Five Republican presidential candidates clashed on the debate stage Wednesday over Ukraine, China, abortion, and the future path of the party, while saving some of their anger for the absent frontrunner, Donald Trump.
While the competitors seemed united in their backing of Israel and its war against Hamas, tensions flared in the debate hardly two months before the all-important first votes in the White House nomination battle.
The third televised debate happened a day after Democrats grabbed key election wins in conservative and swing states, especially over abortion rights, but the perennially thorny issue was not discussed until more than 90 minutes into the two-hour event.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis voiced fury about their party’s recent political losses, while Trump’s onetime UN envoy Nikki Haley, who is enjoying growing momentum in the race, urged Americans to “find consensus” over reproductive rights.
The former president, leading in every significant Republican nomination poll, missed the Miami event and instead held a rally just a few miles away, keeping his strategy of declining to debate challengers.
The remaining candidates in a thinning field have small chance for significant breakthroughs against the populist leader of the hard-right Make America Great Again movement — even though Trump encounters numerous criminal indictments and will spend considerable time ahead of the 2024 election in courtrooms.
But DeSantis, currently polling in second, swiftly pointed out Trump’s absence and provided a glancing blow, telling viewers: “He said Republicans were going to get tired of winning. Well, we saw last night. I’m sick of Republicans losing. Trump owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the only pretender to the Republican crown willing to mount harsh attacks on Trump, delivered fresh criticism.
Christie said, “Anybody who’s going to be spending the next year and a half of their life focusing on keeping themselves out of jail and court-rooms cannot lead this party.”
Ramaswamy delivered a devastating assessment of the Republican Party’s recent performances including on Tuesday, when con-servative-leaning Ohio voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
“We’ve become a party of losers,” he fumed.
He said, “We have lost 2018, 2020, 2022 — no red wave that ever came. We got trounced last night, in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party.”
After an initially swift start to his campaign, DeSantis is struggling to become the new face for Republicans — launching himself as an equally hard-right but more youthful and scandal-free version of the 77-year-old Trump.
But he lags behind Trump by almost 45 percentage points, according to polling aggregator RealClearPolitics.
Closing in is Haley, who has aided from DeSantis’s fall and promotes a more centrist view on abortion.
While describing herself as “unapologetically pro-life”, Haley said it was unrealistic to seek a nationwide ban on abortion.
“So let’s find consensus” on ending late-term abortions and mak-ing contraception more available, she said.
She said, “Let’s make sure that none of these state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion.”
In the foreign policy discussion, all five displayed unconditional backing for Israel.
Haley stated she would “finish” Hamas and that “the last thing we need to do is to tell Israel what to do” in its war.
Fireworks flared between Haley and Ramaswamy who, in a bid to denounce the party establishment, branded Haley “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels,” referring to the Republi-can former vice president.
At one point Haley called Ramaswamy “scum” for citing her daughter as the candidates rowed over TikTok.
Trump declared the debates, at his rally in Hialeah, “not watchable,” and sought to present himself as a protective commander-in-chief.
He told his supporters, “I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe, I kept Ukraine safe, and I kept the world safe. Israel, Ukraine would have never happened under the Trump administration.”
Ramaswamy denounced Ukraine as “not a paragon of democracy,” and said the country has “celebrated a Nazi” in its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who is Jewish. His position gained denunciations from Haley and Christie, who said US should support Ukraine.
The Republican primaries kick off in Iowa on January 15. The eventual nominee is expected to face President Joe Biden in next November’s presidential election.
