Rubio was third debate’s biggest winner

For those who missed the early night Republican debate between Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.), former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), former Gov. George Pataki (N.Y.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Graham wiped out the other three. Perhaps enough people saw Graham to move him up a bit in the polls.

As for the main event, just as Dr. Ben Carson races past Donald Trump in Iowa and in a respected national poll, he stood in the middle of the other Republican presidential candidates in Boulder, Colo., and fell flat on his face stumbling over what he calls his tax reform.

{mosads}Trump looked like a deer caught in headlights when he denied calling Florida Sen. Marco Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal [s]enator.” He challenged the CNBC moderator about that statement, claiming that he had never said it. Later, she threw his statement back in his face, because it came from his own website. But nothing embarrasses Trump — even when he is caught lying.

Carly Fiorina sounded great and on the subject of her tenure at Hewlett-Packard, she noted that NASDAQ dropped 80 percent during her time at HP and took 15 years to recover; Hewlett-Packard didn’t take that long. Ohio Gov. John Kasich sounded angry, but accomplished, as did Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, especially when he landed a terrific overhand right to the totally incompetent CNBC moderators. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did well because he ran against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and for Social Security reforms that will save it from its projected demise. The crowd screamed when he challenged the moderators for bringing up fantasy football. He stated that we have real problems and fantasy football isn’t one of them.

The two biggest losers of the night were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with his position against means-testing for Social Security, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, with his position against the new budget plan since it increases military spending.

The biggest winner has to be Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. He easily handled former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s attack in which he referenced the call for Rubio’s resignation by the liberal (Broward County, Fla.) Sun Sentinel newspaper. Rubio was obviously well-prepared and smoothly pointed out that the same newspaper didn’t demand the resignation of senators it had supported in previous runs for the presidency. He pointed out that Bush didn’t complain when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) missed votes when he ran for president in 2008.

That moment buried Bush.

Rubio went on to defend his position on high-tech immigrant work visas and that caused Trump to throw out a new position on H1B visas. On his website, Trump criticized Rubio for wanting three times more H1B visas — the reason why Trump called him “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal [s]enator” — but contradicted himself in the debate and came out 100 percent for the visa program.

He can’t have it both ways.

Rubio really turned on the audience when he took up Trump’s feeble attack on political money super-PACs and landed a killer blow on the mainstream media by attacking it for ignoring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s admission-by-silence that she lied to the American people about who attacked our facilities in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 and killed four Americans. Rubio flatly cut through the bull and called Hillary Clinton a liar. Rubio was right and the audience knew that his charge that the mainstream media is a pro-Clinton super-PAC is correct. The 30-second television/Internet attack ads against Clinton write themselves.

If Rubio is on the GOP ticket, the other big loser of the debate in Boulder was Hillary Clinton.

Contreras formerly wrote for Creators Syndicate and the New American News Service of The New York Times Syndicate.