Trump, Bush, Kasich offer a gentler approach in town hall chats | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and John Kasich made final pitches to South Carolina voters in a mostly gentle, issue-filled town hall meeting.

The CNN-sponsored forum Thursday night at the University of South Carolina Law School had a very different tone from the pointed, even vicious exchanges on the campaign trail. People in the town hall audience wanted to know where the candidates stood on health care, military strategy and other issues.

There was some intrigue. Trump, the New York-based real estate magnate, dominated the political dialogue Thursday before the CNN session. His tiff with Pope Francis had dominated media coverage of the South Carolina campaign 48 hours before voters go to the polls. The pontiff had just concluded a visit to Mexico, including a stop at the border with the United States, where he prayed for those who died trying to come north. Trump has been tough on Mexican immigrants, insisting he’ll build a big wall between the two countries.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel,” the Pope said.

Trump praised the Pope at the town hall meeting. While he said, “I didn’t think it was a good thing for him to say, frankly,” and that the Pope only got the Mexican government’s view of the immigration controversy, Trump said he thought the Pope’s statement was “probably a little bit nicer statement than reported by you folks in the media.”

He went on to say he doesn’t like fighting with the Pope, and that “he’s doing a very good job.”

Trump was less charitable to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Trump is the South Carolina front-runner in polls; Cruz badly wants to win this state, with its large evangelical Christian population.

Trump noted how Cruz backers were circulating a photo-shopped picture of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and President Barack Obama shaking hands. They didn’t; their heads were imposed over someone else’s bodies.

Cruz, Trump said, is deceitful. “He holds up the Bible and lies,” Trump said.

Cruz has been blasting Trump in an ad showing how, in 1999, Trump called himself “very pro-choice” on abortion. Today, he’s opposed. Trump argued that was a long-ago position.

The anti-Cruz jabs were unusual during the two-hour, 40-minute town hall. Bush, the former governor of Florida, and Kasich, the governor of Ohio, were asked about Trump’s Pope comments at the town hall meeting.

Bush has been a sharp critic of Trump, but not this time. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to question Donald Trump’s faith,” Bush said.

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“I’m pro-Pope,” Kasich said. What’s important to remember about the pontiff, Kasich said, is that “this man has brought more sense of hope and more about the do’s in life than the don’ts.”

He took only a vague swipe at Trump. “The strength of America is not some guy or woman coming in on a white charger here to solve our problems,” Kasich said.

Bush got a jolt this week when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who Bush and his brother, the former president, had courted, decided to back Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

“I’m marking her down as neutral,” Jeb Bush joked at the forum. He insisted his campaign, now fourth in poll averages, isn’t sinking.

“I do have momentum if you look at the polls and you look at the crowd sizes of our town hall meetings,” Bush said.

Bush spoke at length about his faith and how it informs his views. “We’re now confronted with a real challenge in this country,” he said. “Can we find the ability to respect people who may not agree with us?”

Kasich’s message was that the nation needs to slow down, look around and see how other people are in pain or welcome support. “You’ve got to celebrate other wins and sometimes you’ve got to sit with them and cry,” he said.

Kasich, who has been endorsed by The State, steered a center-right course. He didn’t insist that the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, be scrapped, as some of his rivals have urged. He wants it easier for consumers to learn about quality and cost. “We don’t know how our hospitals really do and what their costs are, and we really don’t know how our doctors do or what their costs are,” he said. “It’s easier to interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls than a hospital bill,” he joked.

Bush did support repealing Obamacare, and replacing it with a different system. He would continue current policies on pre-existing conditions, and would give people a tax credit that would make it easier to afford insurance.

On foreign affairs, Kasich said that the United States should defeat the Islamic State by joining a Muslim coalition, but he would make sure to “go take care of business, and once we’ve taken care of business go home.” If elected, Kasich said, he would avoid unnecessary entanglements abroad unless the country’s national security is at risk.

“Nation-building is not a place for the U.S. military,” he said, a main foreign policy point that he has frequently emphasized since the beginning of his campaign.

Kasich also told the audience that he called former House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last year to tell them that the United States needed to support moderate rebels in Syria.

Bush also responded to a combat veteran who said he was “darn mad” with the Obama administration for “dropping the ball” on fighting and defeating Islamic State in Iraq.

“This is a tragedy of our doing,” Bush said, blaming Obama for pulling back the troops and creating circumstances that led to the creation of the Islamic State organization. “The blood of American soldiers was (...) squandered by this administration’s lack of effort.”

Bush said that when his brother, former president George W. Bush, left office, Iraq was “fragile but stable.” The candidate has been defending his brother, who joined him on the campaign trail this week, in the wake of the Feb. 13 Republican debate in which Trump called the Iraq war a mistake and accused the Bush administration of lying before the invasion.