--- title: Republican Debate: Everything Changed Without Donald Trump description: For two whole hours Thursday night, the Republican Party awoke from its 2016 fever dream. canonical: https://time.com/4199456/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-analysis/ author: Michael Scherer article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-29T06:13:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:41:30.303Z article:section: Politics og:title: Everything Changes When Republicans Debate Without Trump og:description: An evening from a parallel universe. og:url: https://time.com/4199456/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-analysis/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6471951615bd1d56/69887b320b72e3352b6e7e05/timepol-gop-debate-jan-28.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2886 og:image:height: 1623 og:image:alt: Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Everything Changes When Republicans Debate Without Trump twitter:description: An evening from a parallel universe. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6471951615bd1d56/69887b320b72e3352b6e7e05/timepol-gop-debate-jan-28.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Everything Changes When Republicans Debate Without Donald Trump > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=10e2b87c-86ac-4fa8-8e29-71421feb8bc0&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Watch The Republican Debate in Under 4 Minutes [Watch (HLS stream): Watch The Republican Debate in Under 4 Minutes](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yAWlwSjX.m3u8) (3:34)  _Published 2016-01-29. GOP Debate-012816-v1_ by [Michael Scherer](https://time.com/author/michael-scherer/) ## Michael Scherer Jan 29, 2016 6:13 AM UTC GOP Debate-012816-v1 by [Michael Scherer](https://time.com/author/michael-scherer/) ## Michael Scherer Jan 29, 2016 6:13 AM UTC For two whole hours Thursday night, the Republican Party awoke from its 2016 fever dream. There was no Donald Trump on the Fox News stage in Des Moines, not in person or even in spirit. No schoolyard taunts, no outlandish promises to forcibly move 11 million people or block entire religions from entering airports. No grim tidings for America’s future, funny facial expressions or tough guy alpha talk.  Republican presidential candidates, from left, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talk after the Republican presidential primary debate, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. Charlie Neibergall—AP It was as if the seventh Republican debate appeared suddenly, through a trick of time and space, from a doppelgänger universe, offering the country a fleeting glimpse of the election everyone expected a year ago. In this alternate reality, little was surprising or shocking. The colors were dimmer, the tones more muted. Echoes arrived of debates in cycles past, replacing the reality show set pieces of 2015\. The stage of seven split into the well-worn ruts of Republican politics, with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul serenading the “Liberty voters,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz playing to the pure-blood conservative base and a crowded pack of the party’s most accomplished establishment stars battling it out with skill and finesse for the crown of competency, experience and conviction. The political amateur Ben Carson, a former brain surgeon prone to mumbles and non-sequitur, was also on stage. But he spoke rarely, with answers that creaked under his need to deliver facts like a high-school student presenting last night’s reading before class. No one showed a sign of paying him any mind. With the regular cast and a regular script came debate exchanges that had been previously stomped on at past meetings by Trump’s outsize presence and the shock and awe it entails. A debate over immigration glossed the fantasies of a historic expulsion and a Mexico-financed wall to focus on the technical differences between a path to citizenship, a path to some other legal status or no path at all for the millions living in the country without legal documentation. The candidates threw consultant-crafted lines at each other as we have come to expect. “Throughout this campaign, you’ve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes,” Rubio told Cruz at one point, employing language that must have been employed, perhaps word-for-word, in every presidential election since Lyndon Johnson. **Read More:** [_Republicans Echo Super PAC Ads in Debate Attacks_](http://time.com/4199298/republican-debate-super-pac-ads/) The contest of machismo gave way to debates over Senate votes and the word counts in amendments. Bush, who has previously found himself addled by the incivility of his opponent, was able to suppress his stutter and successfully deliver entire sentences from his campaign’s voluminous white papers. “I will make sure that we fire the sheer incompetence inside the Department of Veterans Affairs and then we’ll give veterans a choice card so that they don’t have to travel hours and hours to get care if they want to go to their private provider,” he said, in one impressive example. Without using words like “great,” “so good” and “big league,” the contenders sorted themselves into the familiar lanes of Republican foreign policy, differing on the proper level of funding for the military and the degree of foreign ambition, but not on their resolve to keep the nation safe. Rand Paul even had space to return to his old appeal to broaden the party by reaching out to minority communities, decrying the municipal oppression of the black residents of Ferguson, Missiouri, before their city erupted in fury. “The war on drugs has disproportionately affected our African-American community, and what we need to do is make sure that the war on drugs is equal protection under the law and that we don’t unfairly incarcerate another generation of young African-American males,” he said. If there was a person who struggled under the new format, it was Cruz, who found himself for the first time without the shelter of Trump, and therefore unable to parry the same fury with a more mechanical, predictable, even Ivy League sheen that looked impressive in comparison. Instead, the Texas Senator spent the night playing defense, as the others attacked him for winning the Iowa polls. **Read More:** [_Cruz Finds Himself in Crosshairs as Trump Skips Debate_](http://time.com/4199392/republican-debate-ted-cruz-donald-trump/) For whole stretches, Cruz seemed to disappear, as if Fox News boss Roger Ailes was executing a well-worn plan to put him in his place. Then, at perhaps the most crucial moment of the debate, where body language matters as much as words, Cruz made a play to interrupt a Fox moderator, Chris Wallace, and bequest himself more time. Wallace, steely and confident, did not yield. Cruz, after awkward protestations, was forced to fold, appearing less than bold. When Cruz later whined about his treatment, Wallace pounced. “It is a debate, sir,” the moderator said, ice cold. Of course, dreams have been known to appear within dreams, and reality often feels unreal. These are times when nothing should be taken at face value, especially when televised. The truth of the seventh debate is that what took place on that stage over those two hours did not reflect the reality of either the Republican nomination fight or, at least for the moment, this country. That could be found a few miles away, where Trump had gathered his own multitudes at a separate venue in Des Moines, with his own network cameras, and a couple other candidates, in protest. The Republican frontrunner, rather than fading, has outgrown the circus he spoiled and set off on his own. When the debate ended, the fever dream returned. ## Transcript [00:00] Welcome to the seventh Republican presidential debate. [00:03] I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, [00:07] fat and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon. [ LAUGH ] [00:11] Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the [00:13] way. [ LAUGH ] He's an entertaining guy, he's the greatest [00:16] show on earth. I have not insulted Donald personally and I [00:18] don't intend to. I kind of Donald Trump, he was a little teddy [00:21] bear to me. I want to thank Everyone here for showing the [00:24] men and women of Iowa the respect, to show up and make [00:28] the case to the people of this state and people of the [00:30] country why each of us believe we would make the best [00:33] Commander- in- Chief. I've been held accountable for six [00:35] years of the Governor of New Jersey. And with a [00:37] Democratic legislature, I've gotten conservative Things [00:39] done. That is exactly what I'll do as a president of United [00:42] States. The ball collection of your phone data. The invasion [00:45] of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. I don't think [00:49] you have to give up your liberty for a fall sense of security. [00:52] We cannot fix these things in this country. The sole [00:55] security, the boarder Balancing the budget. Getting wages [00:58] to grow faster. Unless we lead as conservatives, but we [01:01] also invite people in from the other party. We need people [01:05] who think out of the box, and can solve problems. The last [01:10] four questions have been, Rand please attack Ted. Marco [01:13] please attack Ted. Chris please attack Ted. Jeb please [01:16] attack Ted. It is a debate, sir. If you guys ask [01:20] one more mean question I may have to leave the stage. [01:23] You cannot destroy ISIS with a military that's being [01:26] diminished. When I'm President we are rebuilding the U. S. [01:28] military because the world is a safer and a better place. [01:32] When America's the strongest military in the world. You [01:34] claim it is tough talk to discuss carpet bombing. It is not [01:38] tough talk. It is a different fundamental military strategy [01:41] than what we've seen from Barack Obama. We need to [01:43] arm directly to Kurds, embed our troops with the Iraqi [01:46] military, re- engage with the Sunni tribal leaders, get the [01:49] lawyers off the damn backs of the military once and for all. [01:52] Arming the allies of ISIS will make the situation worse. [01:55] Then what we really need to do is defeat ISIS, but if [01:59] you defeat Assad, what you will wind up with is a larger [02:03] and more powerful ISIS that occupies that space. If there [02:06] were someplace in this country where radical Jihadists are [02:08] planning to attack the United States, we will go after them [02:11] wherever they are, and if we capture them alive, They are [02:14] going to Guantanamo. And if you wanna defend the [02:16] country, it begins with border security, and this is where I've [02:18] had my disagreement with Senator Rubio. You can't be in [02:21] favor of defending us against Islam, radical Islam, if you're [02:24] not for border security. I will support law Law enforcement [02:27] and we will stop radical terrorist attacks in this country by [02:30] supporting out intelligence community and our law [02:32] enforcement community. We need to stop allowing political [02:36] correctness to dictate our policies. We are a nation of [02:39] immigrants. As such, everyone is welcome, from any race, [02:43] any country, any religion if they wanna be Americans. We [02:47] are not gonna round up and deport 12 million people but [02:50] we are not gonna go around handing out citizenship cards [02:52] either. Nations will have to make a choice. They can do [02:54] business with Iran or they can do business with America. [02:57] And I am very confident that they're going to choose [02:59] America before they choose the Iranian economy. If we find [03:02] out they're developing a nuclear weapon and we know [03:04] how to get to it We're gonna go take it out. What we need [03:07] to do is make sure that the war on drugs is equal protection [03:10] under the law and that we don't unfairly incarcerate [03:13] another generation of young African American males. Get [03:16] rid of Planned Parenthood funding for the United States of [03:18] America. [ APPLAUSE ] Bernie Sanders is a socialist. I [03:21] think Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for president of [03:23] Sweden. Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being the [03:26] Commander and Chief of the United States. In fact one of [03:29] her first acts as president may very well be to pardon [03:31] herself. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4199456/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-analysis/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4199456/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-analysis/"},"headline":"Everything Changes When Republicans Debate Without Donald Trump","datePublished":"2016-01-29T06:13:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-05T08:41:30.303Z","description":"For two whole hours Thursday night, the Republican Party awoke from its 2016 fever dream.","url":"https://time.com/4199456/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-analysis/","keywords":["Debates","2016 Election","Rand Paul","ted cruz","jeb bush","Donald Trump","fox news","Dr. Benjamin S. 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