Draw
Cruz delivered a dangerous blow, but Trump was able to recover
Trump won.
Had Cruz not made the comment he made about Trump's "New York Values", he would have come away the victor, but Cruz snatched defeat from the jaws of victory doing that. He committed a "gaffe". Trump, on the other hand, is not someone who commits "gaffes", because when he says it, it's not a "gaffe", it's Trump telling it like it is.
One of the illuminating aspects of this debate is that for all of Nikki Haley's pontificating, Trump is NOT the angriest candidate on the stage. Listen to Cruz, Rubio, and Christie, and you hear nothing but anger. And it's not the kind of "righteous anger" Trump projects over issues that are important to his following; it's the anger that comes from the frustration at obstacles to their own ambitions. Rubio comes off as angry because he's risked his entire political career, and it's not working out. Christie's angry because he's contemptuous of others, but has to puff up his resume to impress folks, and because he's the bully that far too many career prosecutors are. Cruz is angry because he's a narcissist in ways that Trump could never be. (Cruz's response to the NYT's article on his Goldman-Sachs loan and Laurence Tribe's opinions on Constitutional Law came off as the responses of a sociopathic kid complaining that the other kids didn't like him and wanted to get him in trouble.) Trump's not angry in that way because he doesn't need to be President and has a life beyond political ambitions. The anger that manifests in Cruz, Rubio, and Christie ought to give folks pause in considering what kind of President they would actually be.
Poll
