Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley blast each other in CNN-hosted debate while Fox fetes Trump

Ron DeSan­tis and Nik­ki Haley trashed each oth­er, trad­ed talk­ing points, and took issue with fron­trun­ner Don­ald Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 elec­tion tonight, dur­ing a fero­cious debate staged in Des Moines five days before Iowa’s Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial caucuses.

The stakes in this Repub­li­can brawl could not have been higher.

Either DeSan­tis or Haley will sur­vive the Iowa and New Hamp­shire bat­tle­grounds to take on Trump. The oth­er will be rel­e­gat­ed to polit­i­cal Palookaville.

The result saw fire con­cen­trat­ed on each other.

Pres­i­dent Biden was not denounced until near­ly nine­ty min­utes into the debate, which was tele­cast on CNN. Exchanges were relent­less­ly nasty.

Nei­ther can­di­date came across as the least bit likeable.

In DeSan­tis’ words, Haley is a “mealy-mouthed” politi­cian who “caves” to the left, whose foot-in-the-mouth gaffes amount to “bal­lis­tic podiatry”.

In turn, Haley made no few­er than four­teen ref­er­ences to her DeSantisLies.com web­site and mocked him for blow­ing through $150 mil­lion in a cam­paign that has gone down­hill. “If he can’t han­dle the finan­cial parts of a cam­paign, how is he going to han­dle the econ­o­my when it comes to the White House?” she asked.

The can­di­dates had sub­stan­tive clash­es. Haley said she would raise the retire­ment age for Social Secu­ri­ty “to reflect what life expectan­cy should be.” To which DeSan­tis replied: “I don’t see how you can raise the retire­ment age when our life expectan­cy is col­laps­ing in this coun­try. That’s a huge prob­lem in itself.”

“You would cut Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits for sev­en­ty-year-olds while you pay the pen­sions of Ukrain­ian bureau­crats,” DeSan­tis charged.

Haley respond­ed by again mock­ing DeSan­tis’ cam­paign, say­ing: “You’re so des­per­ate, Ron, you’re just so desperate.”

Both can­di­dates were selec­tive­ly tough on Trump. They argued that the ex-pres­i­dent would take bag­gage into the Novem­ber elec­tion. They refrained from call­ing him an insur­rec­tion­ist although DeSan­tis said Trump engages in “word vom­it.” Restraint was under­stand­able. DeSan­tis used a Trump endorse­ment to win his 2018 Flori­da guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­ma­ry. Haley was gov­er­nor of South Car­oli­na when plucked by Trump to become Unit­ed Nations ambassador.

DeSan­tis pre­dict­ed that Trump would lose his defense claim that he is immune for crim­i­nal actions for actions on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021.

“What are we going to do as Repub­li­cans if Trump is the nom­i­nee” (and is con­vict­ed before the Novem­ber elec­tion) asked the Flori­da gov­er­nor. “If Trump is the nom­i­nee, it’s going to be about Jan­u­ary 6, legal issues, crim­i­nal tri­als.” And he added, “The Democ­rats with the media would love to run with that.”

“What hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 6th was a ter­ri­ble day,” said Haley. “Trump will have to answer for it. Trump will have to answer for it.” She also debunked the ex-pres­i­den­t’s false claims of vot­er fraud, say­ing: “That elec­tion, Trump lost it. Biden won that elec­tion.” And when it comes to Trump’s gov­ern­ing style, said Haley: “When it goes to Don­ald Trump, we go through four more years of chaos.”

The Repub­li­cans’ grow­ing split on aid to Ukraine was reflect­ed in the debate. Haley is the hawk. She argued that Chi­na would be encour­aged with a Russ­ian vic­to­ry. “Dic­ta­tors always do what they say they’re gonna do,” she argued. “This is about pre­vent­ing war.” (Chi­na’s Pres­i­dent Xi has late­ly deliv­ered aggres­sive sound­ings about Taiwan.)

“We need to find a way to end this,” DeSan­tis said of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war. He fault­ed that Haley “does­n’t artic­u­late how this comes to an end.” The Flori­da gov­er­nor repeat­ed­ly tried to depict his foe as an inter­na­tion­al­ist – a mor­tal sin in Repub­li­can cir­cles. Said DeSan­tis: “You can take the ambas­sador out of the Unit­ed Nations, but you can’t take the Unit­ed Nations out of the ambassador.”

The MAGA-era Repub­li­cans have seized on a curi­ous bun­dle of issues of late, which was reflect­ed in tonight’s debate. There was a curi­ous amount of indif­fer­ence to cli­mate dam­age, even though ris­ing sea lev­els threat­en the state of which DeSan­tis is gov­er­nor. “On day num­ber one, we will take Biden’s Green New Deal and throw it in the trash can,” DeSan­tis said in the debate. Not to be out­done, Haley promised: “We’ll roll back all of Biden’s green subsidies.”

Amer­i­ca, as a coun­try, has been built by immi­grants and has served as a home for refugees. Many nowa­days are flee­ing a social­ist regime in Venezuela. They were promised no mer­cy last night. What to do with the eleven mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants in the Unit­ed States? “We have to deport them,” said Haley. “That is actu­al­ly what will get them to stop com­ing, is when they do real­ize they get to the wall, and they real­ize they have to turn around and go back.”

DeSan­tis took aim at those who have fled to the Unit­ed States and those who help them. “We’re going to crack down on sanc­tu­ary states and sanc­tu­ary cities,” he promised. He pledged that the “num­ber of peo­ple that will be amnestied when I’m pres­i­dent is zero.”

As well, no Repub­li­can gath­er­ing goes by these days with­out attacks on trans­gen­der Amer­i­cans. DeSan­tis was ready to push the hot but­tons, say­ing: “I have always fought to pro­tect kids. I have ways said that boys need to go to boys’ bath­rooms, girls need to go to girls’ bath­rooms, that we should­n’t have any gen­der tran­si­tions before the age of eighteen.”

The DeSan­tis-Haley slugfest had com­pe­ti­tion. While the brawl was under­way on CNN, Fox News pro­duced a com­pet­ing card. A spe­cial billed as a “town hall” saw Don­ald Trump bask in adu­la­tion with Fox per­son­al­i­ties ask­ing soft­ball questions.