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Jeb leaves a vacuum. Who fills it? — If you were in Washington watching the Republican debate last night, you might have felt a small tilt in the floor, or heard the plates rattling gently in their cupboards. — That was the sound of the Republican establishment shifting …
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JustOneMinute
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Carly Fiorina is wrong about the Planned Parenthood tapes. I know because I watched them. — Carly Fiorina gave a harrowing description of the Planned Parenthood sting videos at Wednesday's Republican debate. She challenged Barack Obama to watch “a fully formed fetus on the table …
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Slate, Washington Monthly, American Prospect, Refinery29, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos, RH Reality Check, The Federalist, Washington Post, Business Insider and Mediaite


Carly Fiorina won the GOP debate, but fact checkers will have a field day — At Wednesday's CNN debate, Carly Fiorina did what no other Republican has been able to do: she stopped Donald Trump cold. — CNN's Jake Tapper provided the opening. “In an interview last week in Rolling Stone magazine …
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JustOneMinute, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Slate, Daily Kos, Hot Air, Chicago Business, Lawyers, Guns & Money and US News


No, Jeb Bush, Your Brother Did Not Keep Us Safe — Jeb looked delusional, but he wasn't alone. — GETTY JUSTIN SULLIVAN — “There's one thing I'll tell you about my brother,” said Jeb (!) Bush. “He kept us safe.” — And everybody cheered. — I ran out of patience long ago with The Great Mulligan.
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Business Insider and Eschaton

Carly's Night — From the beginning of her campaign for president, Carly Fiorina has had to deal with lowered expectations, encapsulated in a frequent question: Aren't you just running for vice president? “People ask that because I'm a woman and I'm not a politician,” she told me earlier this year.


How to Make Donald Trump Disappear — It's coming — We now know how to make Donald Trump disappear: talk policy. He simply has nothing useful to say. He'll deal with it when the time comes. He'll hash out Syria with Putin. He'll hire people. “Killers,” no doubt, as he likes to say.
Discussion:
Talking Points Memo


The rest of the field figured out how to make Trump not quite as dominant — SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Something unusual happened here Wednesday when the Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate: For the first time since he joined the race, Donald Trump wasn't the commanding presence on the stage.
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Wall Street Journal, New York Times, US News, Politico, ABC News, WIAT-TV, BuzzFeed, Guardian and Washington Post

GOP insiders: Carly crushed it — <p>Carly Fiorina nailed it in the second Republican debate.</p><p>That's the assessment of GOP insiders in a special edition of the POLITICO Caucus, our weekly survey of the top operatives, activists and strategists in Iowa and New Hampshire.
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msnbc.com, Washington Post and Mock Paper Scissors

Trumped: His 14 most memorable debate lines
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ABC News, The Hill, Weekly Standard, Scared Monkeys, Bloomberg.com news and Bloomberg Business


‘Donald Trump Met His Match in Carly Fiorina’
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International Business Times

Sound and Fury Signifying Little
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Booman Tribune and Talking Points Memo

Who Won the Second Republican Presidential Debate?
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Politico, CNN, CBS New York, Fox News Insider, New York Times and BillMoyers.com

A Trump lie: He tried to expand casino gambling in Florida
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Bloomberg Business and JustOneMinute

Candidates Use Second G.O.P. Debate to Taunt Donald Trump
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Power Line, Vox, Fox News, Outside the Beltway, Politico, The Atlantic, Guardian, Political Insider blog and Hullabaloo

Trump fails to stampede GOP herd
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Bloomberg Business, ABC News, Daily Kos and The Moderate Voice

This is the way Trump ends — SAN PEDRO, Calif. — It had all the makings of A Moment.
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Reason, Liberaland, Washington Post and Betsy's Page

‘Look in the Mirror, Fat Boy’
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Bloomberg Business, Hit & Run, Hot Air, Talking Points Memo and Wall Street Journal

Long Shadow of Donald Trump Dominates Debate He Missed
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The Hill, Hot Air, Politico and Talking Points Memo

Dems block amendment linking Iran deal to Israel — Democrats on Thursday blocked a last-ditch effort from Republicans to stop the Iran nuclear deal by linking the agreement to Israel and American prisoners. — Senators voted 53-45 on an amendment from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell …
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McCarthy, Ryan call for end to Boehner drama — <p>The only two viable potential replacements for John Boehner as speaker of the House say they back the Ohio Republican and will oppose any effort to remove him from power. But other high-ranking Republicans are testing the waters …
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Washington Post, NPR, Outside the Beltway and Bloomberg Business

GOP leaders hope Right to Life can help head off shutdown
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Erick on the Radio

Fearsome fiscal cliff looms for Congress
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Daily Kos, Bloomberg Business, Hot Air and neo-neocon

CBO: Defunding Planned Parenthood means ‘several thousand’ more births
Discussion:
Politico and LifeNews.com


Transcript: Read the Full Text of the Second Republican Debate — Eleven Republican presidential candidates met at the Reagan Library for a primetime debate on CNN. — At the debate were real estate mogul Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker …
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The Atlantic, New York Times, Right Wing Watch, NO QUARTER USA NET, Hit & Run, National Review, Informed Comment and Hot Air
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Biden-Warren in 2016? — Until now, my position regarding the 2016 campaign has been to support Hillary Clinton for president and to be extravagantly friendly toward Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his supporters, who embody the heart, soul and idealism of the Democratic Party at its best.
Discussion:
Politico
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Hillary Clinton Is Stuck In A Poll-Deflating Feedback Loop
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Washington Monthly, NewsBusters, Bloomberg View and Instapundit


More Wisconsin Emails — How investigators targeted conservative Supreme Court justices — Our liberal friends in Wisconsin are unhappy. They think someone is leaking emails that make the state's partisan campaign regulators look bad. We'll plead guilty to having sources, but the emails are news and they sure are revealing.
Discussion:
Instapundit


Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values? — IN 2006, the television comedy “The Office” aired an episode in which one of the characters, Dwight Schrute, nervously faces the prospect of delivering a speech after winning the title of top salesman of the year for his company, Dunder Mifflin.