joined by cnn political commentator and host "the ben ferguson show" ben ferguson and the women's forum sabrina schaffer. welcome to both of you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning. so, ben, this morning marco rubio's message seemed honed. i mean, he got it down to, i don't know, very succinct about it, now calling donald trump a con artist and leaving it at that mostly. effective? >> finally they're figuring out how to deal with donald trump, is the way i look at it. like, hey, the one-liner is okay. you need to define him as a candidate the way that donald trump has defined everyone else as a candidate. that's what you saw last night onstage and worked well for not only marco rubio a boost in florida but also ted cruz as well, because they finally started fighting fire with fire and started saying, hey, you come after us and call us liars, consistently, well, let's look at your record. and they also scored big points on his tax returns. so a very interesting night, not what most are used to seeing during a debate. >> and sabrina, at times trump appeared flustered, at ti

with me ben ferguson and david gergen. welcome to both of you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> ben, is this a good thing that jeb bush is doing? >> i think it is. i think he should have done it a long time ago. the way that republicans and conservatives look at george bush 43, they like him and understand how much of a president he was for them, specifically looking at what barack obama has done over the last eight years. i don't think that jeb's campaign was smart early on. they should have em wrased the legacy. they tried to make him his own unique candidate. i understand the reasoning, but ultimately bringing out in and out only his mom but his brother is a smart move in south carolina. and i also think the attacks the other night by donald trump were really -- it was an emotional attack. it was a bad decision, a bad move to blame george bush for 9/11 and to say that he's a liar. i don't think that connects well with south carolina voters. >> but, david, the iraq war is considered, even among republicans, a mistake