Abraham Lincoln did not with the Presidency in 1860, he won it in 1858.  There were a series of seven debates with Senator Stephen Douglas.  Douglas won re-election as Senator.  Lincoln won the Presidency two years later.  Lincoln asked Douglas the following question:

“Can the people of a United States territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?”

Douglas was doomed.  He if said “no”, then he was admitting that the federal government could not stop slavery from expanding elsewhere.  That would be a fatal position in a Northern State like Illinois.  But if he said “yes”, southern Democrats would never forgive him.

Douglas said yes.  He won the election, but that answer cost him any chance at the Presidency in 1860.

During the Las Vegas debate Ted Cruz may have done the same thing to Marco Rubio.  Actually, to some extent, it may have been a self-inflicted wound.  The Republican Establishment believes that authorizing the NSA to monitor everyone’s phone some how keeps us all safe.  I personally question that.  So do a lot of other people.  Marco Rubio scored big time with the Republican establishment by bragging that he supported this.  But instead of getting defensive, Cruz pointed out, brilliantly, that if you try to investigate everyone you end up investigating no one.

That was not the only issue.  Cruz also got Rubio to double down on removing Assad.  Again, that sounds good to a lot of the Republican establishment, but Cruz has a point.  So far a lot of those “so-called friendly rebels have turned out to be Muslim Extremists.” Liberals ridiculed Cruz for saying the following:

“We keep hearing from President Obama, Hillary Clintonand Washington Republicans that they’re searching for these mythical, moderate rebels. They’re like purple unicorns. They never exist. These moderate rebels end up being jihadists.

To this rest of us this sounded a lot like the truth.

So far the pundits believe that Rubio and Cruz came out even during the exchange.  Rubio is very polished and he looked good.  But the pundits also thought that Douglas won the Lincoln – Douglas debates.  These things are almost impossible to fully comprehend as they occur.  For example, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was widely panned, by many reporters at the time.  I suspect the more people understand what Cruz said the more it will matter.

TDM