http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/us/politics/confrontation-is-avoided-in-forum-for-republican-presidential-candidates.html?ref=politics&_r=1Uneven Performances in Trump-less Republican Forum
By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHAEL BARBAROAUG. 3, 2015
Jeb Bush stumbled through a familiar question about his brother and father, struggling for the right words as he cracked a joke about duking it out with anyone who questioned the legacy of his aging dad.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey awkwardly said aloud what many have been wondering about his candidacy: “Am I washed up?”
And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina reached back to the 1990s to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton’s credibility by dredging up her husband’s dishonesty about a sexual affair.
Mischievously promising to translate “Clinton-speak” for the audience, Mr. Graham explained, “When Bill says, ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman,’ he did.”
After weeks of preparing for a smash-mouth debate with Donald J. Trump, 14 Republican candidates found themselves instead Trump-less but sandwiched into a constricting format on Monday night, delivering strikingly uneven performances just days before the first big test of the presidential primary contest.
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