Things got downright personal at the Feb. 25 GOP debate. Here are a few of the most stinging barbs thrown by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 Things got downright personal at the Feb. 25 GOP debate. Here are a few of the most stinging barbs thrown by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 Three weeks after being pummeled on a debate stage in New Hampshire, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida showed Thursday night that he had learned his lesson, launching repeated and aggressive attacks on front-runner Donald Trump in the hope of slowing the New York businessman’s march to the nomination. 
 
 In New Hampshire, Rubio faltered under relentless attacks from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. On Thursday, it was as if he were channeling Christie’s prosecutorial style. He unloaded a series of charges from Trump’s past against the billionaire reality TV star. 
 
 He mocked his opponent as shallow on the issues. He needled him and interrupted him as Trump has interrupted others in past debates. It was the kind of performance his supporters had hoped he would deliver. 
 
 Rubio wasn’t alone in challenging Trump at Thursday’s debate. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, hoping to boost his candidacy after a disappointing third-place finish in last week’s South Carolina primary, used his time to try to undermine Trump’s conservative credentials and his electability. 
 
 Trump would be a high-risk nominee, Cruz charged, one whose inconsistencies on issues and past friendships with and contributions to Democrats would leave him vulnerable in the general election. 
 
 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Top quotes from the tenth Republican presidential debate View Photos The candidates shared these comments during the CNN/Telemundo debate in Houston. Caption The candidates shared these comments during the CNN/Telemundo debate in Houston. Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 The question is whether any of it will change the minds of Republican voters ahead of two critical weeks in March in the Republican race. Though he found himself attacked from the two candidates on either side of him on the stage, Trump remained typically aggressive. “Swing for the fences,” he taunted his rivals part way through the debate. 
 
 It was that kind of night for the Republicans — a night that repeatedly descended into personal insults, with the candidates shouting over one another. 
 
 Down to five candidates on the stage and with many seeing the race narrowing to Trump, Rubio and Cruz, rarely has there been a time when the stakes were as high. From here on, every Trump victory adds to his luster as the front-runner, and Thursday was the first moment for his rivals to change perceptions of where the race could be heading. 
 
 Neither Rubio nor Cruz has relished going after Trump in the past, perhaps fearing the blowtorch counterattacks that were leveled at others who are now on the political sidelines. But by Thursday night, they had no choice. Amid a rising Republican chorus urging them to go after the front-runner, the two answered the calls. 
 
 Rubio used his opening statement to issue an implicit attack on Trump. He argued that what Republicans need is a nominee who would carry both the conservatism and the optimism of former president Ronald Reagan into the general election, rather than “a party that preys on people’s angers and fears.” 
 
 That was only the start. Within minutes, he had charged Trump with building Trump Tower with illegal immigrants, of running “a fake university” and of becoming wealthy by inheriting a fortune. 
 
 “If he hadn’t inherited $200 million, you know where Donald Trump would be right now?” Rubio asked. “Selling watches.” 
 
 “I took $1 million and I turned into $10 billion,” Trump replied. 
 
 They tangled over health care. Again borrowing from Christie’s style, Rubio noted that as Trump described his plan for replacing the Affordable Care Act, the New Yorker was repeating his points over and over. 
 
 Cruz questioned whether Trump would nominate true conservatives to the Supreme Court. He jumped on a question to Trump about releasing his taxes and pressed him to prove that there is nothing lurking in his finances that could blow up in the middle of the general election. He accused Trump of talking out of both sides of his mouth on the Middle East and Libya. 
 
 Ohio Gov. John Kasich, as is his style, tried to stay above the fray, hoping that his promise to be practical and open to compromise with Democrats in order to solve problems will win him enough votes to keep his fragile hopes alive. 
 
 Rubio’s performance Thursday will cheer those who have rallied to his side since South Carolina, despite the fact that he did not win any of the first four contests. But will that be enough to impress voters? 
 
 Super Tuesday begins a critical two-week stretch in the Republican campaign that will determine whether any of the remaining candidates can disrupt Trump’s path toward the nomination. 
 
 Super Tuesday is the biggest day on the 2016 primary and caucus calendar, with contests in 11 states and 595 delegates up for grabs. Texas, with 155 delegates, offers the single biggest prize, followed by Georgia with 76. 
 
 On March 5, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine hold their contests, and the Puerto Rico primary is the day after that. Then on March 8, Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii hold their contests. From March 5 to March 8, more than 300 delegates will be awarded. 
 
 To that point, delegates will be allocated on a proportional basis, meaning that candidates who finish relatively close to the winner will grab a share of the delegates. Beginning on March 15, however, the rules change. From there to the end of the primary season, states have the authority to award delegates on some version of a winner-take-all basis. 
 
 That makes March 15 especially important in sorting out the future of the nomination. March 15 is the second-biggest day on the calendar. Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, with a combined total of more than 350 delegates, hold primaries that day. By the end of that night, it should be clear which of the candidates, if any, has the strength and support to go up against Trump. 
 
 Those two weeks also pose individual tests for Cruz, Rubio and Kasich. Each must win his home state, at a minimum, to remain viable. 
 
 Cruz will be first in the barrel on Tuesday. Without a victory in his home state, Cruz’s Southern and Super Tuesday strategy will collapse. He was damaged by his failure to win South Carolina last weekend, and a loss in Texas probably would finish him. But his advisers have expressed confidence about his ability to win in the Lone Star State. 
 
 Rubio’s big test comes March 15 in Florida, where Trump has been leading the polls by a wide margin. But Rubio also must demonstrate his vote-getting appeal on Super Tuesday. Unlike Cruz, who was victorious in the Iowa caucuses, Rubio has not won a state, finishing third in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire, and second in South Carolina and Nevada. 
 
 His campaign has benefited financially and in endorsements from the withdrawal of former Florida governor Jeb Bush. But Rubio is under pressure to translate that into the kind of support from the voters that pushes him to victory somewhere. 
 
 Kasich has set a big goal for himself ahead of his home state of Ohio. After his second-place finish in New Hampshire, his advisers said they would plant a flag in Michigan, making it something of a must-win. 
 
 For those fearful of Trump as the party’s nominee, Thursday was supposed to be the night that the dynamic of the race began to change. Certainly Rubio and Cruz tried to make that happen, with some success. But Tuesday’s balloting will be the real first test of whether things actually are changing. ||||| Donald Trump has gotten very used to winning recently, after racking up three straight primary and caucus wins. He’s even promised to win so much that Americans will get sick of winning. 
 
 But he didn’t get a victory in Houston on Thursday. 
 
 It was Trump’s worst debate of the campaign, and the defeat came largely at the hands of Marco Rubio, who hit Trump early and often. The climactic moment arrived during a discussion of health insurance. Every candidate has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, but with what? Trump’s answer was that he’d allow the sale of insurance across state lines. Rubio pressed him: Is that all you’ve got? When Trump tried to slap back, Rubio was ready. 
 
 “He’s repeating himself!” Rubio exclaimed with a grin, echoing the very attack Chris Christie used so effectively against him just a few weeks ago. “I’m not repeating myself. I’m not repeating myself,” Trump insisted, but he was practically drowned out by the huge round of applause sweeping the hall. 
 
 It’s a wonder no one thought to accuse Trump of repetition before. As Rubio noted, Trump repeats a familiar set of slogans over and over: Make America great again. Build the wall. Win. Stop losing at trade. Force Trump away from those mantras, and he tends to get lost and confused. Of course, it’s also a wonder that no one has attacked Trump so directly before in debates, and especially that Rubio hasn’t done so. Right from the start on Thursday night, though, the Florida senator unloaded line after line of opposition research. He noted that Trump had paid $1 million to settle a court case over use of Polish illegal-immigrant labor. He pointed out that Trump is being sued for fraud over the so-called Trump University, a glorified real-estate seminar. He said that without his father’s inheritance, Trump would be "selling watches in Manhattan." 
 
 It was an incredible barrage. Only Jeb Bush had tried anything like it, and Trump easily talked over him. Unlike Bush, Rubio kept hammering, interrupting Trump and getting under his skin. And unlike Bush, who seemed deeply unhappy attacking, Rubio seemed to be having a blast slashing Trump. It all raised a rather uncomfortable question: What if Rubio had gone after Trump earlier, before Trump became the clear front-runner with Super Tuesday just days away? 
 
 Those weren’t Trump’s only bad moments. On Wednesday, Mitt Romney—remember him?—demanded that Trump release his taxes. Asked about that Thursday, Trump responded with an amazing unforced error, saying that he couldn’t yet release them because he was being audited by the IRS, adding that he’s regularly audited. It’s a fascinating admission: Why is Trump regularly audited? Is there some reason the IRS has questions about his returns? Trump was even made to look foolish by lead moderator Wolf Blitzer, who otherwise repeatedly lost control of the debate. Blitzer asked how Trump would cut the federal budget, and Trump mentioned eliminating the Department of Education and the Common Core, cutting environmental regulation, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Blitzer quickly noted that this would barely make any impact at all on federal spending. 
 
 Most of the debate was a three-way melee among Trump, Rubio, and Cruz. Trump had a few good one-liners. "I'm the only one on the stage who's hired people, period,” Trump sniped when Rubio brought up the Polish immigrant labor. “You don’t know a thing about business.” But Rubio generally got the better of Trump, while Trump had only retread insults to lob back. He kept trying to bring up Rubio’s New Hampshire meltdown, but it was a different Rubio on stage in Houston: agile, athletic, ready to improvise. Trump never saw it coming. He was generally supine and—could it be?—low energy. (Other Rubio lines were a bit less effective. He accused Trump of approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as just another transaction: “The Palestinians are not a real-estate deal." But as many a wag pointed out, resolving the conflict sort of is a real-estate deal: After all, the basic dispute is over land.) 
 
 Trump did a little better against Cruz. As he has before, Trump assailed Cruz as a liar and harped on how little Cruz’s colleagues in the Senate like him. When Hugh Hewitt, one of the moderators, offered Cruz a chance to say that Trump couldn’t be trusted to nominate Supreme Court justices, Cruz mostly passed on the attack. Yet Trump happily turned around and slammed Cruz for his advocacy for the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts, whom each called a disaster as a justice. 
 
 Rubio didn’t have a perfect night. Early on, moderator María Celeste Arrarás scored a direct hit by asking him about a statement he’d made, in Spanish, on Telemundo, where he said that DACA, President Obama’s plan to allow “DREAMers”—undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children—to stay in the U.S. must end, but that it would be unfair to end it immediately. On Thursday, he insisted he would end it on his first day in office. It was hard not to conclude that Rubio is either saying different things to different audiences or has changed his position. 
 
 This debate, like many others, remained sadly deficient on tough policy questions and follow-ups. Blitzer started off the night asking about vows by Trump and Cruz to deport all the immigrants who are illegally in the country, but he never asked either how they would execute that promise, which is uniformly considered fantasy by experts. While Rubio was right to call out Trump for having no health-care plan beyond allowing interstate insurance, there was precious little detail from any other candidate on stage, either. A lengthy discussion of “religious liberty,” mostly served to show the narrow and euphemistic way the term is deployed in Republican discourse, where it mostly applies to Christians: The candidates discussed whether bakers should have to provide cakes to gay weddings, but there was no discussion of Trump’s call to bar Muslim refugees, and perhaps other Muslims, from entering the country. 
 
 And, oh yeah, there were those two other guys on stage: John Kasich and Ben Carson. Kasich got the most attention of the two of them, occasionally jutting in to deliver a long, wonky answer, but he was largely shut out of the Trump-Rubio-Cruz fight, which isn’t a good sign for his chances going forward. Carson, never a strong debater, was a particularly spectral presence Thursday, hardly ever getting a word in edgewise and at one point begging to be attacked so he could talk. Carson did, however, manage to coin an incredible phrase when describing his litmus test for Supreme Court nominees: “The fruit salad of their life is what I will look at.” (Your guess is as good as anyone else’s.) 
 
 Will Trump’s terrible night make any difference? One rule of thumb so far has been that no matter how Trump performs during these debates, it doesn’t seem to hurt him. In fact, he’s hardly ever done well, though never this poorly. Maybe the concentrated heat of Rubio and Cruz will finally take Trump down a notch. That would be a great relief to the Republican Party establishment, but it would also be a serious indictment. If one debate is all it took, why didn’t Rubio and the rest of the party have the guts to take Trump out earlier, before he did major damage to the Republican brand? 
 
 Or maybe Trump will just keep rolling and rack up a series of victories on Tuesday. Stranger things have happened. 
 
 —David Graham 
 
 Ron Fournier Link 11:17 PM Super Tuesday voters are left to chew over two truths exposed by this Republican debate: Rubio won the battle, but Trump is redefining the war. 
 
 David A. Graham Link 11:01 PM Trump had a bad debate, but luckily for him CNN is giving him a long solo rebuttal slot in an interview with Chris Cuomo. ||||| Republican presidential candidates fought over immigration reform, health care and peace in the Middle East during the CNN/Telemundo debate in Houston on Feb. 25. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 The 10th Republican presidential debate is in the books. I watched, tweeted and took some notes. My best and worst from the night that was is below. 
 
 Winners 
 
 * Marco Rubio: This was not only Rubio's best debate performance, it was the best debate performance by any candidate in any debate so far in the 2016 election. Rubio, grasping the fact that if nothing changes in this race he — and everyone else — will lose to Donald Trump, hit Trump at every turn. He savaged Trump on using illegal immigrants to help build Trump Tower. He went after Trump for inheriting money. He hit Trump for his position on Israel and Palestine. And, most importantly, he rattled Trump during a back-and-forth over Obamacare. It reminded me of this moment from another great battle between two titans: 
 
 What Rubio's stellar performance means is that the race between now and Tuesday — and March 15 and beyond — will be cast as a two-man showdown between Trump and Rubio. That's the only chance Rubio has of winning. What I don't know is whether the punches Rubio landed will do any lasting damage to Trump. Nothing else has — yet. 
 
 * Mitt Romney: The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has been a low-profile figure in this race. No longer! First came this tweet: 
 
 Methinks the Donald doth protest too much. Show voters your back taxes, @realDonaldTrump. #WhatIsHeHiding — Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 25, 2016 
 
 Sure, Romney came under a full-frontal assault from Trump during the debate. But questions over when Trump and the other candidates will release their taxes took up a considerable amount of debate time. That demonstrates Romney is still able to drive conversation within the GOP. 
 
 * Crosstalk: There were times — lots of times — when two, three or even four candidates were trying to speak at the same time. This was crosstalk's finest hour in its unending march to make America great again. 
 
 * Fruit salad: It's delicious. And nutritious. 
 
 Losers 
 
 * Ted Cruz: Cruz watched — and I do mean watched — as Rubio turned the race into a two-man contest between him and Trump. Cruz was strangely absent from the main back-and-forths of the night. To the extent Cruz was able to get into a debate with Trump, he spent his time hitting the real estate mogul for making past donations to Democrats. Cast me as skeptical that that line of attack will work. Cruz also tried to make the electability case against Trump but found himself hoist on his petard by The Donald, who noted that the senator's polls aren't in a great place. Cruz looked like the third wheel in this debate — a bad place to be with March 1 just five days away. 
 
 Things got downright personal at the Feb. 25 GOP debate. Here are a few of the most stinging barbs thrown by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 * Donald Trump: This wasn't Trump's worst debate. In fact, it might not even be in the bottom half of his performances. He generally counterpunched admirably — particularly against Cruz. But Rubio got the better of Trump on several occasions; the senator from Florida found ways to embarrass and mock Trump, which is something no one in any previous debate has been able to do. Rubio also effectively exposed the thinness of Trump's policy solutions especially on health care. 
 
 I am under no illusion — and no Republican operative or candidate should be either — that Rubio's punches on Trump are guaranteed to slow the real estate billionaire's momentum in advance of Tuesday's primaries. But Trump didn't escape this debate unscathed and, if he can be cut, he was. 
 
 * Ben Carson/John Kasich: You could be forgiven for having forgotten that either the retired neurosurgeon or the Ohio governor were part of this debate. Carson and Kasich got almost no questions, and the ones they did get they seemed unprepared to handle. Carson somehow made a fruit salad reference (see above) when asked about Supreme Court nominees. Kasich used every question to talk about how we all need to get along. Both men felt entirely ancillary to the proceedings — as though they were engaged in a different event than the one Trump, Rubio and Cruz were participating in. Which, of course, they sort of were. 
 
 * The Shrieker: Who was this person? And why did she shriek before the candidates even finished what they were saying? Was she pro-Rubio? Pro-Trump? I have no idea. One thing I do know: She was anti-my-ears. 
 
 * My bladder: CNN went from 8:40 p.m. until 10 p.m. without a single commercial break. I like to stay hydrated. I drink water. I drink green tea. A man needs a commercial break more than every 80 minutes. Come on, man. What are we even doing out here, man? ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Todd Graham is director of debate at Southern Illinois University. His teams have won national championships for three years, and he's been recognized twice as the national debate coach of the year. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. 
 
 (CNN) Debaters should adapt to the latest circumstances, and those are quite simple for the Republicans running for President: Donald Trump's steamrolling them in this election unless his opponents either (1.) Present a better case to be President while differentiating themselves from Trump or (2.) Attack Trump in a coherent and unified way. Haphazardly attacking Trump is ineffective. 
 
 For his part, Trump only needed to keep doing what has worked in the debates. Remind us why we dislike politicians, repeat his general themes, and don't get trapped having to provide specific policy proposals. 
 
 With those considerations in mind, here are my grades for Thursday's debate: 
 
 Ted Cruz: A 
 
 Cruz was assertive and his positions more clearly explained. Plus, he went on the offensive against Trump instead of against Marco Rubio. His answers on immigration were his best in any debate, talking about faith, family and patriotism. Both he and Rubio forgot their squabbles and focused on Trump. All great strategic moves. 
 
 Plus, Cruz selected a unique theme to attack Trump. He harped on Trump's donations to Democrats time and time again. Why? Because Cruz positioned himself to be a consistent conservative and this differentiated him from Trump. Sure. But it was craftier than that. 
 
 Trump's theme in the entire election is that he's an outsider, and we can't trust politicians. By constantly reminding us that Trump throws money (and influence) at one Democrat after another, Cruz stole a little bit of that "outsider" luster away from Trump. In this debate, Trump seemed like just another player in the business-as-usual political machine. 
 
 Marco Rubio: A 
 
 Like Cruz, Rubio showed up last night. He was much stronger and more forceful. His answers on immigration, Israel and health care were all better and his presence was way stronger than in previous debates. 
 
 Indeed, he pulled his own inner Chris Christie when he forced Trump to repeat himself several times without substance. Trump tried to remind Rubio that he'd repeated himself badly in a debate five weeks ago, but Rubio exclaimed, "I saw you repeat yourself five seconds ago!" It was fascinating to see Rubio do the same thing to Trump that Christie did to him. 
 
 At times, due to their similar debating tactics, it almost felt as if Rubio and Cruz were one candidate. They presented a unified attack, two against one, one position at a time. Cruz and Rubio consistently asked Trump for more details. Rarely letting him off the hook, their interrogation was targeted at the "how" question. 
 
 The idea was to get the Republican audience thinking along with them: How would you do that Donald? How would you save the budget? How would you fix health care? How would you support Israel? How can you be tough on illegal immigration if you've hired undocumented workers yourself? How can we trust you since there's a fraud suit against Trump University? 
 
 As for the interruptions, it was as if both Cruz and Rubio decided to give Trump a taste of his own medicine. While I don't approve of interruptions in debates, it's the only thing that's worked to slow down the playground-quarrelling techniques from Trump. Use his tactics against him. 
 
 John Kasich: A- 
 
 For Kasich, the grade is based off a different set of criteria. Kasich may be positioning himself to be a vice presidential selection (and Trump recently said he'd want someone with more political experience as his running mate). But if not, he's still trying to position himself as the level headed, cheerful, nonconfrontational voice of reason. And he pulled it off nicely. He demonstrated his own strengths, continually using examples of his governorship while avoiding criticizing Trump or others. 
 
 Donald Trump: C 
 
 What I liked most about Trump was his humor. After hearing quotes from Mexican politicians attacking him about paying for the wall, Trump retorted that, "the wall just got 10 feet taller!" I had to laugh. When Hugh Hewitt asked a question referencing his own radio program, Trump responded that, "very few people listen to your radio show ... check out the ratings." And when Cruz said Trump couldn't beat Clinton, Trump fired back that he hasn't attacked Clinton but one small time, and after his attack, "they had a rough weekend between Bill and Hillary." 
 
 A sense of humor goes a long way in debates, and even though Trump was constantly challenged, he did his best to maintain his humor, even by telling Rubio and Cruz, "I know you two are embarrassed" (by the polls), "but keep swinging at me ..." 
 
 Trump's failure in this debate, which was in large part due to sustained and organized attacks from Rubio and Cruz, was that he forgot his general themes and he missed opportunities to attack Washington politicians. Only in his opening and closing did he remind us strongly that politicians couldn't get things done. More importantly, both Rubio and Cruz forced Trump, time and time again, to defend (quite unsuccessfully) his policy stances. 
 
 Ben Carson: D 
 
 I don't know what Ben Carson wanted to achieve in the debate. He's not deep on policy specifics, so he's not debating to force other candidates toward detailed positions. And Carson doesn't present a unifying thesis, so he's not a single-issue debater (such as Sanders is with campaign finance/Wall Street greed). This late in the race, trailing badly in all polls, and without a compelling theme, Carson is mostly just spinning his wheels in the debates. ||||| Senator Marco Rubio, alarmed by Donald J. Trump’s ascendancy and worried that his presidential chances were slipping away, unleashed a barrage of attacks on the real estate mogul’s business ethics, hiring practices and financial achievements in Thursday’s debate, forcefully delivering the onslaught that Republican leaders had desperately awaited. 
 
 In a series of acid exchanges, a newly pugnacious Mr. Rubio, long mocked for a robotic and restrained style, interrupted Mr. Trump, quizzed him, impersonated him, shouted over him and left him looking unsettled. It was an unfamiliar reversal of roles for the front-runner, who found himself so frequently the target of assaults from Mr. Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz that he complained they must have been a ploy for better television ratings. 
 
 From the opening moments of the debate, Mr. Rubio pounced. Deploying his own up-by-the-bootstraps biography, the Florida senator assailed Mr. Trump for hiring hundreds of foreign workers at his tony resort in Florida and passing over Americans who had applied for the same jobs. 
 
 “My mom was a maid in a hotel,” Mr. Rubio said. “And instead of hiring an American like her, you’ve brought over 1,000 people from all over the world to fill in those jobs instead.”
– The debate post-mortems have a clear theme Friday morning: Marco Rubio is the consensus winner after his relentless attacks on Donald Trump, with the big question being whether it's too late to stop the frontrunner's momentum. Some highlights: "This was not only Rubio's best debate performance. It was the best debate performance by any candidate in any debate so far in the 2016 election." So declares Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post; he thinks it's now a two-man race between Rubio and Trump. Ted Cruz also scored points for his Trump assaults, and Todd Graham at CNN gives him an A. "His answers on immigration were his best in any debate, talking about faith, family, and patriotism. Both he and Rubio forgot their squabbles and focused on Trump. All great strategic moves." "For those fearful of Trump as the party’s nominee, Thursday was supposed to be the night that the dynamic of the race began to change," writes Dan Balz at the Washington Post. "Certainly Rubio and Cruz tried to make that happen, with some success. But Tuesday’s balloting will be the real first test of whether things actually are changing." Trump generally is getting bad to mediocre reviews—the New York Times says the attacks on him resulted in a "less nimble performance"—but David A. Graham of the Atlantic thinks it was his "worst debate of the campaign." Of course, "one rule of thumb so far has been that no matter how Trump performs during these debates, it doesn’t seem to hurt him." One succinct wrap-up comes from Mary Kissel of the Wall Street Journal via Twitter: “Blitzer loses. Cruz-Rubio tag team against Trump effective, but too late? Trump took big hits. Kasich blah. Goodbye, Ben.” Click to read some of the debate's best lines.