The four remaining Republican presidential candidates gathered in Detroit today for the 11th debate of the GOP nomination fight. Here's some of the best - and worst - of the night.
Winners
Ted Cruz: The Texas Senator picked a nice moment to have his best debate of the primary season. He flashed his prosecutorial chops when making the case that Donald Trump was neither a real conservative nor someone who could win the White House for Republicans this fall. His persistent calls for Trump to release the audio tape of an off-the-record interview with the New York Times were effective and put the real estate mogul off his game a bit. Cruz also benefited from the fact that Trump and Marco Rubio went after each other hammer and tongs for the first hour of the debate, a brawl that allowed him to look like he was above the fray and magnanimous.
John Kasich: The narrowing of the presidential field quite clearly helped the Ohio governor on Thursday night. Sure he often felt like he was participating in an entirely different debate than the other three candidates. But, when he got a chance to talk Kasich's uplifting and positive message made for a welcome relief from the name-calling, interrupting and general rudeness that dominated most of the conversation on stage in Detroit. Kasich effectively made the case for why being an insider was a good thing - a very hard one to make in an election like this one - and likely won himself some votes from voters fed up with all the fighting. Did he do enough to boost himself into the top tier? No. But that simply isn't possible for Kasich given the delegate math. Still, he deserves credit for putting his best foot forward.
Fox News moderators: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace are a really good trio. They asked well-thought-out questions that anticipated - and avoided - the talking points of the candidates. I l-o-v-e-d when Wallace called up a series of fact-checks aimed at rebutting Trump's talking points on how he would handle the debt and deficit issues in the country. Ditto the video triptych that Kelly introduced showing Trump contradicting himself over and over. That's what moderators should do; force candidates off their regular schtick, make them think on their feet a bit and, in the process, show viewers who they really are.
