CLEVELAND (AP) — Before the first Republican debate of the 2016 campaign for president, there was the undercard: a match-up of seven GOP candidates who didn’t have the poll numbers to make the main event.
It was a chance for the four current and former governors, a sitting senator from a crucial early-voting state and the GOP’s only female candidate to try for the sort of hit-it-out-of-the-park performance that could vault them back into the top-tier of candidates.
Here are five takeaways from Thursday the pre-debate debate.
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PLAYING NICE
Instead of going after one another, the candidates in the pre-debate event focused who wasn’t there: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and, of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton.