Saturday night’s Republican debate started with a sober moment of silence for the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.
About ten minutes later all hell broke loose as the CBS GOP Debate looked more like WWE or even MMA. It was the wildest and most rowdy debate yet and there were plenty of fireworks with Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio all with loud and raucous exchanges.
Trump shouted about how much of a liar Cruz was. Then Cruz and Rubio yelled at each other about speaking Spanish. Bush and Trump got into a huge fight about 9/11 and some other stuff.
Meanwhile, crowed cheered, booed and acted more like a wrestling group. We were witness to a knockdown drag-out fight. The father figure John Kasich, over in one corner, hemmed and hawed about the fighting, but the audience was apparently there for a WWE match.
Ratings wise CBS got the highest rated debate thus far in 2016. The network averaged a 9.3 household rating in Nielsen’s metered markets, surpassing the 8.9 rating for last Saturday’s Republican debate on ABC. The other GOP debates so far this year averaged a 7.4 rating (on Fox Business in mid January) and a 8.4 rating (on Fox News in late January).
For comparison’s sake, Thursday’s Democratic match-up on PBS and CNN had a combined 6.3 rating.
