Rubio and Cruz try frantically to knock Trump down, but it may be too much, too late

Thursday night’s debate could be summed up in a few words: “loud, unintelligible crosstalk.” Both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz had obviously decided that this was the night to launch an all-out assault on front-runner Donald Trump, which on several occasions led to both Rubio and Cruz shouting a series of arguments against him at the same time, with Trump often yelling back over them. This strategy had one serious problem:

By dropping so many attacks at once, Rubio and Cruz also make it difficult to focus on any one issue in four days, giving Trump an opportunity to regain control of the conversation. We’ll never know what might have happened if they had doled out bits of opposition research over months and months instead and litigated each topic one at a time.

Shoot, you often couldn’t even hear any given attack well enough to know what it was about. That didn’t stop Rubio from ending every exchange with a satisfied smirk—a “hey, look, I didn’t screw up this time” expression he needs to learn to tamp down on. But even if the attacks had been doled out more judiciously, and with less juvenile smirking, Trump just isn’t vulnerable in the ways candidates traditionally are. If he was, he would have been weakened coming out of the previous debate. And while Trump doesn't fare well with fact-checkers, neither does Rubio. They could get into endless “you lied about this” back-and-forths and both be right at least 80 percent of the time.

For his part, Trump came out of the debate ready to push back in classic Trump fashion (and CNN gave him plenty of time to do so in a one-on-one interview). Having said during the debate that he couldn’t release his tax returns because he’s being audited—what a great defense against the idea that there might be something questionable in your taxes!—Trump claimed, after the debate, that the IRS may be targeting him because he’s a “strong Christian.” Ludicrous on its face, but you can’t discount that claim appealing to some of his supporters.

And more importantly, Trump didn’t seem rattled. He was as confident and Trumpish as ever. By Friday morning, he was tweeting that Rubio is a “lightweight” and a “choker”—presumably previews of a lot more to come.

This debate was one more reminder that, with Trump, the regular rules don’t apply. Maybe the combined Cruz-Rubio onslaught will be able to knock him down some, but after watching Trump survive so many campaign moments that were supposed to be the end of him, I sure wouldn’t bet on it being this one.