well, Fox seems to believe that theory, as they tried very very hard to get him out of the race in that debate, he actually got tough and well researched questions, while the others got off easy in contrast - and that "who won't swear he won't go 3rd party" opening bit was 100% to either get Trump into line or show him up as traitorous to the GOP either at the debate or later on

He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Fox News (including one of the moderators, Chris Wallace) have been portraying Rand Paul as a "candidacy in decline" in the run up to the debate. Think about it, if Rand didn't interject when he did, how much screen time would he have got? A question on gay marriage and a closing statement?

He knows their gameplan by watching what they did to Ron Paul in the last election. Yeah, he meets the criteria to let him on stage, so they let him on. But, for the most part, they will just ignore him unless he does what he did today.

He comes off as "unpresidential" but at least he gets air time. Thanks to his spat with Christie over the Bill of Rights, his name was even mentioned in the post-debate analysis. Ron Paul never got that, and I very much doubt Rand would have got that if he played by their rules.

I think that his candidacy is like the Newt Gingrich and Santorum candidancies from 2012. They got into the race simply to increase name recognition. A lot of Trumps' "$10bn net worth" (which Forbes heavily disputes) comes from his name and his brand. Once he saw how well he was doing in the polls, then he probably got some aspirations in his head about actually becoming President.

He's a greedy man, and when he saw those numbers, that's probably when he started thinking about a third party run.

Fox doesn't like trump because he's not an establishment candidate. He's polling too highly to ignore him, like they do Paul, so instead they attack him.

I'm willing to bet that Fox does better out of a democrat win, anyways. Fox News has done gangbusters the whole of Obama's presidency. They literally wipe the floor with their competitors, over 50% of cable news marketshare (including the young people demographic), in fact one of the top channels overall, bested only by the likes of ESPN.

Nah, if Trump becomes President, UST's will skyrocket so high that the US Gov't wouldn't be able finance such a war.

It's pretty crackpot but it's also fun to believe.

Well, I finally got some time to look over the debate, so here are my thoughts.

Rubio looked really good. Excellent speaker, had good answers. I liked a lot of what he had to say.

Christie was good too. I liked his exchange with Paul, showed some fire and passion that is usually absent from presidential politics (that goes for Paul as well, but he seemed a little to aggressive)

Paul stuck to his guns, showed some fire, but was in full on attack mode. I would like to see more positive ideas from him...

Bush was terrible. He just looked so unprepared, which is ridiculous for somebody in his position. How in the hell did he get people to give him over a hundred mil?

Walker was boring. Also, I really didn't like a lot of what he said either... And his abortion answer was kinda creepy. He definitely did a good job of convincing me not to support him.

Trump is disaster, which I think most people already know, so moving on...

Everybody else didn't leave much of an impression, they were never going to get my support anyway, so it's probably good that they didn't stand out. I haven't seen the earlier debate, but evidently Fiorina stood out as a big winner. That surprises me quite a bit. If her polling picks up I might have to do more research on her. Up to now she always seemed like a nothing candidate to me...

False

The Drudge Report and TIME have Trump winning  the GOP Presidential Debate at 45% and 47% respectively.  The second highest candidate is Ted Cruz at 14% in the Drudge Report or Carson/Rubio at 11% in the TIME poll.  Based on those polls, Trump won by a clear landslide.  I respect your opinion, but you cannot speak for "most people".

Winning a debate and being a disaster are very different things.  It boggles my mind that anybody can support trump just because he plays to the mob.  I would imagine any rational person who did an ounce of research would quickly discover that he is a terrible and extremely flawed candidate...