Winners and losers of the final GOP debate before Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa — Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis met one-on-one on the debate stage for the first time here Wednesday night, just five days before the Iowa caucuses.

It was a critical encounter for the former United Nations ambassador and the Florida governor, as polls indicate they are locked in a tight battle for second place in the Hawkeye State.

Former President Trump avoided this debate, hosted by CNN, as he had avoided the four prior clashes. He instead took part in a Fox News town hall elsewhere in Des Moines.

Trump leads polls in Iowa by 36 points, according to the average maintained by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ. 

Trump has 54 percent support, way ahead of Haley’s 18 percent. She has recently overtaken DeSantis in the average, but only by 1 point.

Wednesday also brought an unexpected twist in the campaign when former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suspended his bid for the GOP nomination. 

Christie told a crowd in New Hampshire, “It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination.”

Here are the winners and losers from a dramatic day in the final sprint to the caucuses.

Winners

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

DeSantis has become a far better debater over the course of five clashes so far. 

The big question is whether that has come too late to change the narrative of a struggling campaign — or whether he has peaked at the right time, just as late-deciding, persuadable voters tune in.

The one-on-one format Wednesday seemed to help him — and hurt Haley — and he landed far more verbal punches than she did.

DeSantis unfurled one of his best ripostes on a major point of substantive difference: the war in Ukraine. Haley is much more supportive than DeSantis of the need for continued U.S. aid for Ukraine. 

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

DeSantis also sought to connect two of his most frequent lines of attack: Haley’s purported softness toward China — which she denies — and her backing from some wealthy GOP donors.

“The elites in this country have sold out the middle of the country for China,” DeSantis said. “She is part of that now, and she’s not going to stick up for you.”

In his closing remarks, DeSantis hit Haley once again over her recent gaffe in which she told a New Hampshire audience it could “correct” the verdict in Iowa.

“Iowa’s votes do not need to be corrected by any other state. You all know what you’re doing,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis still has a propensity to use overly wordy or rehearsed-sounding lines. 

An attack on the “pale pastels of the warmed-over corporatism of people like Nikki Haley” was one stiff example Wednesday. 

Another caveat is whether it’s possible that the aggressiveness of Wednesday’s debate could end up wounding both DeSantis and Haley, turning off caucusgoers.

Overall, however, this debate performance was one of the best nights of DeSantis’s campaign to date — at a time when he sorely needed it.

Former President Trump

A slugfest between Haley and DeSantis is just fine for Trump.

The longer and more bitterly the non-Trump vote remains divided, the more impregnable his position becomes. 

The two candidates at the debate did take some shots at Trump.

Haley at one point said the next president needed to bring “sanity” back to American life and implied that Trump had helped send the nation off the rails. She clearly acknowledged the reality that President Biden won the 2020 election.

DeSantis, in an unusually colorful phrase, noted that Trump “does word-vomit from time to time on social media.”

And, on issues of civil disorder, DeSantis complained that amid Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Trump “sat in the White House and tweeted ‘law and order,’ but he did nothing to ensure law and order.”

Those moments were memorable. But they weren’t representative of the debate as a whole, which was dominated by the squabbling between DeSantis and Haley over each other’s record and character.

The bottom line is, that helps Trump.

Trump’s decision to do the Fox town hall also diverted at least some of the attention — and audience — away from the CNN debate.

At the town hall, Trump teased that he knows the identity of the running mate he’ll choose if he becomes the nominee. He also sought to make light of an earlier pledge to be motived by a desire for “retribution.”

There are still big question marks over the outlook for Trump as a general election candidate.

But Wednesday was another good night in his quest to become the GOP nominee.

Mixed

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley

It was not a disastrous night for Haley. But it wasn’t a good one, and it certainly did not help keep her perceived momentum going.

Haley’s repeated mentions of a website launched by her campaign, desantislies.com, was a questionable tactic. On one hand, she repeated the name enough — at least seven times — for it to lodge in viewers’ minds. On the other, it might have been more effective to rebut her rival’s assertions in real time rather than leaning on repeating the website name.

Haley on several occasions suggested DeSantis’s well-documented campaign woes augur badly for his capacity to lead the nation. 

“If you can’t manage a campaign, how are you going to manage a country?” she wondered at one point.

But DeSantis was able to parry that attack by talking up his record as governor of Florida.

There is the possibility that Haley’s debate tactics — including more than once arguing that DeSantis was trying to “demean” her — could resonate, particularly with women voters or those who simply don’t care for the Florida governor’s aggressiveness.

But DeSantis effectively raised questions around Haley’s record on China, immigration and culture war issues — all topics that matter to the social conservatives whose support is vital on caucus night.

“He has spent more time trying to lie about me than he is about telling the truth about himself,” Haley said at one point.

But her tone of frustration seemed to betray anxiety that at least some of DeSantis’s jabs were making a mark.

Loser

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

Christie captured some headlines with his decision to suspend his campaign. 

He presumably hopes the timing could give a boost to Haley, and thus ultimately thwart Trump.

Christie told supporters he wanted to ensure he would not “enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.”

But Christie’s withdrawal was also an admission of defeat. The appetite for his strong anti-Trump message in today’s GOP is very small.

As is often the case with Christie, his big moment was complicated. Before his speech announcing his withdrawal, he was caught on a hot mic predicting that Haley was “going to get smoked.”

Christie was not really a factor in Iowa, polling at only around 3 percent. But he had been much stronger in New Hampshire, running in third place and drawing about 12 percent support.

If that backing mostly transfers to Haley — as many people expect — it could make a vital difference in the Granite State.

But that outcome is far from guaranteed. 

Christie has obvious political skills, but his party and he are in a fundamentally different place.

At one level, his withdrawal was only him bowing to the inevitable.