Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) The biggest elephant wasn’t in the room — so Ted Cruz stood center stage, taking punches from his opponents and the moderators.
But how much did this matter? The Fox News debate Thursday night exposed few new rifts between the contenders and featured candidates mostly sticking to message.
Donald Trump was elsewhere, and here’s what he missed:
The debate had a lackluster quality, and it’s not just because Trump wasn’t there. Perhaps because Trump’s dominance drove them to desperation in earlier debates, every candidate had thrown his best punch before strutting onto stage Thursday night.
Viewers learned little new about the candidates’ policy stances, and — aside from Jeb Bush showing the kind of passion his supporters have long craved — they also saw few stylistic differences.
This debate won’t change many minds. So close to the first votes being cast, the candidates were either trying not to stumble before the Iowa caucuses, or trying to survive and advance to the New Hampshire primary. It’s time to give them what they want.
Everyone had their one-liners about Trump as the debate opened.
Cruz joked, in his opening statement: “I’m a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. Ben, you’re a terrible surgeon. Now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way…”
Offered Bush: “I kind of miss Donald Trump. He was a little teddy bear to me. Everybody else was in the witness protection program when I went after him.”
Donald Trump says he raised nearly $6 million for veterans with debate boycott
But for most of the night, he was ignored.
His absence exposed a reality of most of the Republican debates: Bombastic as he’s been, Trump was never really at the center of any policy battles. What he brought was personality — so the only way to tell whether his absence affected much comes not in the substance, but in the TV ratings.
His rival event — a rally and fundraiser for veterans — caused a split-screen atmosphere for GOP voters and even drew two of his competitors to join him. Undercard debaters Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum — the winners of the last two Republican caucuses in Iowa — stood on stage with the front-runner.
Without Trump on stage, Cruz entered the night expecting to be bounced around like a pinball.
He survived — but it wasn’t always pretty and some thought the Texas senator did worse than others. The Des Moines Register ruled it a “Rough night for Cruz” in its front-page above-the-fold review of the debate.
“I would note that that the last four questions have been, ‘Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted…,” Cruz said. He soon added a joking reference to Trump that sounded an awful lot like a complaint, saying: “If you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage.”
He was hurt the most by Fox News’ decision to use video of candidates’ past statements, too — a move that forced Cruz to explain away an amendment that would have granted undocumented immigrants legal status by hailing his allegiance with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, hardly a household name.
Cruz commanded the stage early in the debate, and withstood most of his opponents’ punches — particularly because none were criticisms he hadn’t heard before.
But the night would have been much easier for him had Trump worn the biggest target.
In an alternate, non-Trump world, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio would be center stage. And they were Thursday night.
Each senator knows that if Trump doesn’t fade, one of the freshman senators of Cuban heritage has to knock the other out to stand a chance beating the real estate mogul head-to-head.
So Rubio was working hard to court evangelical voters — a particularly important constituency in Iowa and South Carolina.
Asked about Time Magazine’s cover proclaiming him a Republican savior, Rubio said: “There is only one savior and it’s not me.”
