The eight top Republicans jostling for position in the race for their party’s presidential nomination engaged in the most substantive but also the most volatile and feisty debate of the 2016 cycle on Tuesday night as the race for the White House entered a new and more demanding phase.



Two hours of debate in the Milwaukee Theater in Wisconsin saw the country’s leading rightwing presidential hopefuls hurl themselves into detailed and heated disputes over the fundamentals of modern conservatism. Donald Trump clashed with Jeb Bush over immigration, Rand Paul took on Marco Rubio, while Ben Carson was deeply tested over his knowledge of foreign affairs and the veracity of his own personal story.

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The media hosts of the fourth Republican presidential debate, Fox Business and the Wall Street Journal, promised that it would be the most substantive on the issues that Americans cared about. And it delivered.

The populist grandstanding of the so-called “outsider” candidates – notably Trump and Carson – came under more detailed scrutiny than in any previous debate. Trump in particular was challenged over his headline-grabbing promise to round up and eject the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Jeb Bush, whose campaign has been seriously flagging in recent weeks as he struggled to find his voice, came out guns blazing in a derisive take-down of the Trump position. “Twelve million illegal immigrants, to send them back, 500,000 a month, is just not possible. And it’s not embracing American values. And it would tear communities apart. And it would send a signal that we’re not the kind of country that I know America is.”

Feeling the wind finally in his sails, Bush pressed on. He said that even having a conversation about forced deportation of millions of law-abiding people “sends a powerful signal. They’re doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now when they hear this, that’s the problem with this”.

Ohio governor John Kasich also attacked Trump on his crude immigration plan, insisting: “Come on folks, we all know you can’t pick them up and ship them across a border. It’s a silly argument. It’s not an adult argument.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, right, and John Kasich. Photograph: Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images

His phrase caught the mood of the night, when more experienced politicians snatched back control of the conversation. Bush was not the only experienced politician on the stage who palpably felt the momentum of the presidential contest move in their direction, away from the hitherto ascendant “outsiders”. Rand Paul too came into his own to an extent not previously seen in any of the three earlier debates.

In one of the most substantive discussions of the night, the Kentucky Republican took on Marco Rubio over their respective interpretations of conservatism as it applied to government spending on domestic welfare and the military. When Rubio talked about introducing a new family-friendly tax system, Paul pounced, denouncing the plan as a new trillion-dollar expense on the federal budget.

“He’s talking about giving people money they didn’t pay. It’s a welfare transfer payment,” Paul said, adding it didn’t look very conservative to him. He then went on to lambast Rubio’s plan to increase spending on the US military by a similar trillion dollars. “How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You cannot be a conservative if you’re going to keep promoting new programs you’re not going to pay for.”

Rubio lashed back by branding Paul a “committed isolationist”. “I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, and the United States is the strongest military power in the world. There are radical jihadists beheading people and crucifying Christians.”

It was a difficult night for Ben Carson, who was exposed to one of the only non-economic questions of the evening when he was asked whether recent press coverage of inaccuracies in his personal story had damaged his standing. Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, has faced a recent flurry of news stories suggesting that he juiced up his personal biography. He has been shown to have exaggerated or misrepresented his own accounts that he turned down a scholarship to West Point military academy, tried to stab a friend at school and was rewarded by his professors for being the most honest student in his class at Yale.

He tried to deflect the question by turning it back on the media in an echo of the attack leveled by Republican candidates at CNBC over the debate two weeks ago. Carson said the assault on his trustworthiness by the media was unfair compared with the treatment of Hillary Clinton’s narrative over Benghazi.

“We should vet all candidates, I have no problem being vetted but I do have a problem with being lied about and putting that out there as truth. We have to start treating people the same.”

Carson also faced difficulties over his approach to raising the minimum wage and tax policy.



Within the first 10 minutes of the debate, he flip-flopped on his policy when he told moderator Neil Cavuto: “I would not raise [the minimum wage]. I would not raise it specifically because I’m interested in making sure that people are able to enter the job market and take advantage of opportunities.”

However, in May, Carson favored raising the federal minimum wage. He said then in an interview on CNBC: “I think, probably, it should be higher than now.”

Carson later said he would favor getting rid of tax deductions for home mortgages and charitable giving, which are two of the most popular and widely used tax deductions. He stood by this statement after the debate, saying he was “100%” in favor of removing both from the tax code.



In a further assault on his image of calm but assured statesmanship, Carson also exposed his limited knowledge of the complexities of foreign affairs when he talked about his proposed way of dealing with Isis. The important thing, he said, was to treat the Islamist extremists as “losers”, and to take the land they controlled in Iraq away from them.

The more detailed the level of discussion, the more edged out of the limelight both Carson and Trump appeared. When historians look back on the 2016 presidential race, they may come to see Milwaukee as a tipping point in which the more establishment politicians within the crowded field of contestants finally came into their own.

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Trump also sounded maverick on foreign policy, saying that he was quite happy with Russian president Vladimir Putin going in to Syria to fight the Isis insurgents. That gave Bush the second chance of the night to assert his desperately struggling bid for the Republican nomination.

“Donald is absolutely wrong on this. The idea of letting Putin take out Isis, that’s like a board game, like playing Monopoly or something, that’s not how the world works,” he said.

While Bush and Paul both left a greater imprint on the race than they have up to now, other candidates on stage found it more difficult to leave their mark. Ted Cruz made a forceful statement on immigration, pinning his colors to the same mast as Trump by opposing any concession to any of the 11 million undocumented individuals. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, stuck largely to a familiar script about her business prowess though she did receive a resounding cheer from the audience when she exclaimed: “We must take our government back.”

In the post-debate spin room Trump praised the debate as “an elegant evening” compared to the controversial CNBC debate just two weeks before. Other presidentical campaigns took turns declaring victory. Doug Stafford, the top strategist for Paul, said of his candidate: “I thought Rand really stood out from everyone in this debate and showed himself to be the real, true fiscal conservative on every issue.” Michael Steel, a top aide to Bush, also felt comfortable about his candidate’s performance. “I think Governor Bush showed again why he’s the best choice to be the next commander in chief and did the best job making a contrast with Hillary Clinton on question after question.”



Earlier in the evening, in the undercard debate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, newly relegated from the top tier by dint of low poll ratings, also helped to resurrect his moribund campaign by strategically turning his remaining firepower on Hillary Clinton.

Christie said Clinton was “the one to fight tonight”, the one who would inflate public spending were she to get into the White House. “The people out there … care about who’s going to beat Hillary Clinton and who’s going to keep their eye on the ball. I’m going to keep my eye on the ball,” he said.

Christie’s statesmanlike tone earned him a plaudit from Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp which owns the host media organizations, who tweeted about him: “Possible to see as Chief Executive.”