First Republican debate of the 2016 presidential election

Now that voting in the presidential primaries has begun, debates are coming fast and furious — there are four more this month. Here are the dates:

Here’s the schedule for upcoming GOP debates:

On Friday, Donald Trump said that Fox News’s Megyn Kelly had it out for him during the first Republican presidential debate. And he had a theory as to why.

“She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump told CNN. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ... wherever.”

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

“She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump said in an interview on CNN Friday night. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ... wherever.”

If it seemed like Donald Trump took more heat and burned up more opponents than anyone else on the Republican debate stage last night, it’s because it’s true.

A Vox data visualization shows Trump name-checked opponents half a dozen times and was the target of about as many himself. Compare that to Scott Walker. The mild-mannered governor of Wisconsin threw no direct punches and endured none himself.

These wild, historic numbers make it clearer than ever that the public can’t get enough of Donald Trump’s presidential bid. It’s very difficult to imagine anywhere near this amount of people tuning in so early if the controversial celebrity billionaire wasn’t in the race. He’s essentially turned the campaign into a reality show, where Americans can’t wait to see what will happen next.

Unexpectedly, the Republican Party’s effort to cut down the number of debates from the 20 in the 2012 cycle may have ended up making them even more of a media circus. In recent cycles for both parties, the debates have been important, but the sheer number made them repetitive. They were a marathon, an endurance contest, that sometimes gave short-term boosts to novelty candidates but ended up helping the most qualified and disciplined contenders in the long run.

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

But not Trump. He viewed the questions from Fox News moderators about his record and past comments as vicious personal attacks. On Twitter, he voiced his disdain for the moderators, particularly Megyn Kelly, and Frank Luntz’s debate focus group by tweeting his own thoughts and retweeting more than a dozen people who came to his defense.

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

The Wisconsin governor is generally considered Jeb Bush’s top rival for the nomination, and he looks quite impressive on paper. He’s been elected three times in a blue state, while fighting hard for conservative priorities in a way that’s impressed both the GOP’s base and its elites. It seems that all factions in the GOP would consider him an acceptable nominee (except, perhaps, wealthy financiers who support same-sex marriage).

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate 2015.

People have been avoiding noticing this out of a dual aversion to Trump’s brand of demagogic anti-immigrant politics and an excessive sense that deference is owed to the real professional politicians up on the stage.

After last night’s performance as moderators, Fox News anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace deserve a big thank you. They did a great job managing a stage of 10 candidates, Donald Trump’s antics included.

The trio of moderators had good questions about immigration and national security, the latter of which kicked off a memorable and heated exchange between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul. These were questions meant to highlight intraparty tensions, spaces where candidates who fall under the Republican umbrella disagree, and it worked.

Update: Coverage of the second 2015 Republican debate.

At National Review Online, Jim Geraghty wrote, “Marco Rubio was really, really good tonight. Shining.” Matt Continetti, the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, said Rubio was “confident, energetic, eloquent, knowledgeable, and figured out the way to handle Donald Trump.” Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard wrote, “If we were doing a sabermetric ranking of the candidates, [Rubio would] lead the field. Easily.” Three of the seven Republican strategists in the Hill’s debate roundtable picked Rubio as the debate’s winner; only one named a different candidate in the primetime debate. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

When Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Trump a question about his past treatment of women during the first GOP debate, he gave an expert seminar on a subject that every boorish misogynist executive needs to master: how to belittle and dismiss women’s discrimination claims and enable a hostile work environment.

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

Fox News’s primetime Republican debate began with an attempt to cow Donald Trump. Would he pledge to forego a third-party candidacy and endorse the eventual Republican nominee?

There’s finally a presidential candidate who fits the values, character and attitude of the Tea Party to a T — that’s “T” as in Trump.

Donald Trump’s candidacy is the apotheosis of a movement created to take down the Washington establishment. His brazen hostility toward every conceivable political institution and convention works so well because it echoes the nihilism that the Tea Party injected into the Grand Old Party.

Before the first Republican debate started, I was worried that the debate would be boring unless Scott Walker took the opportunity to go negative in a big way against Jeb Bush. Walker did not go negative in a big way against Jeb Bush. The debate was not boring. It was the least boring presidential debate I’ve ever seen, and possibly the least boring presidential debate of all time.

Update: Coverage of the second GOP debate.

Fox moderator Megyn Kelly seemed to have a pretty good way to put the screws to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Thursday night’s Republican primary debate.

Update: Coverage of CNN’s Republican debate.

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

Fox News’s Bret Baier opened up the Republican debate with one question: Who on the stage won’t pledge to run an independent campaign should he not win the GOP nomination?

The verdict of the first Republican presidential debate is in, and it is this: America is Googling Donald Trump. They were Googling Donald Trump before the debate, and they were definitely Googling him after the debate.

Update: Coverage of the second GOP debate.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee doesn’t think transgender soldiers should be allowed to serve openly in the military because the military is meant to “kill people and break things,” not serve as “a social experiment.”

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

In the first Republican presidential debate, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump about some of his previous flip-flops on several issues, including abortion, gun control, and his party affiliation.

Kelly asked, “When did you actually become a Republican?”

Update: Coverage of the second Republican debate.

“You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ slobs, and disgusting animals. … It was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Kelly asked Trump.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush got a debate question about an issue that has divided him from the rest of the Republican field: his continued support of Common Core.

Bush said he doesn’t support the federal government creating education standards for states, “directly or indirectly.” (The Common Core standards were written primarily by two groups of state-level officials, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.) “I think the states ought to create these standards,” Bush said. “If states want to opt out of Common Core” — as seven states have — “fine, make sure your standards are high.”

Donald Trump wants a border fence, or possibly a wall. (But one with a big door.) John Kasich also wants a fence.

Marco Rubio doesn’t not want a fence. But he knows that border security isn’t actually as simple as “build a fence”:

Update: Coverage of second GOP debate on CNN.

Trump’s claim #1: Nobody was talking about illegal immigration before Trump got into the race

Does Donald Trump think calling women “fat pigs, slobs, and disgusting animals” is presidential? That was the first question posed directly to the billionaire — by Fox News’s Megyn Kelly — during the first Republican presidential debate.

Update: Coverage of the second GOP debate.

Fox News’s Bret Baier opened up the Republican debate with one question: Who on the stage won’t pledge to run an independent campaign should he not win the GOP nomination?

Only one person said they wouldn’t make that pledge: Donald Trump. The billionaire said he was weighing his chances. He got booed, and he shrugged. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯