CNN: Trump ‘Pushed the Boundaries of Acceptability’ for GOP in Debate

BALDWIN: “Listen, all this talk about losers and idiots. And to your point, you know, getting into the debate, we kept talking about that would be this, you know, Rubio/Bush fight, and then it would be the Cruz/Trump. But then you have this back and forth. Whatever this is truly over deep down, this, you know, Trump v. Bush. And Trump went there over and over again when Jeb Bush was, you know, speaking about his big brother, Bush 43, and Trump doubled down on the Sunday shows just yesterday morning. Ron, I want you to hear this.”
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TRUMP: "When Jeb gets up and says we were safe under his brother, we weren’t safe. First of all, his brother got us into the war in Iraq, which is one of the worst catastrophes ever. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The World Trade Center came down during his reign. So you can’t say that we were safe under his reign when the World Trade Center comes down, and the CIA said something like that was going to happen.”
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BALDWIN: “I want your thoughts, Ron, on the attack there, which is we’ve heard it before in a debate. But also, we also know that President George W. Bush will be out in South Carolina. Do you think he defends his legacy, faces that today?”
BROWNSTEIN: "Yes, I think he does. Look, I mean, I agree with Errol. Part of this is that these guys have been debating for a long time. There’s a lot of personal animosity here. Beyond that, Donald Trump has effectively used Jeb Bush as his foil, as kind of the embodiment of the establishment that he claims to be overthrowing. But overall, in this debate, Trump was as kind of unbound as we have seen him in any debate. And in that sense, he gave more ammunition to people who don’t like him, I think, than any other point. He was as intemperate, unpresidential, belligerent and kind of iconoclastic in denouncing Bush in language usually heard from Democrats, as we’ve seen. And I think that makes this a very revealing moment. Because if he can hold his piece of the coalition, you know, other Republican electoral coalition after this, it is really an indication of how deep that connection is, how difficult it is to shake. It still has the issue of whether he can grow as the race continues to narrow. But he really pushed, I think, kind of the boundaries of acceptability for a Republican. If he holds it after this, I think that’s going to be a big statement.”