Republican presidential primary debate: Key takeaways after Haley and DeSantis clash in Iowa

And then there were two.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faced off in their first one-on-one debate of the 2024 race.

Absent again was front-runner Donald Trump, who simultaneously held a town hall on Fox News.

The split-screen political offering came just five days before Republicans gathered in Iowa to choose their candidate for the party nomination — the first state to make their choice.

So what have we learned?

A battle to the death (but not Trump’s)

The first question to DeSantis was an open invitation to attack Trump. “Why should voters looking for an alternative to the current front-runner, former President Trump, look to you instead of former Governor Haley?”

All he heard was the last word.

“Donald Trump is trying to pursue his issues,” Desantis said. ‘Nikki Haley is trying to solve her donors’ problems. I’m running to find your problems and those of your family.’

That was the civilized part.

DeSantis went on to call his opponent “a mealy-mouthed politician beholden to wealthy donors.”

Haley, in turn, accused DeSantis of lying about her criminal record and plugged in a new website with the address desantislies.com.

“It will relate to the fact that he is just angry at the donors because the donors used to be with him,” she said.

Both candidates made it clear that their main focus was to beat the other, rather than trying to take down the frontrunner (who spent the evening with friends on Fox News).

The Trump campaign couldn’t contain its joy.

“The Losers Bracket debate is embarrassing,” wrote advisor Jason Miller on X.

“They’re tearing each other down and pumping out URLs as President Trump takes on Crooked Joe Biden.”

Another DeSantis

Animated and aggressive, this is the candidate DeSantis supporters have been hoping to see for months.

In previous debates, he used the podium to step back and put himself above the fray as tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy created a firestorm. Instead, he tried to quietly tell his story and introduce himself to the viewers.

He abandoned that approach Wednesday evening in Des Moines.

He waved at Haley as soon as the debate started and didn’t stop until the two hours were up.

And he managed to get the only laugh of the entire two-hour confrontation.

“Now that she’s under scrutiny, Nikki Haley has a ballistic podiatry problem: She shoots herself in the foot every day,” he said, referring to some recent blunders.

Pollster Frank Lutz wrote, “If DeSantis had been this good in the early primary debates, he would be in a much stronger position today. I’ve been critical of him, but he’s on fire tonight.”

Haley has a new website

Every debater knows that repetition is the key to making sure your message sticks. But there’s a fine line between rhetorical mastery and sounding like a stuck record.

Over and over, Haley came back to the same answer.

“It’s a shame that we had to set up DeSantislies.com,” she said after being accused of being a flip-flopper.

A few minutes later she reached for it again.

“He humiliates me over and over again, tells lies… DeSantislies.com… because he thinks it makes him look bigger.”

And again, when he challenged her as weak on China and claimed to have kicked Beijing out of Florida…

“DeSantis lies.com,” she replied. “He has an economic development department… on the website you had an office in Hong Kong.”

Perhaps millions of viewers now have the URL imprinted in their heads. Or maybe they just switched to something less repetitive.

No joke

The tone of the debate can best be described as strident. Both candidates barely drew breath as they blasted each other over China policy and the federal gas tax and how to pay for roads and stop terrorist cells from sneaking across the border and energy production and health insurance for illegal aliens and aid to Ukraine and green subsidies from Biden. and records as governor…

And all before the first commercial break. Exhausted? A lot of?

What was missing was the humor that people like Chris Christie brought to the debates, with his asides, snipes and side eyes, and simply the way he paused before answering questions.

Neither candidate on stage is known for their humor. To do this, viewers had to switch to Fox News, where Trump delivered one-liners.

“I’ve started to like Christie more,” he said when asked about possible VP choices.

On CNN, it was a night of loud, breathless desperation rather than confident humiliation.

A real difference in philosophy

But for all the noise, names and accusations, the debate revealed a crucial difference in the views of two conservatives who rose to prominence as governors.

It came when they were asked whether the government should monitor companies and their social policies.

DeSantis, who has been at war with Disney over his opposition to its ban on references to homosexuality in classrooms, said yes.

“The proper role of government, if it means anything, is to protect our children, and I have protected our children,” he said.

Haley offered another, traditionally more conservative and less interventionist answer: “Government was designed to secure the liberties of the people.

“We don’t need a government fighting our private industries.”

That sentence was fired on social media after her campaign debate.

DeSantis sees Haley’s UN years as a weakness

Haley was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations and served in New York for two years.

It allowed her to develop her foreign policy skills and she has consistently used that experience to take down opponents when they wondered whether she would face China, Iran or other enemies.

On Wednesday evening, after Haley referenced her UN experience several times, DeSantis tried to neutralize that argument.

He portrayed her as a globalist, content with sending US dollars around the world to solve the problems of others and, for example, pay pensions to Ukrainian retirees or salaries for Ukrainian officials.

“You can take the ambassador out of the United Nations, but you can’t take the United Nations out of the ambassador,” he said.

She responded by saying he was lying again.

She has a website for that, you know.