This GOP debate was all about timing

Everything in life is timing, right? So you have to wonder whether Marco Rubio waited too long to go after Donald Trump.
 
The senator from Florida was a revelation in the Republican presidential debate Thursday night in Houston, more than holding his own in blistering exchanges with one of New York’s best-known billionaires.
 
But will any of the blows landed by Rubio and, to slightly lesser extent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, do anything to slow down Trump? The duo might have needed the once-unwieldy field to narrow to the five candidates on the stage at the University of Houston to effectively launch their assault. But it also might have come too late. This, after all, was the 10th GOP debate.
 
Indeed, Trump later wrote off the double-barreled attack to desperation. He’s won three straight primaries and continues to lead in most polling with Super Tuesday’s 11-state delegate haul looming. And the Republican establishment is now fractured between those who are trying to figure out how to derail him and those who are rationalizing why they can live with him as the party’s standard-bearer.
 
But the GOP was united in begging both Rubio and Cruz to go after Trump instead of each other. And the fireworks started early.
 
When Rubio asked in his opening comments whether the Republican Party would be a party that preys on fear, a not-so-subtle dig at Trump, it seemed like it might be a gloves-off night. And when he charged in his first answer that Trump has changed his views on illegal immigration, of all things — and when Cruz chimed in by saying that while he was working on the immigration issue Trump was firing Dennis Rodman on “Celebrity Apprentice” — they were off to the rowdy races.
 
It was grand performance theater, appropriately delivered in an opera house. With hands flailing, voices rising, expressions contorted, their fans in the crowd egging them on, the trio traded barbs with relish. They talked over each other so much that at times it was impossible to make out what anyone was saying. CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer, who tried gamely to corral them, was like an elementary school crossing guard at the Daytona 500. No, no one stopped.
 
There was no shortage of memorable moments. Rubio brought up the many lawsuits regarding the controversial Trump University as well as Trump’s hiring of immigrants here illegally and foreign workers, and said archly that if Trump builds his proposed wall on the Mexican border the way he built Trump Towers he’d be using illegal labor.
 
Cruz said Trump was not a conservative and several times charged that because Trump has contributed to Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Harry Reid and other Democrats he can’t prosecute the case against Clinton in the fall.
 
Trump parried many of the attacks, at one point reminding viewers of Rubio’s performance in the New Hampshire debate when he wilted under New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s charge that he was little more than a scripted robot. But Rubio turned the tables when the topic was Obamacare and Trump kept saying that allowing insurance companies to cross state lines would increase competition and reduce costs. “Now HE’S repeating HIMSELF,” Rubio said, as the audience broke into huge applause. “You repeat yourself every day,” Rubio said.
 
The three men so often begged Blitzer for a chance to respond that Dr. Ben Carson delivered the line of the night when he said plaintively, “Can somebody attack me, please?”
 
Ohio Gov. John Kasich seemed equally out of place but that was to his credit, in that he came off as the only calm and experienced voice on the stage.
 
Again, will it matter? The votes on Tuesday will be the first bit of evidence as to whether any of this slows down Trump’s momentum.
 
Trump himself seemed alternately bemused and frustrated, and at one point when questioner Hugh Hewitt singled him out for another question, Trump said, “I know I’m good for ratings but this is a little ridiculous.”
 
But he neatly summed up the problem facing his challengers with a swat-down in his closing comments.  “Nobody knows politicians better than I do. They’re all talk, no action,” Trump said. “I will get it done. Politicians will never, ever get it done. And we will make America great again.”
 
Because he leads in the delegate race, Trump spoke last. So those were the debate’s final words.
 
Talk about timing.