A day after Republicans suffered a string of off-year election defeats, five of the party’s presidential hopefuls barreled through a substantive yet hostile primary debate on Wednesday, clashing over policy and with each other in a competition for second place behind the absentee frontrunner, Donald Trump.
On stage in Miami, the debate was dominated by foreign questions about the Israel-Hamas war, immigration and China. But the contenders also decried the losses in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia, warning that 2024 could end with the re-election of Joe Biden if they were unsuccessful in breaking Trump’s dominance of the Republican primary.
“We’ve become a party of losers,” said businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, noting that Republicans lost the US House in 2018, and the Senate and the White House in 2020. He decried the “red wave that never came” in 2022. And on Tuesday night, Ramaswamy said the party again “got trounced”.
With just over two months until the Iowa caucuses, which officially launch the Republican nominating contest, the window for denting Trump’s lead is closing. On Wednesday, his leading rival for the nomination, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, sharpened his case against the former president.
Taking the stage in his home state, DeSantis recalled that Trump often said “Republicans were gonna get tired of winning”.
“Well, we saw last night – I’m sick of Republicans losing,” he said, before touting his re-election rout last year, a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing midterm election for the party. “I will be a nominee that can win the election.”
Trump, who became a resident of Florida after leaving the White House, again skipped the debate and instead held a dueling rally in Hialeah, a heavily Latino Miami suburb.
Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, sought to build on her campaign’s momentum, presenting herself as in the vanguard of the next generation of Republican leaders and distinguishing herself from Trump as an unambiguous foreign policy hawk.
“The world is on fire,” Haley said. In 2016, Trump, she said, was the “right president at the right time. I don’t think he’s the right president now.”
As the candidates confronted their most immediate challenge – beating Trump in a primary – they were well into the second hour of the debate when it came time to discuss the issue that has powered Democratic wins in conservative states despite Biden’s low approval ratings: abortion.
On Tuesday, Ohio voted to enshrine a right to abortion into their state constitution, the Democrats took control of both chambers of the Virginia general assembly, and held on to the governorship in beet-red Kentucky.
When finally asked about their position on abortion, the candidates offered a range of positions underscoring the lack of consensus within the party since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina again committed to supporting a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He argued that 15 weeks was a reasonable limit, and called on Haley and DeSantis to support one, too.
DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in Florida, emphasized his support for “a culture of life” and lamented that the anti-abortion movement had been “caught flat-footed” after Roe.
Haley sidestepped Scott’s challenge, arguing that Republicans “should be honest with the American people” that they do not have the votes in the Senate to enact such a ban.
“As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said, adding that the decision to restrict or expand abortion rights should be left up to the states. “There are some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decide it.”
Trump has continued to dominate the field in Iowa and nationally, despite facing four criminal indictments and a civil fraud case involving his businesses for which he took the stand in New York this week.
“I’ll say this about Donald Trump,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, whose anti-Trump candidacy has struggled to gain traction. “Anybody who’s going to be spending the next year and a half of their life focusing on keeping themselves out of jail and courtrooms cannot lead this party or this country.”
Substantive discussion over America’s role in the world pervaded the debate, the first since Israel’s war in Gaza after the attack by Hamas that left 1,400 people dead. The candidates were largely united in their support for Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians.
It also drew some of the sharpest attacks. Ramaswamy, an isolationist, derided Haley and DeSantis as “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels” – a jab that immediately drew accusations of sexism. DeSantis ignored the barb, but Haley responded.
“They’re five-inch heels, and I don’t wear them unless you can run in them,” she said. She added: “They’re not a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”
Ramaswamy went after Haley again later in the debate, noting that her daughter was on TikTok. “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” Haley shot back, adding: “You’re just scum.”
