A tough day for the president and his party

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Washington Examiner:

A tough day for the president and his party

 

By MICHAEL BARONE • 8/10/15 12:01 AM

 

Thursday was the biggest night of the political year so far, for what happened on the stage at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena and for what happened offstage as well.

The stage was the scene of the first two Republican presidential debates, hosted by Fox News, which lasted some 200 minutes between 5 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time. What happened there did not go unnoticed. According to overnight Nielsen ratings, the two-hour prime time debate got a rating as high as the National Basketball Finals — almost triple the highest rating of a Republican debate in the 2012 cycle and more than half that of the first Obama-Romney debate that fall. It was apparently the most watched primary debate in history.