By STEVE PEOPLES and NICHOLAS RICCARDI (Associated Press)
With the Iowa caucuses rapidly approaching, a shrinking field of Republican White House hopefuls gathered Wednesday in Alabama for the fourth presidential debate.
As usual, former President Donald Trump, who is dominating the GOP primary, didn’t appear. Instead, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continued their effort to gain a sliver of the spotlight in the race.
Here are some takeaways from the final primary debate of 2023.
Nikki Haley was under attack from the opening seconds of the debate. And it didn’t let up for almost 20 minutes, a clear reminder that the former United Nations ambassador’s opponents see her as a growing threat in the race.
DeSantis took the opening shot as he answered the debate’s opening question, which was about his struggling campaign.
“You have other candidates up here, like Nikki Haley, she caves every time the left comes after her,” DeSantis said, casting himself as a fighter.
The Florida governor then seized on Haley’s recent support from Wall Street and at least one major Democratic donor. Ramaswamy soon joined in, highlighting the personal wealth Haley accumulated since leaving the public office.
“That math doesn’t add up,” Ramaswamy charged. “It adds up to the fact you’re corrupt.” Minutes later, Ramaswamy called Haley a fascist.
Haley defended herself aggressively. But as the political adage goes, if you’re explaining, you’re probably losing.
“I love all the attention, fellas, thank you,” she said.
And she drew some applause from the crowd when she pushed back against the criticism of her political donations.
“In terms of these donors that are supporting me, they’re just jealous. They wish they were supporting them,” she said.
Christie has faced questions about why he’s not dropping his struggling campaign and backing Haley, who shares many of his more moderate views. While he’s not showing any sign of leaving soon, he took the opportunity to defend Haley, particularly from Ramaswamy’s heated critiques.
“This is a smart, accomplished woman,” Christie told Ramaswamy during an animated exchange. “You should stop insulting her.”
The front-runner in the Republican primary has no end of vulnerabilities. He faces 91 criminal charges and just the night before declined to say he wouldn’t act as an authoritarian is he returns to the White House. But, as has been the pattern, Trump was barely mentioned Wednesday. The candidates trained their fire on each other instead — and particularly on Ramaswamy.
The 38-year-old political novice and pharmaceutical entrepreneur has specialized in grating, personal attacks that his rivals just can’t bring themselves to ignore. At the first debate he dismissed everyone as corrupt. At the last debate he insulted Haley’s daughter, prompting her to call him “scum.” On Wednesday, he challenged Haley to name three Ukrainian provinces that he claimed his 3-year-old could identify, and Christie exploded.
Minutes earlier, Christie had bemoaned the lack of focus on Trump. “This is a guy who just said last week he wants to use the Department of Justice to go after his enemies when he gets in there,” Christie said. But moderator Megyn Kelly cut him off, saying they’d get to the former president later. The next time Christie was heard from, he was scolding Ramaswamy for his personal attack on Haley.
“All he knows how to do is insult good people who have committed their lives to public service,” Christie said.
Minutes later, Haley took an unusual swing at Trump for failing to go further than simple trade actions against China. But DeSantis jumped in, attacking Haley for her relationship with China. The two Republicans began snapping at each other, leaving Trump unmentioned.
Again, it went just as Trump would hope — the candidates fought each other rather than him.
For the past seven months, the political world has watched a sort of Bizarro primary unfold — a number of Republican politicians have insisted they will become the next president while the last one, Trump, leaves them in the dust.
For those not in the know, Bizarro was a Superman character who came from a world where everything was scrambled. It’s been hard to escape that upside-down feeling as, every month, there’s another debate that Trump skips where no one does anything to change the trajectory of the race.
Wednesday night was an example. The debate was on NewsNation, a little-viewed upstart cable channel. The debate also aired on CW stations — but only in the eastern and central time zones.
Indeed, one big question was whether the debate’s ratings would be surpassed by those of DeSantis’ faceoff with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on Fox News last week. The Republican National Committee is expected to soon announce whether it’ll allow further unsanctioned debates. At least one more debate is expected before the Jan. 15 Iowa Caucus.
Perhaps the ultimate Bizarro twist would be if these confrontations mattered in the presidential election. You can never tell when something unexpected might happen in politics. But the time for these debates to matter, if it ever existed, is rapidly running out.
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