A couple of candidates’ remarks hit very close to home…
Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott duked it out in the third GOP presidential debate last night. Here’s what they tussled over — and what they conspicuously ignored….
Focus on foreign policy
Foreign policy got far more air time than it has in previous debates. President Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s war against Hamas left the candidates little to attack him over, though they broadly agreed that he could do more to stop Iran from adding fuel to the fire.
Asked what he’d tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he was president, DeSantis replied: “I will tell Bibi to finish the job once and for all and destroy the butchers from Hamas.”
There was far more dissent over Russia’s war in Ukraine, with Ramaswamy accusing the country of harboring Nazism, saying: “To frame this as some kind of battle between good versus evil. Don’t buy it.”
Haley, who was at odds with Ramaswamy all evening, retorted that Russia’s President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were “salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president.”
Christie agreed, cautioning: “Let’s remember, the last time that we turned our back on a shooting war in Europe. It bought us just a couple of years. And then 500,000 Americans were killed in Europe to defeat Hitler. This is not a choice.”
Everyone sidestepped abortion for as long as possible
Despite resounding proof in Tuesday’s elections that Democrats are winning on reproductive rights, candidates ignored the issue of abortion for the first 99 minutes of the debate. Haley and Scott’s positions were pretty similar to that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose GOP colleagues lost control of the state House that night.
Scott repeated his call for a 15-week federal ban, while Haley continued to sit somewhat on the fence, saying: “When we’re looking at this, there are some states going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that. There are some states going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decided.”
DeSantis made a sharp U-turn from his position in the second debate, in which he rejected the idea that pro-lifers were to blame for midterm defeats.
He said anti-abortion groups had been “caught flat-footed on these referenda,” and took back his previous support of a 15-week federal ban.
Attacking close to home
Defending his use of TikTok (a Chinese-owned platform the other candidates all denounced), Ramaswamy effectively called Haley a hypocrite, because her daughter uses it.
Haley hit back “leave my daughter out of your voice,” and said Ramaswamy was “scum.” Ramaswamy appeared keen to steer clear of Haley later, when the candidate’s families joined them on the stage.
