The raucous field of Republican presidential candidates hustled back before voters Friday, hoping to build on momentum from their first meeting of the 2016 campaign — and clean up any debate-night messes left behind.
“It’s not easy with 10 people debating,” said Jeb Bush, who spent Friday on the New Hampshire coast before an evening town hall.
Bush, among the rivals scrambling for notice in a campaign dominated at the moment by Donald Trump, said: “I don’t view debating as a question of winning and losing. It’s the cumulative effect of shaping people’s opinions of who you are that matters over the long haul.”
After Thursday night’s debate, a long haul is what the GOP appears in for.
With billionaire businessman Trump showing no signs of letting up, and none of the other 16 major Republicans in the race ready to concede anything after just one debate, the contest for the Republican nomination is an unsettled affair that’s just getting started.
“Party donors, party leaders need to take a deep breath, put down the sharp objects, step away from the window,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said at the RedState Gathering of conservative activists in Atlanta. “The voters will decide who our nominee is. They’ll decide who the president is.”
And the voters seem to be loving the show.
Thursday night’s debate wasn’t just the most-watched program in the history of Fox News Channel. It drew more than twice as many views as the previous record-setter — the 2012 election night.
Bush, the former Florida governor, complained that the debate didn’t get into substance and marveled at all the public attention it drew.
“Was there no game on?” he asked as he spent his lunch hour Friday rehashing the forum over a lobster roll at Brown’s Lobster Pound in Seabrook, N.H.
Undoubtedly, the reason for the record ratings was Trump.
He was back on TV on Friday morning, telling the morning talk shows he couldn’t recall insulting women in the past — rejecting the premise of a debate question posed by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.
“You know, some of the statements she made about the women, I don’t recognize those words whatsoever,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We’re going to take a very serious look at it.”
He won’t have to look far. Trump’s Twitter feed is sprinkled with insults to women — and some men — that use words such as “dog,” “ugly,” “dumb,” “stupid” and “disgusting.”
Before dawn Friday, Trump had retweeted a post calling Kelly a “bimbo.” The post was later deleted, but on Friday evening Trump called Kelly a “lightweight.”
“She’s not very tough and not very sharp,” Trump said during a phone interview on CNN. “I don’t respect her as a journalist.”
Referring to Kelly’s questions during the debate, Trump said, “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
But for all the attention on Trump, Bush said Friday the criticism lobbed at him by Democrats shows he is the candidate they fear most.
“I’ll take that as a badge of honor,” he said.
While Bush was thinking about the general election, many of the contenders headed south to the RedState Gathering in Atlanta to work on shoring up their support among the party base.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that he’d been relegated to the pre-debate debate for the seven candidates who failed to qualify for the main event. “I was up late last night,” Perry said. “Not as late as I wanted to be.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio also spoke Friday at RedState.
Ratings smash
Thursday’s prime-time GOP candidates’ forum on Fox News Channel reached a stunning 24 million viewers, by far the largest audience ever for that network and any cable news event. (The closest was the 1992 “Larry King Live” debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot on CNN, which was seen by 16.8 million people.) In fact, it stands as the most-watched television program of the summer so far, beating the last game of the NBA Finals and the women’s World Cup soccer finals, Nielsen said. The Associated Press
