This Republican Debate Shows Why The Other Candidates Can't Stop Trump

Thursday night's Republican debate exemplified why Donald Trump's competitors have had so much trouble stopping him: None of them have the courage to risk a sustained attack on the front-runner -- even when the issue is assault.

In the days before the debate, the news media had been suffused with stories of violence at Trump rallies. Abusive behavior has long been a fixture of Trump gatherings, my colleagues Dana Liebelson and Sam Stein noted earlier Thursday. But the story exploded this week after video emerged of a man at a Trump rally sucker-punching a protester. On Thursday, Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields published a story reporting that someone had violently yanked her arm at a Trump rally -- and a Washington Post reporter had told her it was Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager.