It's not that I disagree with you guys about Fiorina's performance. She came close to dominating the debate, which is no mean feat considering each of the others candidates did pretty well themselves. The problem with her is similar to the problem with Jeb! Two strikes against each of them. With her it's Lucent and HP, with him his father and brother, both terrible presidents. Nice guys but disastrous presidents. it's not unfair to say that most of the chaos in the middle east is a direct result of their policies. If we had stayed the heck out and let the arabs sort it out on their own, we would have been a lot better off.
Carly's over the top neo-con rhetoric scares me and is not a winning message for the general election. People have had enough body bags and heroes coming home missing arms and legs, and for what? WTF exactly has it all accomplished? The fact is no company will give her another shot in the C suite, which tells me plenty.
I would have to say Trump kind of brought up the rear. He didn't handle several issues too well. He made a mistake with his comment about Fiorina's looks, even though in all honesty, she probably has depleted the botox supply for California. I thought he should have been a little tougher with Jeb! on the point about Jeb's mexican wife. For example, he could have said " I'm not attacking your wife but your amnesty support is so idiotic that I am trying to find a rationale for it."
Trumps' performance in the first debate was also underwhelming and it seemed to make zero difference.