaks during the CNBC Republican presidential debate. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

THE CONTENDERS | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie chimed in to discuss the issue of police morale, referencing recent remarks made by FBI Director James Comey suggesting that law enforcement officers might be pulling back amid heightened scrutiny.

“The FBI director, the president’s appointed FBI director, has said this week that because of a lack of support from politicians like the president of the United States, that police officers are afraid to get out of their cars, that they’re afraid to enforce the law,” Christie said during the debate. “And he says, the president’s appointee, that crime is going up because of this.”

Comey’s remarks touched on the so-called “Ferguson effect,” the suggestion that policing has changed since a white officer shot a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., sparking a national protest against how police use lethal force. This contested theory suggests that as police officers have pulled back, criminals have become more emboldened.

Homicide rates have risen in dozens of U.S. cities, but criminologists say it is too early to know what precisely is happening.

But in speeches in Chicago earlier this week and last week, Comey did not say he believes police officers are pulling back due to a lack of support, nor did he point to any lack of support from politicians. Rather, Comey pointed to what he called the “age of viral videos,” saying he believed officers are afraid of being recorded and having their actions become the focus of a public outcry.

“In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime?” Comey asked during a speech Monday before the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago.

Current and former police officers have voiced similar concerns this year, with many pointing to the proliferation of smartphones as a growing issue. Comey’s suggestion that police officers were pulling back on the job as a result — which he also made last week — has drawn criticism from civil rights activists, law enforcement officials and the White House.

In a private meeting in Washington this month, during a gathering of more than 100 of the country’s top law enforcement officers and politicians, many officials made similar comments. So far, there has been no evidence of police broadly pulling back in major cities.

As the debate ended, Jeb Bush’s campaign manager confirmed that he had already expressed concerns to CNBC about the format and management of Wednesday’s presidential debate.

“I expressed my concerns with the amount of time that we’ve had. I think that’s pretty clear,” Diaz told The Washington Post by telephone.

News reports from Boulder said that Diaz was spotted in “a heated confrontation” with a CNBC producer about the debate.

Tallies taken by The New York Times and NPR during the debate showed Bush trailing his opponents in speaking time. As of 10:01 p.m. ET, Bush had spoken for just four minutes and 24 seconds, the Times said.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

THE CONTENDERS | From Wonkblog’s Max Ehrenfreund:

Donald Trump and the other presidential candidates in Wednesday night’s primary debate have spent a fair amount of time blaming the media for misrepresenting their positions.

Trump, though, appeared to contradict his campaign’s own published white paper on immigration with his statements on visas for skilled immigrants — the controversial H-1B program, as its known.

Read more in Wonkblog.

Marco Rubio, right, and Jeb Bush argue a point during the CNBC Republican presidential debate. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

THE CONTENDERS | From The Fix’s Amber Phillips:

The scene was set for two former political buddies to become adversaries Wednesday night. Only one was truly ready for the fight.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) walked into CNBC’s Republican primary debate under fire from allies of his former mentor, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, for missing votes in the Senate.

A Bush-supporting super PAC, “Right to Rise,” had set up a Twitter account earlier Wednesday, @IsMarcoWorking, mocking Rubio’s absence in Washington. And sure enough, once the debate got started, Bush went for the attack.

Well, kind of.

“When you signed up for this, this is a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work,” Bush said, turning to his former mentee in the Florida legislature, who was standing right next to him by virtue of where the polls stand right now. “You can campaign or just resign and let someone else take the job.”

This has been in the news for days, and Rubio was clearly ready for it. Squaring his shoulders and widening his stance, he immediately blasted back that Bush was making something out of nothing.

Read more in The Fix.

“Gun-free zones, when you say that, that’s target practice for the mentally ill. … They look around for gun-free zones. We can give you another example. … The six soldiers that were killed — two of them were of the most highly decorated — they weren’t allowed, on the military base, to have guns. And somebody walked in and shot them and killed them. If they had guns he [the shooter] wouldn’t have been around very long, I can tell you.”

–Businessman Donald Trump

Trump, referring to the shooting at the Naval Reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July, is wrong on this point. The service members at the Naval Reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn., were armed. In fact, the military is investigating why they were armed, as the Pentagon has restrictions on who can carry weapons at such facilities.

The FBI said a 24-year-old gunman armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle and a handgun methodically hunted for Marines and sailors to kill.

As The Washington Post’s Adam Goldman reported:

Edward Reinhold, special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Knoxville, Tenn., provided the first definitive account of the terrorist attack that left four Marines and a Navy petty officer dead.

Reinhold told reporters at a news conference in Chattanooga that Mohammad Youssef Abdul­azeez smashed through the gate of the reserve center last Thursday and was almost immediately confronted by a service member who had his own gun.

The service member fired several rounds, but it has not yet been determined whether he managed to hit Abdulazeez, who quickly entered the reserve center looking for targets, mortally wounding the sailor inside the building.

In another installment of media as punching bag, Christie attacked the CNBC moderators for a question about the fantasy football insider trading scandal. “Who cares?!” he says, to whoops from the crowd.

Christie went on further attack when interrupted by moderator John Harwood: “What you’re doing is considered rude in New Jersey.” The crowd whooped again.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

“The socialist [Sen. Bernie Sanders] says they’re going to pay for everything and give you everything for free, except they don’t tell you they’re going to raise your taxes to 90 percent to do it.”

–Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.)

THE FACT CHECKER | This is false, though it has increasingly emerged as a GOP talking point. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has not yet released a tax plan, but has has repeatedly denied that he would increase taxes from the current marginal rate of 39.6 percent to 90 percent. (The margin rate is what you pay on each additional dollar earned.)

The United States had a marginal tax rate of 90 percent in Dwight Eisenhower administration, and then John F. Kennedy reduced it to 70 percent. But even such rates would not take 90 percent of a person’s income.

SOCIAL STUDIES | From The Post’s Michael Cavna:

THE CONTENDERS | Ben Carson carefully navigated the tricky terrain of same sex rights question Wednesday, demonstrating development of political skills to handle an issue that has left him badly bruised in the past.

Pointing to Carson’s role on the corporate board of Costco, Carson was asked by a CNBC moderator why he would “serve on the board of a company whose policies seem to run counter to your views on homosexuality?”

The issue has been politically fraught for Carson in the past. In March, he said that homosexuality is a choice and pointed to prison as evidence. “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight and when they come out they’re gay. So did something happen while they were in there?” Carson said on CNN at the time. His response ignited an immediate controversy.

Not so Wednesday.

“Obviously you don’t understand my views on homosexuality. I believe that our constitution protects everybody regardless of their sexual orientation or any other aspect. I also believe that marriage is between one man and one women,” he said. “There is no reason that you can’t be perfectly fair to the gay community – they shouldn’t automatically assume that because you believe that marriage is between one man and one woman that you are a homophobe.”

ON THE ISSUES | The GOP presidential candidates just exchanged a few words on Social Security, one of the issues that divides them most sharply.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other candidates say that reducing future benefits for people who are working now is the only way to make sure that there’s enough money in the system to go around.

Christie argued for that point in the debate by claiming that Social Security’s trust fund has been emptied. The trust fund is where all of the money that workers forfeit in taxes with every paycheck they cash is kept, in order to pay out future benefits.

“It’s not there anymore. The government stole it and spent it,” Christie said. “All that’s in that trust fund is a pile of IOUs for money on they spent on something else a long time ago.”

Social Security’s finances are not in the best shape, but the money is still in the trust fund — to the tune of $2.8 trillion at the end of last year.

Read more in Wonkblog.

Marco Rubio’s attack on the mainstream media as a “the ultimate super PAC” for the Democratic Party was the fourth such critique of the media in this debate.

Earlier, Rubio went after a Florida newspaper that criticized his Senate voting record. Sen. Ted Cruz also went after media bias, and Ben Carson challenged CNBC’s questions, which drew boos from the crowd, about his involvement with a company called Mannatech.

Each attack seemed to be popular, drawing applause from the audience.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

“My record was one of cutting taxes each and every year. You don’t have to guess about it, because I already have a record [cutting] $19 billion in taxes, 1.3 million jobs created.”

–Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush

THE FACT CHECKER | Bush repeatedly claims $19 billion in taxes over his eight years as governor, but that is quite misleading. This refers to cumulative state revenue changes as a result of state and federal decisions, and it includes revenue changes from tax and non-tax legislative actions during his tenure as governor.

Moreover, this $19 billion figure includes revenues the state would have received if the federal estate tax credit had not been phased out. There were some states that levied new state taxes to balance out the phase-out of the federal estate tax. Bush didn’t fight the estate tax repeal. But that’s certainly not the same as actively “cutting” those tax revenues from the state budget.

Bush’s 1.3 million jobs number is accurate, as far as it goes, and he avoided claiming that he “led the nation” in job creation. But, as we repeatedly warn, readers should be wary when state executives take credit for the number of jobs in their state. There’s not one policy decision that affects jobs figures.

SOCIAL STUDIES | This map shows Twitter declaring its winner in the dustup between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio over missed Senate votes, based on mentions. The GIF is via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs:

THE CONTENDERS | When asked about the pay gap between men and women, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) used the question as a chance to pivot to his personal story, talking about how his sister and, for a time, his mother, were single parents.

The story of Cruz’s mother is one he often tells on the campaign trail, where he is working hard to try to court the support of Republican women.  Conservatives have been frustrated by a drop in support from working women.

“There were a lot of single moms in my family,” Cruz said. He then pivoted his answer to reflect the  broader economic situation for women, claiming that 3.7 million women have entered poverty under the Obama administration.

“If you look at a single mom buying groceries … she sees her cost of electricity going up, she sees her health insurance going up,” he said.

Cruz often recounts how his mother, Eleanor Darragh, went to college over her father’s objections. She never learned how to type, Cruz said, because she didn’t want men to tell her to type something when they couldn’t.

“There is no force in all of politics like Republican women,” he said last month in Phoenix.

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

“92 percent of the jobs lost in Barack Obama’s first term were to women.”

–former business executive Carly Fiorina

THE FACT CHECKER | Fiorina, who served as a surrogate for Mitt Romney’s during his 2012 presidential run, recycles a misleading talking point from that unsuccessful campaign — but oddly, she never double-checked the math. The Romney campaign calculated these figures by comparing the decline in the number of all nonfarm employees from January 2009 to March 2012 with the decline in jobs held by women in that period.

While the statistic was technically correct for one month in 2012 — about three years into Obama’s first term — it quickly was dropped by Romney’s campaign because newer economic data began to make it irrelevant.

In the debate, Fiorina claimed that this statistic was true for Obama’s first term. But by the time he took the oath of office a second time, his jobs record was a net winner, both for men and women. So this claim is utterly wrong.

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Chris Christie

This one could haunt Jeb Bush:

Republican Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio (R) speaks as Jeb Bush looks on. AFP PHOTO/ ROBYN BECK

THE CONTENDERS | For months, Marco Rubio has mostly been on offense. He’s been campaigning on his vision of a “New American Century” and has largely stayed above the fray. But with opponents circling him on his Senate attendance record and comparing him to President Obama, it was clear he would have to play more defense tonight than ever before.

So far, he’s more than held his own. Two key moments:

1. When Jeb Bush went after him on his Senate absences, Rubio pivoted to attacking Bush, suggesting that Bush never went after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 nominee, for missing votes.

2. When he was asked by a moderator about irregularities in his personal finances, he pivoted to a discussion about his modest beginnings and struggles to pay off his loans.

In both cases, Rubio didn’t deeply address the substance of the criticism he faced. But he showed a shrewd understanding of politics: If you can turn the tables in a convincing way when you are under attack or heavy scrutiny, you can probably survive.

SOCIAL STUDIES | A Twitter spokesman said Cruz and Trump essentially tied in the number of mentions on the social platform. They were followed, in order, by Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and John Kasich.

BOULDER, Co. — The host of tonight’s Republican presidential debate, CNBC, has played an outsized role in the politics of the Obama years. It was on CNBC that Rick Santelli — who got to ask questions at the “undercard” debate — issued a 2009 rant about an Obama housing proposal that inspired the Tea Party movement. Other CNBC commentators, like Larry Kudlow, are prominent voices in favor of supply-side tax cuts.

Tonight, several of the candidates jujitsu’d CNBC against each other — and the network itself. Donald Trump effectively swatted away a question about the estimated cost of his tax plan by saying that Kudlow had endorsed it.

“Larry Kudlow is an example, who I have a lot of respect for, who loves my tax plan,” Trump said.

Kudlow not only loved it — he called it “Jeb plus,” a characterization that benefited Trump when the former Florida governor insisted that the rival tax plan was unworkable. After a while, moderator John Harwood simply gave up on pushing the point. CNBC’s coverage of the economy did not rule out “dynamic” supply-side taxes as workable policy; it was asking too much for that to be ruled out in the debate.

Not long after, in obvious breakout moments, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) both attacked the network for… slanting political debate too far to the left. Rubio lumped a question about a home state newspaper’s criticism of his Senate attendance with “the bias in the mainstream media.” The conservative Media Research Center rewarded him immediately:

When Cruz’s turn came, he insisted that “the questions that have been asked so far in the debate illustrate why America doesn’t trust the media,” and ran through capsule versions of the leadoff questions, denouncing each one. His reward on the right: a high-five from For America, a grassroots group run by the son of the MRC’s president.

CNBC was simultaneously an example of conservative validation — and the source of conservative anger.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Here’s a look at total mentions of the GOP candidates through the first 45 minutes of tonight’s confab in Colorado, via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs:

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Ben Carson

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Rand Paul

SOCIAL STUDIES | From The Post’s Ann Telnaes:

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to John Kasich

Chris Christie. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

“They told you that your Social Security money is in a trust fund. All that’s in that trust fund is a pile of IOUs for money they spent on something else a long time ago. And they’ve stolen from you because now they know they cannot pay these benefits and Social Security is going to be insolvent in seven to eight years.”

–Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.)

THE FACT CHECKER | Christie loves to says this but that doesn’t make it true. And he significantly misstates the date for when Social Security’s trust funds will be depleted; that will not happen for another 20 years (and even then Social Security can pay partial benefits).

An IOU is just a pejorative way of saying “bond.” These bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Until the 2011 debt-ceiling impasse, one could not imagine that any president or Congress would risk defaulting on them because it would damage the nation’s financial standing. Still, Treasury bonds are considered a good bet – deemed to be one of the safest places to keep money.

The bonds are a real asset to Social Security, but they also represent an obligation of the rest of the government. Like any entity that issues debt, such as a corporation, the government will have to make good on its obligations, generally by taking the money out of revenue, reducing expenses or issuing new debt. The action taken really depends on the resources available at the time. There is nothing particularly unusual about this, except that the U.S. government is better placed to make good on these obligations than virtually any other debt-issuer.

Some analysts, however, question whether the Social Security system holding those bonds lowers the cost of paying benefits relative to if the system did not hold them. Since the bonds have to be redeemed by general taxpayers, as a group taxpayers have to provide the same level of revenues to finance benefit payments as if Social Security were not holding any bonds.

So then the question becomes whether the fact that Social Security ran these surpluses in the past improved the government’s overall fiscal position and thereby made it easier for the government to finance the total level of upcoming benefit payments. Some analysts contend that the existence of the earlier Social Security surpluses spurred lawmakers to spend more, resulting in higher public debt.

BY THE NUMBERS | Both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz complained of media bias in coverage of their campaigns and in moderating debates. Objecting to the referees is nothing new and may not always be endearing, but Republicans across the country may have special sympathy for their party’s candidates’ treatment in the press – they’ve long been skeptical of liberal bias.

A Gallup poll last year found just 27 percent of Republicans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the mass media, close to record lows and significantly lower than trust among independents and Democrats. In a separate question, 71 percent of Republicans said the media is “too liberal,” while 18 percent saw the media as “about right” and 9 percent said they were “too conservative.”

Gallup poll Sept. 4-7, 2014 among 1,017 U.S. adults.

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Mike Huckabee

“For the first time in 35 years, more businesses are closing than starting.”

–Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

THE FACT CHECKER | Rubio is referring to a report published in 2014 by the Brookings Institution which studied Census Bureau data called Business Dynamic Statistics. Brookings analysts tracked data back to 1978 and found that starting in 2008, business deaths exceeded business births.

But note that this started happening seven years ago, while Rubio makes it sound like it is a new development.

THE CONTENDERS | Ted Cruz was asked to address the debt ceiling. His reply addressed debate moderators instead.

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he said. “This is not a cage match.”

Cruz constantly slams the media on the campaign trail, and his calling out the moderators for asking confrontational questions plays right into the narrative he uses to appeal to his base of conservative supporters. Voters may not like him. They dislike the media more.

While Cruz slams congressional leadership, he says that he’s not going to attack his presidential opponents, and actually complimented them. It wasn’t fair, he said, to ask Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) about resigning from the Senate or Ben Carson whether he can do math.

“The men and women on this stage have more ides, more experience, more common sense” than the Democrats.  He called the Democratic debate one between the “Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.”

A few minutes later, Cruz seemed to have made up with the moderators. While he may not be a person people want to have a beer with, he offered this: “I’ll buy a tequila or even some famous Colorado brownies.”

SOCIAL STUDIES | Here are a look at the top Cruz-related tweets after he took on the media for asking “cage match” questions. Note the electronic (if back-handed) high-fives from Patton Oswalt and Bill Maher:

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Donald J. Trump

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Marco Rubio

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Chris Cillizza:

SOCIAL | Lindsey Graham got just slightly more media mentions than Rick Santorum during the undercard debate, 39 percent to 35 percent. Bobby Jindal was a distant third, with 17 percent, and George Pataki was fourth, with 9 percent. Here is a GIF breaking down the share of voice via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs:

“#gopdebate” is the overwhelming way people are identifying their debate postings on Twitter. Here’s a list of the most commonly used others:

THE CONTENDERS | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Ted Cruz

Republican presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

“I went into Ohio, where you had an $8 billion hole and now we have a $2 billion surplus. We’re up 347,000 jobs. When I was in Washington … we cut taxes and we had a $5 trillion projected surplus when I left. That’s hard work.”

–Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R)

THE FACT CHECKER | These are Kasich’s go-to claims about his record as Ohio governor and chairman of the House Budget Committee. But some of his figures lack context.

The $8 billion figure reflects the breadth of the budget imbalance that Kasich’s administration faced when he took office (the actual figure is $7.7 billion). But the projection did not end up being as high, and the actual shortfall was decreased by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Kasich’s $2 billion figure and jobs numbers largely check out. The $2 billion surplus is the state government’s tally of the rainy day fund. While Bureau of Labor Statistics support his job creation numbers, we’ve frequently urged readers to be wary about such claims. So much of what happens in an economy and the impact on jobs is beyond a single politician’s control.

Kudos to Kasich for clarifying that the $5 trillion surplus was a projection, not an actual surplus, when he left Congress in 2000. We’ve urged him to clarify this point in the past. The figure he uses was a projected, 10-year surplus — but it didn’t end up materializing because of a slower economy, tax cuts and increased government spending after 9/11 in the years after Kasich left Washington.

America’s costly federal entitlement programs are expected to be able to pay out full benefits for another two decades or so, but most analysts agree adjustments need to be made to keep the programs solvent for generations to come.

Many GOP candidates propose bumping up the federal retirement age from its current minimum of 66 and reducing benefits for wealthy Americans (this is the basis of Bush’s proposal, which he rolled out Tuesday). A few candidates, like Kasich and Carson, want to cut out Social Security entirely for younger generations and replace it with something else. Others, like Huckabee, don’t want to touch the programs at all. Overhauling long-term entitlement programs entirely has become a major taking point for Christie, who says their insolvency is a “hard truth” people in Washington like to ignore.

But major reforms to these programs can be politically difficult to do, especially as an aging Baby Boomer population leans on these programs in droves. (And they are reliably politically active; seniors made up about 18 percent of the voting population in 2012.) Congress is voting this week on a budget deal that would raise Medicare premiums slightly for an estimated 1 in 3 older Americans. But interest groups like the AARP say the changes aren’t dramatic and have endorsed the deal.

THE CONTENDERS | Marco Rubio was bound to get asked about his many absences from the Senate. He rebutted the notion he is not doing his job by saying the media has a double standard, accusing media outlets of not calling out Democrats like John Kerry for missing votes when they ran for president.

Substance aside, this is bound to be an effective response. Why? Because the conservative audience may like different candidates. But almost all of them dislike the mainstream media.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

SOCIAL STUDIES | More from The Fix: Your online guide to Carly Fiorina

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tore into each other Wednesday as they debated Rubio’s attendance record in the Senate – and that open fight has been bubbling for weeks.

We reported earlier this month:

“Rising tensions between former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Republican presidential primary rival Marco Rubio broke out into the open Friday after the two campaigns began exchanging pointed fundraising-related barbs, culminating with a senior Bush campaign aide accusing the senator from Florida of intentionally exaggerating fundraising totals reported to the media and the Federal Election Commission.

“Lying about budgets. Guess Marco picked up something in the Senate,” Bush communications director Tim Miller tweeted Friday in an uncharacteristically blunt attack against Rubio, whom the former governor has described as a personal friend.

At the heart of the dust-up is the Rubio campaign’s repeated assertions that it has been more frugal than other campaigns, at times specifically singling out Bush’s team. “Here’s why Marco Rubio’s campaign has more cash in the bank than Jeb Bush for President,” tweeted Rubio communications director Alex Conant Thursday.

The campaigns’ attacks on each other have intensified in recent weeks as the two candidates jockey for higher standing in national polls. On one side, Bush is trying to counteract the narrative that his campaign has reached an impasse and is losing support among influential donors. On the other, Rubio is attempting to capitalize on the increased attention he has received since his strong debate performance earlier this month.”

Read the full story here.

BY THE NUMBERS | John Kasich kicked off the debate with some very pointed words about his opponents — that their tax plans and general demeanor are unrealistic alternatives for a presidential candidate — while highlighting his deep political experience.

But that pitch may not resonate with Republican voters.

Republican and Republican-leaning Americans say they are looking for a president from outside the political establishment rather than someone with political experience, by 57 to 39 percent. Over three-quarters of those who support Donald Trump, Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina say they want an outsider. But among supporters of more traditional politicians like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, about 6 in 10 want political experience.

Democrats are far more attracted to a candidate with political experience: 76 percent say they want a president who has worked in the political system, while 21 percent prefer someone outside the political establishment. Some of those preferences may be influenced by support for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a veteran public official.

Follow along with this rolling annotated transcript, with Genius annotations from The Fix crew as well as the Fact Checker’s Michelle Lee.

THE CONTENDERS | When asked about his biggest weakness, Ted Cruz told moderators he tended to be too agreeable and easygoing.

Just kidding.

“I think my biggest weakness is exactly the opposite,” he said.

“If you want someone to grab a beer with I’m not that guy, but if you want someone to drive you home I will do that and I will get the job done,” he said.

Cruz hasn’t always been sober. According to The Boston Globe he got so drunk on grain alcohol in while at Harvard Law School the next night he had to drop out of a performance of “The Crucible.”

THE CONTENDERS | Two things are clear tonight: One: John Kasich is coming out swinging. Two: Donald Trump is ready to give it right back to him.

Trump hit Kasich not just on his record, but also with a signature insult, telling Kasich his poll numbers are not good and, “That’s why he’s on the end.”

Trump gets that debates are about short sound bites. He’s showing that once again tonight.

ON THE ISSUES | It wouldn’t be a presidential campaign if Republican candidates didn’t promise to simplify the tax code, once and for all, to make it fairer, easier and cheaper for Americans and businesses.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found GOP candidates are proposing anywhere from $2 trillion to $12 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. How they do that is up for debate: Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Ben Carson all want to establish flat taxes, while many of the governors, like former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, want to simplify the code into three tax brackets. (Donald Trump, who wants to create four tax brackets, stands out from the field in that he has also proposed raising taxes on the wealthy — while reducing their tax burden in other ways.)

The Tax Foundation notes the candidates are also largely in agreement that the U.S. is hindering its ability to compete abroad because it taxes corporations way too much; the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate among developed nations. To pay for all these tax cuts, another source of agreement seems to be cutting out the deduction for state and local taxes.

What little momentum there was for a tax reform overhaul has stalled as House Republicans focus on their leadership drama, though it’s unclear how having tax wonk Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as speaker could change that.

Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. AFP PHOTO/ ROBYN BECK

ON THE ISSUES | Minutes before the debate, Sen. Ted Cruz unveiled a flat tax plan that he is sure to reference during the night.

Cruz, who wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, unveiled his positions in The Wall Street Journal. He is calling for no income or payroll tax on the first $36,000 of income for a family of four. For wage and investment income above that level, Cruz proposes a 10 percent flat tax.

The Texas Republican would abolish the estate tax, tax on health care plans under the Affordable Care Act, and the alternative minimum tax. The payroll and corporate income tax would be replaced by a 16 percent business flat tax.

Cruz will create universal savings accounts that allow people to save up to $25,000 and defer taxes on that money. People are allowed to tap into that money at any time.

“The virtue of a single tax rate is that the rate doesn’t rise as people work more and invest more. This means better incentives to increase output, and fewer distortions,” Cruz wrote.

Via The Post’s Chris Cillizza:

Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich. AFP PHOTO/ ROBYN BECK

THE CONTENDERS | Ohio Gov. John Kasich — whose frustration with the GOP race has become so acute, his remarks this week about the GOP race were appropriated wholesale as a fundraising e-mail by Democrats — had to came out swinging Wednesday.

He did.

Bypassing the first question – about his biggest weakness – in favor of stating that some of his opponents are unprepared to be president.

“Great question, but I want to tell you, my great concern is that we are on the verge perhaps of picking someone who cannot do this job,” Kasich said, knocking suggestions to cut Social Security and mass deportation. “…We need somebody who can lead, we need somebody who can balance budgets, cut taxes, and you know frankly I did it in Washington, in Ohio, and I will do it again in Washington if I’m president.”

Kasich indicated that he would be on offense during a pre-debate rally Tuesday night, particularly pointing to policy positions held by front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

“But you know, I want to let you all know: Do you know how crazy this election is?” he said at the rally. “Let me tell you something: I’ve about had it with these people.”

SOCIAL STUDIES | Take a look:

THE CONTENDERS | Asked what his biggest weakness is, Jeb Bush responded candidly:  “I am by my nature impatient.” He added that it doesn’t fit well with a campaign like this.

Bush also said he can’t “fake anger.”

Mike Huckabee said: “I don’t really have any weaknesses.” Like many others, his answer seemed less forthcoming than Bush’s.

SOCIAL STUDIES | There he is:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Since the last GOP debate, our analytics partners at Zignal Labs have tracked more than 14 million mentions of the GOP presidential candidates across traditional and social media.

Donald Trump continues to dominate the discussion, attracting 55 percent of all news coverage and social media chatter That’s five times more than the second-most discussed candidate, Ben Carson.

The graphic below shows the overall share of voice among GOP candidates since Sept. 17 through just minutes before the start of the debate:

Seems like we’re starting now, though:

“G.E. just lost a contract, you know what they did? … They got the Ex-Im bank in France to support it, and what did they do? They moved manufacturing out of South Carolina, out of Texas, moved to — Hungary, and to France. G.E. is still making money. G.E. is still doing well, but American workers are out of jobs. That’s why we have to have this level playing field so we can compete with the rest of the world.”

–Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.)

THE FACT CHECKER | That the Export-Import Bank levels the playing field for the U.S. economy is a common argument for reauthorizing the federal agency. But there are data limitations to how the Ex-Im Bank’s loans has affected American jobs.

The Government Accountability Office in 2013 found that there are limitations to the method the bank uses to keep track of employment figures. This method plays an essential role in the bank’s jobs calculation process, the GAO found.

But because of limitations out of the agency’s direct control, the GAO found that the data “cannot be used to distinguish between jobs that were newly created and those that were maintained.”

BOULDER, Colo. — Moments after he stepped off the undercard debate stage here, Rick Santorum told reporters that the Republican presidential race was like a “demolition derby.”

The candidates, he said, were wise to keep their cars away from the carnage and let the others slam into each other.

Extending the metaphor, a Washington Post reporter noted that there were a great many cars currently in the derby and asked the former Pennsylvania senator whether it was time for some of the underperforming drivers, so to speak, to face reality and get off the track.

“You asked me that question four years and two months ago,” Santorum replied. “It was in December of 2011. You as well as a host of other very smart political reporters came up to me and said, ‘Your message is obviously not resonating, you’re at 1 percent in the national polls…'”

But, Santorum noted, he surged just days before the 2012 Iowa caucuses and went on to win them and a host of other caucus and primary states. The pressure to drop out was “wrong” then, he said, and it is “wrong” now.

“The election is when the election is,” Santorum said. “It’s not now.”

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Ann Telnaes:

BOULDER, Co. — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) crossed the final hurdle in his cautious race for Speaker of the House Wednesday, winning support from 200 of his 246 colleagues in a vote earlier today. He got there, in part, by telling members of the conservative Freedom Caucus that there would be no movement on immigration reform so long as Barack Obama was president. That calmed, but did not end, worries that a future president could make Ryan a partner in reform.

After today’s “undercard” CNBC debate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Washington Post that Ryan could absolutely fill that role.

“I think Paul Ryan has been very open-minded to a rational immigration plan,” said Graham. “I think if he was Speaker of the House and I was president of the United States, we could bring people together, because I know I could get something through the Senate, because I’ve done it three times.”

THE CONTENDERS | BOULDER — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) agrees he was the most entertaining guy in tonight’s early debate for low-polling candidates. But he quickly added: “The bar was low.”

“I want to laugh, but I also want to be serious,” Graham told reporters immediately following the evening’s first debate. “I’m trying to show some passion to be a president worthy of the office.”

Graham — like everyone else in the undercard debate tonight — said he hopes his performance will result in a bump in the polls and an invitation to the main stage.

“Send money to LindseyGraham.com,” he told reporters. “Put me in the next debate. I want to talk to the guy with the hat who doesn’t think America is great.”

When asked why he hasn’t already broken through with voters, Graham responded: “It’s a process. It’s October, for God’s sake. John McCain was fifth in a four-person race. You know, my daddy’s never ran for president. I’ve never had a TV show. It takes a while.”

The undercard debate is now finished. Vote in our poll below.

“We’ve lost two million jobs — two million jobs — under this administration in manufacturing.”

–former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.)

THE FACT CHECKER |This is false. Manufacturing took a huge hit during the Great Recession, so 2 million jobs were lost between December 2007 and June 2009, the official length of the recession, according to government statistics.  But the recession began a year before Obama took office.

Meanwhile, from those depths, manufacturing has slowly crawled its way back. From the start of Obama’s presidency, there are about 250,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. That is still about 1.4 million fewer than the start of the recession, however.

SOCIAL STUDIES|

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

For all the talk in the past two Republican debates of foreign affairs, Planned Parenthood and Donald Trump, there’s been relatively little discussion of economic issues.

That will change Wednesday with the third GOP presidential primary debate, which will be hosted by CNBC in Boulder, Colo. In keeping with that channel’s fiscal focus, moderators are expected to focus on job growth, the economy and retirement spending.

Here’s a refresher on the six top issues that are likely to come up:

It wouldn’t be a presidential campaign if Republican candidates didn’t promise to once and for all simplify the tax code to make it fairer, easier and cheaper for Americans and businesses.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found GOP candidates are proposing anywhere from $2 trillion to $12 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. How they do that is up for debate: Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Ben Carson all want to establish flat taxes, while many of the governors, like former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, want to simplify the code into three tax brackets. (Donald Trump, who wants to create four tax brackets, stands out from the field in that he has also proposed raising taxes on the wealthy — while reducing their tax burden in other ways.)

The Tax Foundation notes the candidates are also largely in agreement that the U.S. is hindering its ability to compete abroad because it taxes corporations way too much; the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate among developed nations. To pay for all these tax cuts, another source of agreement seems to be cutting out the deduction for state and local taxes.

What little momentum there was for a tax reform overhaul has stalled as House Republicans focus on their leadership drama, though it’s unclear how having tax wonk Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as speaker could change that.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries reached consensus on one of the largest trade deals in modern history. The countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership make up 40 percent of the world’s GDP.

Free trade is typically a Republican Party staple, but this particular agreement has divided the 2016 hopefuls. The more establishment governors, like Bush and Kasich, are on-board, while some of the senators profess support for free trade but say they are wary President Obama’s ability to negotiate a good deal. The more populist candidates, such as Trump and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, have vocally opposed the deal out of concerns the U.S. didn’t extract enough concessions from other countries.

This June, Obama struggled with his own party to get enough votes in Congress to allow him to negotiate the agreement in good faith (i.e. without Congress interjecting on every item). He’ll bring the full signed deal back to Capitol Hill for a yes/no vote next spring, which is expected to be another close call.

America’s costly federal entitlement programs are expected to be able to pay out full benefits for another two decades or so, but most analysts agree adjustments need to be made to keep the programs solvent for generations to come.

Many GOP candidates propose bumping up the federal retirement age from its current minimum of 66 and reducing benefits for wealthy Americans (this is the basis of Bush’s proposal, which he rolled out Tuesday). A few candidates, like Kasich and Carson, want to cut out Social Security entirely for younger generations and replace it with something else. Others, like Huckabee, don’t want to touch the programs at all. Overhauling long-term entitlement programs entirely has become a major taking point for Christie, who says their insolvency is a “hard truth” people in Washington like to ignore.

But major reforms to these programs can be politically difficult to do, especially as an aging Baby Boomer population leans on these programs in droves. (And they are reliably politically active; seniors made up about 18 percent of the voting population in 2012.) Congress is voting this week on a budget deal that would raise Medicare premiums slightly for an estimated 1 in 3 older Americans. But interest groups like the AARP say the changes aren’t dramatic and have endorsed the deal.

This relatively obscure federal agency has become the center of a proxy battle within the GOP between pro-business Republicans and tea party-aligned conservatives.

The 81-year-old bank helps finance U.S. companies who want to do risky-ish business abroad, often by subsidizing international buyers. When Congress let the Export-Import Bank expire this summer, it was a win for populist conservatives who point to the fact that 87 percent of the bank’s loans go to major corporations such as Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.

Cruz has been leading the fight in Congress to keep the bank shuttered, calling it “crony capitalism” and lodging personal attacks on his Republican colleagues about it.

But the bank got new life this week when pro-business Republicans teamed up with Democrats in the House of Representatives and used a rare parliamentary procedure that allowed them to overwhelmingly vote to start it up again. The battle between the Republican Party’s centrist and right flanks will continue as the bill now heads to the Senate for approval.

Unlike the 2012 campaign, when a sluggish economy was a potential drag on Obama’s re-election hopes, Republicans are having a harder time pointing their figure at Obama’s economy. In July, Democrats were touting 64 straight months of private-sector job growth under the president (although that’s slowed with poorer-than-expected job numbers recently).

A 5.1 percent unemployment rate is also better than average, though economists will note that’s in large part because many people have stopped looking for work and aren’t counted in the workforce. The labor force participation rate keeps dropping and now stands at 62.4 percent — down from over 66 percent before the recession.

It’s enough of a concern that Bush has vocally criticized Obama’s “zombie economy.” Bush, who says he’ll engineer an ambitious 4 percent annual GDP growth in office, likes to claim Florida led the nation in job growth while he was governor. But it’s a statement The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team rated as “bogus.”

Other executives’ claims of job growth, such as Kasich saying he took Ohio from an $8 billion hole to an economic surplus, have also come under scrutiny from the Post’s Fact Checker team, which urges readers “to be wary about job-creation claims, either at the state or national level, as so much of what happens in an economy is beyond a politician’s control.”

This won’t stop those claims from being bandied about Wednesday night, of course.

As the candidates get ready to walk out on the debate stage, lawmakers in Washington will be nearing a vote on a two-year budget deal. Instead of passing a temporary budget every few months, this deal would increase domestic and military spending by $80 billion and, crucially, raise the debt ceiling through March 2017. That would allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow money to pay its existing obligations without defaulting on its debt and would avert a potential government shutdown in early December, when the short-term budget extension runs out.

At least one presidential candidate, Paul, is upset that Republican congressional leaders agreed to the deal without first trying to negotiate spending cuts with Democrats. He has said he will try to block the bill by filibustering it, although his chances of success are slim. Similarly, many conservatives will be upset the GOP didn’t attempt to defund Planned Parenthood through the budgeting process.

Raising the debt ceiling and funding the government was not always such a political issue, but it has become one in recent years, with consequences: The 2011 failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely fashion caused one of the three main credit-rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s, to downgrade America’s credit rating for the first time in history. And the 2013 shutdown hurt Republicans — at least in the near term — when Americans blamed them more than Democrats.

Democrats point out that raising the debt ceiling is merely allowing the United States to pay bills it has already racked up through its budget process, while many Republicans see it and the budget process as levers for potentially extracting political concessions from Democrats.

Expect plenty of reviews of the budget deal on Wednesday night, and few favorable ones.

Right to Rise, the PAC supporting Jeb Bush for president, is on its game today with a new Twitter feed: @IsMarcoWorking.

The account responds to Rubio’s record of missed votes in the Senate, as well as a friend’s comment that he “hates” the upper chamber.

Check out the first tweet, which went up shortly before the undercard debate:

Wednesday’s debate marks another high-profile chance for Republican candidates to make their pitch to voters, but with months of campaigning underway a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week offered a look at how Republicans are reacting to top candidates so far.

The survey asked respondents whether they like candidates more or less the more they’ve heard about them. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson drew the most positive reactions — 64 percent of Republicans said they like him the more they hear about him (just 18 percent liked him less). Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is next, with 52 percent of Republicans liking him more after hearing more about him. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are in the middle of the pack with more narrowly positive marks.  

Businessman Donald Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush receive more mixed reviews – 47 percent of Republicans like Trump the more they hear about him, while almost as many like him less (45 percent). The margin is slightly negative for Bush, with 41 percent liking him more and 47 percent liking him less.

The poll shows Trump’s strength in nomination polls comes despite significant hangups within the party, and that Bush may face a bigger uphill battle than Rubio or others in rising out of the pack of more traditional candidates.

At the same time, mixed reactions to hearing more about a candidate don’t spell doom for a candidate’s chances. Four years ago, a Post-ABC poll  found Republicans were about evenly split on whether they liked Mitt Romney more or less the more they heard about him (38 vs 35 percent), though they chose him as the GOP nominee. The most buzzy candidates then were Chris Christie (43-23) and Herman Cain (47-18).

The Post-ABC poll was conducted Oct. 15-18 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, including land-line and cellphone respondents. Full results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points. The error margin is plus or minus six points among the sample of 423 Republican-leaning registered voters.

This is what the former Virginia governor was doing during the undercard debate:

Via The Post’s Chris Cillizza:

 “We have the lowest labor participation rate in 50 years.”

–former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.)

THE FACT CHECKER | The labor participation rate fell to 62.4 percent in September, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s actually lowest since 1977, when it touched 62.3 percent — but that’s 38 years, not 50. So Santorum’s a bit off with his figure.

When Obama took office in January, 2009, the workforce participation rate was 65.7 percent. So there has certainly been a decline. But the rate had already been on a steady downward track since it hit a high of 67.3 percent in the last year of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

A key reason? The composition of the labor force has been affected by the retirement of the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in 2012 concluded that just over half of the post-1999 decline in the participation rate comes from the retirement of the baby boomers. Critically, the research showed that the problem is only going to get worse in the rest of the decade, with retirements accounting for two-thirds of the decline of participation rate by 2020. In other words, the rate will keep declining, no matter how well the economy does.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Ann Telnaes:

THE CONTENDERS | Around Capitol Hill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is not known for being, well, the most technically savvy. He said as recently as March he’s never sent an e-mail before.

That’s why, in response to a question in the undercard debate that just ended about what his favorite app is, Graham said he’s a newbie at iPhones: the only reason he has one is because Donald Trump gave out his cell phone number, he explained.

It’s a true story. Here are the details from when it happened in July. We wrote about it on The Fix:

While at a campaign event in South Carolina on Tuesday, Trump decided to read out loud a phone number.

Turns out, according to CBS News, it was the cellphone number of fellow GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

What Trump did is basically an old-school form of doxxing, an act made popular by the Internet to blast out to the world people’s personal information.

Doxxing is a form of harassment. It’s serious, and it’s also, apparently, in most cases, legal.

Trump wasn’t necessarily threatening Graham. But it’s clear he was trying to retaliate against attacks from Graham, who has been one of the more vocal GOP candidates to call out Trump’s ridiculousness. As recently as Tuesday morning, Graham called Trump a “jackass.”

“I don’t care if he drops out. Stay in the race, just stop being a jackass,”Graham said on CBS.

THE CONTENDERS | Toward the end, the moderators asked the candidates whether the day after the Superbowl should be a holiday.

Bobby Jindal, who not-so-subtly noted he is a Saints fan, said yes. George Pataki, a self-described “long-suffering Jets fan,” said no.

Rick Santorum speaks during the GOP debate. RJ Sangosti/Pool via Bloomberg

THE CONTENDERS | Rick Santorum is one of the few Republican presidential candidates to support the Export-Import bank, which finances U.S. exports, and defended it on stage.

“A true conservative wants to create a level playing field,” Santorum said. “In order to have a level playing field, which is what conservatives talk about all the time, we have to have export financing.”

Santorum — who has been a less-than-doctrinaire economic conservative — aligns more with the pro-business wing of his party on this decision. He and Sen. Lindsey Graham  (R-S.C.) are the only presidential candidates who support the bank. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) did, but changed course earlier this year.

The House overwhelmingly voted to renew the bank’s charter Tuesday in a rare win for establishment Republicans.

“We cut our state budget 26 percent in eight years. … In eight years, we never raised taxes, we cut taxes.”
— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R)

THE FACT CHECKER |This is Jindal’s go-to line about his record as governor. But he takes too much credit.

The state budget in fiscal 2009, Jindal’s first budget after taking office in 2008, was $34.3 billion. In fiscal 2016, the proposed budget was $25.1 billion. That is a $9.2 billion decrease, or a 26.8 percent decrease.

But this budget decrease was not due to his executive decisions alone. Federal funding also decreased by $10 billion during those eight years, from $19.7 billion to $9.7 billion. Part of this decrease was waning federal funding for hurricane recovery, the Times-Picayune has reported.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

THE CONTENDERS | Rick Santorum won the Colorado caucuses in 2012. He just used a question about breweries — whether it is good for so many companies to be controlled by one brewer — to remind voters of this fact.

“I do drink a lot of Coors beer,” said Santorum, after reminding the crowd of his win.

Also, centralization in the industry doesn’t worry him.

“I’m not concerned that Americans are not going to have a choice,” he said.

THE CONTENDERS | South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose longshot presidential bid has centered on his hawkish foreign policy, knocked Democrats and members of his own party alike when pressed by CNBC moderators on his positions on tax reform and immigration reform – making a joke about Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon in the process.

“Senator Graham, you have said you believe that climate change is real, you’ve said that you accept tax increases as part of a budget deal with Democrats,” asked NBC’s Carl Quintanilla, “you’ve cosponsored a senate immigration bill providing a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally. Are you in the wrong party’s debate?”

Graham responded by suggesting that many of the proposals put forward by his rivals are politically untenable, including eliminating removing the corporate tax rate and deporting all undocumented immigrants en masse.

“I’m tired of telling people things that they want to hear that we know we’re not going to do. We’re not going to eliminate the corporate tax, but we can make it lower,” Graham said. “We’re going to fix immigration if we work together. … We’re not going to deport 11 million people and their legal citizen children but we will deport felons.”

It was a rare departure from discussing national security for Graham – and one that highlighted some of his least popular positions among GOP voters. But Graham tried to turn the question on his primary rivals, pointing toward the general election when more moderate voters will be choosing between the GOP nominee and the Democratic candidate.

“At the end of the day folks I am trying to solve a problem and win an election. I am tired of losing,” Graham continued. “Good god, look who we’re running against – the number one candidate on the other side thought she was flat broke after her and her husband were in the White House for eight years. The number two guy went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon, and I don’t think he ever came back!

National defense has been the biggest issue of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s presidential campaign — and it’s the way he’s distinguishing himself from his competitors on the debate stage tonight.

“The party’s all over for the dictators. Make me commander-in-chief and this crap stops!” Graham said.

The South Carolina Republican went after President Obama, calling him an “incompetent commander-in-chief.”

He asked if Russia would be in Ukraine if Reagan were president. He talked about Chinese aggression with one open hand and a clenched fist.

“We’re being walked all over because our commander-in-chief is weak in the eyes of our enemies,” Graham said. “The foreign policy of Barack Obama needs to be replaced, and the last person you want .. to replace his foreign policy is his secretary of state,” he said, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Graham has vowed to invade Syria with 10,000 troops and keep them there until the Islamic State no longer threatens the United States. He would send more troops to Iraq.

It’s the defining issue of his campaign — and of his debate performance so far.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Here’s your first debate card of the night:

And Graham got animated when talking about China:

Follow along with this running transcript of the Republican undercard debate.

Donald Trump in Atkinson, N.H., on Monday. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

SOCIAL STUDIES | The main CNBC-hosted debate hasn’t even begun and Donald Trump has already said he thinks the business-news network will be “very unfair” to him.

Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to air his pre-debate complaint.

Trump and Ben Carson had threatened to boycott the debate unless CNBC dropped plans to make it three hours, instead of the two Trump and Carson said they had agreed to. Trump won that fight, but he’s still grumbling about CNBC’s reporting on his poll numbers. Recent polls show Carson passing Trump among Republican voters in Iowa.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via Rand Paul aide Chris LaCivita:

But, in the end, it all turned out OK for the Paul campaign:

SOCIAL STUDIES| Watch and find out, via Comedy Central:

BOULDER, Co. — Only one in ten Republican House members backed today’s compromise legislation to raise the debt limit and bust through the 2011 spending caps set by the last budget deal. In Boulder, fully half of the candidates relegated to the pre-prime time “undercard” debate said they’d reluctantly have supported it.

“Let me tell you what is real: The threat to our homeland,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of five presidential candidates who’ll get a vote on the deal. “This budget, if it’s paid for, will put $40 billion back into the defense budget when it badly needs it.”

Former New York Governor George Pataki used the same rationale, but with a sharper edge. “Barack Obama is the first president in American history to hold our military hostage,” he said, using rhetoric that congressional Republicans failed to sell to the media covering budget negotiations.

In tonight’s prime-time debate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has promised to reiterate his call for a filibuster of the debt limit deal, to start when he gets back to D.C. But if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) starts debate on the deal soon, it could remove Paul’s chance to force a delay.

Republican Presidential hopeful Lindsey Graham (R) gestures as he speaks. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECKROBYN BECK

“We are on track to have the smallest army since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1915.”
–Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

THE FACT CHECKER | Will this zombie claim about the shrinking Navy ever go away? Apparently not; we already awarded Graham Three Pinocchios earlier this year for the same claim. Fact checkers repeatedly debunked this in the 2012 presidential elections, and it’s being repeated again this time around.

But, surprise: A lot has changed in 100 years, including the need and capacity of ships. After all, it’s a now a matter of modern nuclear-powered fleet carriers, versus gunboats and small warships of 100 years ago. The push for ships under the Reagan era (to build the Navy up to 600-ship levels) no longer exists, and ships from that era are now retiring.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus recently spoke about this problematic ship-counting exercise. There are other ways to measure seapower than just the sheer number of ships, he said: “That’s pretty irrelevant. We also have fewer telegraph machines than we did in World War I and we seem to be doing fine without that. … Look at the capability. Look at the missions that we do.” Plus, the Navy is on track to grow to just over 300 ships, approximately the size that a bipartisan congressional panel has recommended for the current Navy.

As for his statement about the army, Graham is on a bit more solid ground because he’s talking about the number of troops. (Under sequestration, the number of troops was due to be reduced to 420,000 in fiscal year 2016, the lowest since 1940, but the new budget deal will likely change that.) But even then, it’s apples and oranges to compare the capabilities of a World War II army with today’s army.

SOCIAL STUDIES| Check out The Donald’s grumpy Twitter feed:

SOCIAL STUDIES| Must be nice to have a basketball hoop in the greenroom:

What did you say, Ben?

THE CONTENDERS | BOULDER, Co.–The selection of this liberal romper room of a city for a Republican debate — a place that conservatives have dubbed “the People’s Republic of Boulder” — led to some speculation about how the locals would take it. The answer on the big day: As an amusing distraction.

It was relatively easy for conservatives to stroll onto campus and find a place to evangelize. Ben Carson supporters brought swag and books from The 2016 Committee, the surprise frontrunner’s super PAC.

David Weigel/The Washington Post

College conservatives brought out their hottest ideological gear, accompanied by extremely well-branded signs from the Media Research Institute.

David Weigel/The Washington Post

By contrast, a well-promoted protest, with literal air cover from a plane that trailed a message about Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as “Koch puppets,” was slow to build.

Colorado’s ProgressNow provided gently gruesome puppets of the two Floridians; a puppet of the less Koch-beloved Donald Trump was held up by students in red berets and black body suits, hoisting a painting of a winged god above the pre-Spanish name of Mexico, Aztlan.

David Weigel/The Washington Post

The protest was more or less designed for reporters, whiling away minutes before the undercard debate began.

So was Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky) brief campus roundtable, which drew his biggest national media throng in weeks; the same was true of a gun rights event put on by former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a party-crashing Democratic candidate.

David Weigel/The Washington Post

More protests were scheduled for the waning daylight during the undercard debate.

James Hohmann talked to the Post’s political staff, which is being deployed far and wide, to get their takes on tonight’s happenings for a special pre-debate edition of The Daily 202 (see the whole thing here).

Some themes emerged: “What will Jeb do?” from Chris Cillizza, and how hard will Donald Trump go after Ben Carson, mentioned by Matea Gold, Karen Tumulty and Phil Rucker.

Get the post-debate news delivered tomorrow morning right to your e-mail inbox by signing up for The Daily 202 here.

In case you didn’t hear, via The Post’s Dave Weigel:

Low poll numbers almost kept him out of Wednesday’s “undercard” CNBC debate, but Sen. Lindsey O. Graham’s presidential campaign made it to Colorado — and took him into territory where few campaigns would tread. Graham (R-S.C.) was the inaugural guest at CNN’s “Politics on Tap” happy hour, its first celebrity bartender and its first participant in a twist on a somewhat salacious name game usually reserved for slumber parties.

Graham, whose family owned a bar in Central, S.C., took to the evening with aplomb, posing for pictures and joking with the journalists and activists who’d RSVP’d. Egged on by CNN’s David Chalian and Dana Bash, he poured pints and shots for party attendees.

“To the Donald!” Graham said, after pouring several rounds of Jack Daniel’s and joining in a toast.

ABC’s Rick Klein spotted Graham this morning:

Marco Rubio speaks at a campaign event in Las Vegas. REUTERS/David Becker

THE CONTENDERS | Following The Post’s report about Marco Rubio’s frustration with the Senate and his many missed voters – “he hates it,” according to one long-time friend — the Sun Sentinel newspaper in Florida called on Rubio to step down.

Former Florida senator George LeMieux, a supporter of Jeb Bush, told The Post in Houston that Rubio should consider it. Meanwhile, former Florida GOP chairman Al Cardenas, also a Bush backer, told the Wall Street Journal that Rubio should step down.

One of the biggest questions heading into the debate is how Rubio intends to confront this question.

The Post’s Tom Hamburger just reported:

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a longtime ally of his state’s wealthy sugar producers, is parting ways with the industry and calling for an end to government subsidies that have boosted company profits for decades …
His stance puts him at odds with his in-state presidential rival, Sen. Marco Rubio (R), who is being backed by members of the Florida-based Fanjul family, which controls one of the world’s biggest sugar empires.

Via The Post’s Jenna Johnson:

Possible front-runner status comes with a few drawbacks. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Ben Carson

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is going into tonight’s third GOP debate as a possible front-runner — and a definite target.

A series of recent surveys in Iowa showed him displacing business mogul Donald Trump as the leading candidate in the early voting state. With his new status have come, finally, the attacks that were missing as he steadily climbed the polls all summer.

His status may have changed; his approach hasn’t, as the Post’s David A. Fahrenthold and Robert Samuels reported:

To prepare for Wednesday night’s debate, Carson, who was a quiet and almost passive presence in the first two GOP encounters, showed his trademark combination of confidence and unconventional tactics.

He did not have aides pepper him with the kind of ­pre-researched, detail-oriented questions that the CNBC moderators might ask. Carson instead spent 12 hours Monday talking to about 15 regular voters.

Trump in particular has set his sights on Carson, directly attacking the candidate’s political talents during several appearances in Iowa this week and making critical comments about his faith. Tensions rose between the two campaigns earlier this week after Trump seemingly suggested that Seventh-day Adventists’ faith falls outside the bounds of Christianity.

Carson, who said several weeks ago he didn’t want to fight with Trump, has mostly tried to sidestep direct conflict.

“I really refuse to really get into the mud pit,” Carson told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Sunday. “I don’t think that’s going to change. And I am who I am. That’s not going to change, either.”

On offense. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

Top aides to Jeb Bush briefed donors on their strategy in Houston on Monday, including their plan to try to defeat Marco Rubio. They branded Rubio as a “GOP Obama” and argued he and the president have “strikingly similar profiles.” It’s a comparison unlikely to get a candidate much mileage in a GOP primary.

Bush’s team would not have put that out there without knowing their candidate would probably be asked about it in the debate. So bet on Bush being prepared to explain the attack.

Less clear is how exactly Rubio will respond. Asked about the comparison to Obama in Iowa over the summer, Rubio said Obama was a “backbencher” in the state legislature while Rubio was the Florida House speaker.

Rubio spent the first two debates focused mainly on his own message. In a note to supporters Wednesday, Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan said Rubio’s plan is to “do exactly what he did in the first two debates.”

But when you’re facing more criticism than ever before, that’s easier said than done.