Republican slugfest overshadows policy talk in debate

GREENVILLE, United States — The Republican presidential race veered into vicious personal attacks on Saturday as White House hopefuls brawled in their latest debate, with frontrunner Donald Trump and Jeb Bush locking horns in some of the campaign’s most pointed clashes to date. The showdown, the ninth of the months-long battle for the Republican nomination, began with a respectful moment of silence for iconic conservative US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia who died suddenly earlier in the day. But with a primary just one week away in South Carolina, a state where national politics often gets dragged into the mud, the debate in Greenville quickly turned nasty and divisive, with billionaire Trump, former Florida Governor Bush, and Senator Ted Cruz exchanging heated verbal blows. “You are the single biggest liar,” Trump told Cruz when the Texas senator challenged him on his previous support for liberal policies. Trump, visibly irritated, repeatedly interrupted his rivals, especially Bush, whose momentum he is seeking to blunt in a state where his dynastic family remains popular. He went after Bush on foreign policy and immigration, and lambasted Jeb’s brother former President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq as “a big fat mistake.” He even said Jeb’s mother should have been the 2016 Bush candidate instead of her son. “Jeb is so wrong,” Trump sneered, to loud boos from the audience. Bush parried back, hitting Trump’s suggestion he could work with Russia to combat Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and saying the real estate magnate gets his foreign policy advice from “the shows,” referring to weekly Sunday morning talk shows. “While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did,” Bush fumed. “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign,” Trump shot back. “Remember that.” It was an extraordinary back and forth on the national stage, with candidates often ignoring the moderators and going after each other in perhaps the most aggressive exchanges of the nine Republican debates to date. “We’re in danger of driving this into the dirt,” one of the CBS debate moderators said at one point. With the first two nomination contests in Iowa and New Hampshire under their collective belt, the candidates vying to be their party’s standardbearer are blanketing the so-called Palmetto State known for its bare-knuckle politics. Cruz won Iowa, with Trump finishing an embarrassing second after proclaiming for weeks he would win. But The Donald bounced back to win New Hampshire, and holds a substantial lead in South Carolina. The state holds its Republican primary Feb. 20, the same day Democrats vote in Nevada for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Trump, whose insurgent campaign has turned the presidential race on its head, on Friday made legal threats against his nearest rival Cruz, who was born in Canada, claiming the latter is not a “natural born citizen” and therefore unqualified to run for president. But the most memorable clashes Saturday were between Trump and Bush, who has stepped up his aggressive campaigning and criticism of Trump. John Kasich, who placed an impressive second in New Hampshire, has sought to keep his head above water in the more conservative, more evangelical South Carolina. On the debate stage he steered clear of the daggers. “I don’t want to get into all this fighting tonight because people are frankly sick of the negative campaigning,” he said. — AFP