Just days away from the Iowa caucuses, when the first voters will make their picks for a Republican presidential nominee, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis exchanged bitter barbs and often circuitous criticisms in a debate that yielded few memorable points.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump carried on as usual in a televised Fox News town hall, comfortable in his spot as the top candidate.
Thanks for following along. And stay tuned for more updates and analysis across the Guardian.
Closing thoughts from each candidate are …
“We can’t run under a banner of pale pastels of warmed-over corporatism, the likes of which is practice by Nikki Haley,” said Ron DeSantis, trying once again to make “pale pastels” stick as an insult.
“We can’t go through four more years of chaos,” said Haley. Though her real catch-phrase tonight was “Desantislies.com”.
A question about climate change, and what each candidate is willing to do about it, has – as expected – yielded little useful information.
DeSantis promised to tear up the “Biden’s green new deal” while Haley said she opposed “extremes” in policy and transitioned the conversation over to the topic of crime.
Last summer, during the first Republican presidential debate, a pointed question from a young activist elicited slightly more interesting results. Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis, asked candidates what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy. None of the candidates at that time raised their hands to affirm that climate change was real.
Demonstrating a careful balancing act, DeSantis both defends and critiques Trump, saying that the former president is being wrongly prosecuted but also, “if Trump is the nominee, it is going to be about Jan 6”.
Haley, meanwhile, said that no president should be immune from all prosecution, but as she tends to do, cast her self as a leader who could restore civility after too much “chaos” surrounding Trump.
With Chris Christie out of the running, there’s no one where willing to overtly or forcefully take down Trump. The resulting debate has been an odd, largely disengaging slog for for a silver medal.
Meanwhile, on the debate stage, abortion has just come up.
And DeSantis has started by questioning whether Trump and Haley are adequately pro-life. But he also mentioned that Republicans need to do a better job of highlighting support for mothers.
“Republicans need to do a better job of lifting up folks who are having children,” he said. “It’s very difficult to raise kids in this environment. You need to help with medical care, you need to help with affordability and we need to help with education choice. You got to be pro life for the whole life.”
In an implicit acknowledgment about how extreme anti-abortion restrictions are alienating voters, he claimed that abortion opponents do not support criminalizing women. That’s not quite right, as the Guardian has reported. Bills in state legislatures have proposed prosecuting women for seeking abortion care.
Haley, meanwhile, said of Trump and DeSantis: “These fellas don’t know how to talk about abortion.
“We’re not going to play politics with this issue any more. We’re going to treat it like the respectful issue that it is and the tropes that you want,” she said.
Over at the Trump town hall, the former president is taking credit for ending the right to abortion.
That’s a notable stance for the GOP frontrunner, at a time when it’s become increasingly clear that extreme anti-abortion policies are alienating voters. More than a dozen states could ultimately vote on abortion in 2024. And voters have already enshrined rights to abortion in state constitutions in Ohio, Arizona and Florida.
My colleague Lauren Gambino reported recently:
The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade delivered Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation. But in the year and a half since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling has also become one of their biggest political vulnerabilities.
Over the last 18 months, voters have favored abortion rights in seven consecutive ballot measures, including in conservative states. Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections while Democrats scored off-year election wins in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Virginia – results that again emphasized the enduring power of abortion rights.
“With abortion, there’s really a kind of catch-22 for Republicans,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis and a leading expert on the history of abortion in the US. “On the one hand, you have a lot of base Republican voters who really care about opposing abortion and on the other you have a huge group of something like 70% of Americans who don’t like abortion bans.”
The crossfire has gotten away from the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, struggling to rein in DeSantis shouting over Haley.
“I think I hit a nerve,” Haley said.
Over on Fox News, which is airing the Trump town hall, the former president was pressed on his recent warning that “it’ll be bedlam in the country” if he loses the election.
Co-host Bret Baier asked: “Can you say tonight that political violence is never acceptable?”
Trump replied: “Well, of course that’s right. And of course, I’m the one that had very little of it.”
Later Trump offered some idle speculation on the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. “I think it was done out of incompetence,” he said, “I believe that a scientist went out, said hello to his girlfriend, and that was the end of that. She died and then people started dying all over the place.”
After a short break, we’re on to the issue of Ron DeSantis’s battle with Disney, following the company’s condemnation of Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.
DeSantis was asked whether it aligns with conservative values to antagonize businesses. The Florida governor doubled down on his choice to go after the company for “trans-ing” kids, repeating a slew of baseless talking points about what education, parental and medical support for transgender children entails. “Most corporate Republicans would have caved. I stood and I fought,” he said.
Haley accused DeSantis of supporting Disney until they came out against his policies. “When they went and criticized him he got thin-skinned and suddenly started to fight back,” she said.
Here’s more context on DeSantis’s beef with Disney:
The candidates are divided on Ukraine, and tonight reiterated views they’ve expressed before.
Haley is for the US supporting Ukraine which she said is is “a pro-American, freedom-loving country”.
DeSantis is against sending more money to Ukraine, preferring to “ focus on our issues here at home”.
Both candidates are for sending aid to Israel.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
