Republicans face off in third debate

And although Trump ceded his top spot in the polls to rival candidate Ben Carson this week, he still commanded the spotlight at Wednesday night’s CNBC debate.

David McIntosh, president of the influential conservative advocacy group Club of Growth, says Florida Sen.

Rubio: The Florida Senator was like a football player on defense who repeatedly intercepted the ball and made touchdowns.

With his campaign stuck in single digits despite a big initial money edge and major establishment support, Bush was under pressure to perform in the debate – and the early reviews were brutal. Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you, but Im not running against Jeb Bush or anyone else on this stage, Rubio shot back, to the oohs and ahhs of the audience.

“The reality is most French people work more than 35 hours each week, but the cliché has stubbornly remained on the other side of the Atlantic”, the paper wrote. You get three days to show up.

Rubio (44), the Cuban-American senator and the most skilled debater on the dais, deftly counterattacked, pointing to the hypocrisy of Bush not questioning John McCain’s voting record as a senator from Arizona when he ran for the White House in 2008.

After a debate in which the candidates seemed to spend more time sparring with the moderators than with each other, the chairman of the Republican National Committee declared that CNBC, the host network, “should be ashamed”. “Believe me, that’s why Ohio is doing well”, the frontrunner said. Carson didn’t give any confidence that he could do any of those things in this debate.

Later in the show, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told Alisyn Camerota that he was going to keep standing up to debate moderators.

The former Arkansas governor was asked if he sees Donald Trump as someone “with the moral authority to unite the country”.

Cruz was a champion college debater and those skills were on display Wednesday.

“This is not a cage match”, declared Cruz, referring to pro wrestling in a steel cage. The rebuke drew a few of the loudest, most sustained applause of the evening.

Those who chose to skip the third GOP debate from Boulder, Colorado, missed a series of unusual events that started when the CNBC moderators tried to bait the Republican candidates. Ted Cruz of Texas. In a surprising turn for the bombastic Donald Trump, who has dominated previous debates, the businessman came in fourth for talk time, logging just over nine-and-a-half minutes.

“That’s not true”, Carson said, without evidence.

He also was questioned about his involvement with a medical supplement company called Mannatech that has come under legal scrutiny.

That’s when the crowd began to boo.

While most on the stage took swipes at the media in general or CNBC’s questioners in particular, Sen.

Carson declined to specify exactly what changes he would ask for, but said his campaign was reaching out to the other campaigns to “lay out a plan” going forward for a new format.

“I mean we do get paid to do a job”. “Number 2, this is the man who was the managing general partner at Lehman Brothers when it went down and took nearly everyone of us”, Trump added, arguing Kasich went negative when his poll numbers tanked. “And then he got nasty”.