If you scroll back through social media, a couple things about the commentariat’s real-time reaction to Thursday night’s pre-Super Tuesday Republican primary debate stand out above the rest.

1. Widespread agreement that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but especially Rubio, were finally able to meet Donald Trump head on, and knock him off his game.

2. Notwithstanding the notorious problems with predicting how the public will respond to debates (and a political season defined epically by failed prognostication), the conservative commentariat barely bothered pretending they weren’t going to anoint Rubio the runaway winner before the debate even reached its second half.

But if you go back and rewatch the debate, the most conspicuous thing is more thematic. By (for once) subjecting Trump to repeated and sustained attacks, Rubio and Cruz conducted a real-time experiment to test which kind of attacks work against Trump and which kind do not. Or, at least, to determine what kinds of attacks actually faze him. The results are pretty clear—the only question is whether the right can adequately grapple with the implications of them.

To absolutely no effect, the Republican Party and its conservative movement allies have spent months and months—and a fair amount of advertising money—spreading the message that Trump is actually a liberal. The kernels of truth in their claims are undeniable. Over a long business career, Trump has sprayed opinions and campaign cash like buckshot. It’s easy to strip some of these statements and donations from context to create a caricature of Trump as an unreconstructed liberal Democrat.