The fifth Republican presidential candidate debates have come and gone, leaving a trail of one liners and heated dust-ups in their wake.
Amid the high stakes drama were a number of head-scratching and eye-rolling moments during both the prime-time and undercard face-offs. Tuesday night’s debates, the last Republican debate of this calendar year, have been hailed as perhaps the best of the season to date. Here are just a few of the moments viewers are buzzing about today:
Lindsey Graham gets movie quote happy: Despite his consistently low standing in the polls, the South Carolina senator always seems pretty ginned up when he takes the undercard debate stage. He was particularly enthusiastic about landing a joke utilizing Sen. Ted Cruz’s appreciation for the cult comedy “The Princess Bride.” An exasperated Graham called Cruz’s position on Syria “inconceivable,” and when that got a mild laugh he added that the fictional Princess Buttercup would not approve.
The elusive “purple unicorn”: While critiquing what he perceives to be the naivete of the Obama administration and some Congressional Republicans’ approach to arming Syrian rebels, Sen. Ted Cruz dug into his fandom of fantasy fiction. He claimed the notion of “moderate” rebels was akin to the concept of a “purple unicorn.” “They never exist,” lamented Cruz. Why purple you ask? Nobody knows.
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John Kasich channels “Creed”: So far, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has differentiated himself as one of the more moderate, demure voices in the 2016 campaign. Perhaps in an effort to assert his tough guy bonafides, the governor suggested that it might be time for the U.S. to start “punching Russians in the nose.” “They’ve gotten away with too much in this world and we need to stand up against them, not just there, but also in Eastern Europe where they threaten some of our most precious allies,” he added. Kasich didn’t further elaborate on how exactly our nation should go about throwing haymakers at Russia.
Chris Christie channels “Mad Men”: In one of the many casually sexist moments in these first few GOP debates, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appeared to suggest that mothers and fathers would have a distinctly different reaction to the terrorism scare that temporarily shut down schools in Los Angeles earlier on Tuesday. “Think about the mothers who will take those children tomorrow morning to the bus stop, wondering if their children will arrive back on that bus safe and sound. Think about the fathers of Los Angeles who tomorrow will head off to work and wonder about the safety of their wives and their children,” Christie said. Turns out, women make up 40% of the workforce in California. Whoops.
Opening up the heads of children?: By now, debate watchers are used to Dr. Ben Carson making allusions to his storied career as a neurosurgeon. But his reference to opening up the heads of kids to remove tumors when asked about the possibility of unintended casualties in the fight against ISIS may have been his most awkward yet. “They’re not happy about it, believe me,” Carson said. Something tells us viewers weren’t happy about hearing that grisly analogy either.








