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Four of the contenders vying against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> for the GOP presidential nomination met onstage in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Wednesday night. Former U.N. ambassador <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Nikki Haley</a>, Florida Gov. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/ron-desantis-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Ron DeSantis</a>, former New Jersey governor <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/chris-christie-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Chris Christie</a> and tech entrepreneur <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/vivek-ramaswamy-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Vivek Ramaswamy</a> faced off  as the window narrows to catch up with Trump less than six weeks before the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating contest.

Here are some winners and losers from the Alabama stage.

Trump wasn’t onstage because he didn’t have to be. While defending himself from indictments on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/trump-charges-jan-6-classified-documents/" target=_blank>91 criminal charges</a> in four separate cases, polls and fundraising totals show <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/13/trump-support-indictments/" target=_blank>he has continued to dominate the race</a> as his supporters embrace his claims that he is being persecuted by his political opponents through the justice system.

On Wednesday night, Trump remained relatively unscathed over the course of the two hours. He faced some sharp attacks from Christie, who warned that Trump wants retribution and cares only about himself, not the people he would be representing as president. But the former New Jersey governor was roundly booed by the audience when he said during his closing statement that Trump would not be voting in the November election because he would be a convicted felon.

Under direct questioning from the moderators, DeSantis suggested Trump’s age was an issue and that “Father time is undefeated.” But no one landed a particularly memorable attack, making it unlikely that anything Trump’s rivals said Wednesday night will derail him as the runaway favorite for the GOP nomination.

The biggest jabs and most memorable lines from the Republican debate

The former president led his GOP rivals by at least 43 points in November, according to The Washington Post’s average of polls, During his Tuesday town hall on “Hannity,” — an advance counterprogramming event of sorts — he was asked whether he would never abuse power as retribution against anybody,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/12/06/trump-comments-dictator-campaign-president-2024/" target=_blank>Trump replied: “Except for Day 1,”</a> before going on to talk about drilling for oil and closing the border.

Wednesday  night’s faceoff was essentially the end of the semifinals for Haley and DeSantis as they battle for a distant second place to Trump in Iowa, which will hold the first nominating contest of 2024 on Jan. 15. Haley was repeatedly the prime target of DeSantis and Ramaswamy, but she once again held her own. The Florida governor set the tone for the debate when he went after Haley in his first answer, charging then and throughout the debate that she would “cave” to Wall Street titans, liberal donors and moderates in the Republican Party — painting her as an establishment figure from a bygone era. Ramaswamy called Haley “corrupt” in his first answer, cast her as a pawn of donor puppet masters, and ultimately held up a handwritten sign in all caps on his legal pad that read “NIKKI = CORRUPT.”

Haley shrugged off the attacks early in the debate with a light touch: “I love all the attention, fellas” — and proceeded to carefully choose when to engage and when to move on, rather than getting stuck on defense. The former South Carolina’s message discipline and her ability to land a punch have been hallmarks of her candidacy, and they were both on display in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday night.

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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/12/biden-trump-win-presidential-nomination/" target=_blank>President Biden and Donald Trump both secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency</a>, formalizing a general-election rematch.

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When DeSantis took issue with her actions as governor or her policy positions, she often didn’t waste time getting tangled up in the details, relying on simple one-liners that circled back to the diminished strength of his candidacy: “Ron has continued to lie because he is losing.” When he charged that she would be beholden to liberal big donors backing her candidacy, she replied: “He’s mad because those Wall Street donors used to support him and now they support me.” She delivered the ultimate put-down to Ramaswamy when asked whether she wanted to respond to one of his tirades calling her corrupt: “No,” she replied, “it’s not worth my time to respond to him.”

Her performance is unlikely to place her within striking distance of Trump, but she continues to do what she needs to do to impress donors and build momentum toward what she hopes is a surprise upset in New Hampshire.

Christie is in the single-digits in national polls and his attacks on Trump have often bombed within a Republican primary electorate that adores the former president. But the former New Jersey governor found a way to reinsert himself into the conversation on Wednesday — sometimes serving as a commentator of sorts as he critiqued other candidates unprompted, and repeatedly steering the debate back to a discussion of Trump, whom he called a dictator and a bully. He cast himself as the only “truth-teller” calling out  Trump’s conduct and the threat that he could pose to Republican White House hopes if he is irreparably damaged in the legal proceedings that he’s facing next year. At times, he interjected to try to force other candidates  such as DeSantis to answer questions that they dodged. “Is he fit to be president or isn’t he?” Christie demanded of DeSantis when the Florida governor didn’t directly answer the moderator’s question about Trump.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/06/chris-christie-vivek-ramaswamy-republican-debate/" target=_blank>Christie also created one of the most memorable moments</a> of the night when he defended Haley from Ramaswamy’s attacks on her intelligence. Ramaswamy had teed up that exchange by asserting that his 3-year-old could show Haley how far apart Israel and America were on a map. He went on to accuse her of not knowing the names of three provinces in Ukraine where he claimed she wanted to send U.S. troops. “Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom,” Ramaswamy said. “It takes an outsider to see this through. Look at the blank expression. She doesn’t know the names of the provinces.”

It was Christie, not Haley, who responded, telling Ramaswamy that he would have been voted the “the most obnoxious blowhard in America” within the first 20 minutes of the debate.

“Look, if you want to disagree on issues, that’s fine,” Christie interjected. “But I’ll tell you this: I’ve known her for 12 years, which is longer than he’s [Ramaswamy] even started to vote in the Republican primary. And while we disagree about some issues — and we disagree about who should be president of the United States,” he said, referring to himself and Haley, “What we don’t disagree on is — this is a smart, accomplished woman and you should stop insulting her.”

DeSantis needed to engineer a dramatic shift in his trajectory on Wednesday night to reverse the precipitous slide of his candidacy from his once lofty position as the strongest and best-funded challenger facing Trump. He delivered a crisp and even performance, making no notable mistakes and repeatedly putting Haley on defense on issues such as her encouragement of investment from China when she was governor of South Carolina.

But he wasn’t able to deliver the knockout punch that he needed to surpass her at this juncture of the contest. His chief imperative was making the case for why the Republican primary voters looking for a non-Trump candidate should choose him and not Haley. He needed to demonstrate that Haley is a less viable alternative to Trump — as his team has long argued — because she can’t appeal to the pro-Trump, anti-establishment majority of the party that he can. He sought to diminish her in the eyes of those voters by attacking her as a liberal and pointing out that he passed bills that have driven the Republican policy agenda — Florida’s legislation limiting the discussion of transgender issues in schools, for example. But DeSantis and Haley were fairly evenly matched Wednesday night, suggesting their struggle for second will continue in earnest.

Fact-checking the fourth Republican presidential debate

Ramaswamy, who experienced a mini-boomlet in some polls this year but has since faded, has struck many as the most off-putting contender in every debate so far — and he lived up to that reputation in many ways Wednesday night. He went unchecked by the debate moderators when he embraced debunked conspiracy theories, including that the 2020 election was rigged and that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 2021 attack on the Capitol was an “inside job.” He went on to give credence to the “great replacement theory” which posits that Jews, racial minorities and immigrants are seeking to replace White Americans through higher fertility rates and migration. He repeatedly overplayed his hand with his attacks on Haley — from disparaging her intelligence to holding up the legal pad calling her corrupt. The audience repeatedly responded by drowning him out with boos. His ability to self-finance his campaign may keep him in the race, but there’s no mystery about why he’s not edging above single-digits in the national polls.

Trump transformed the tone of American politics forever — making name-calling, petty insults and personal attacks commonplace. These debates are a constant reminder of how uncivil our politics has become. Countless Trump acolytes such as Ramaswamy have adopted his style, trying to create viral moments with insults that attack their rivals’ character and convictions. Wednesday night’s debate often devolved into a shouting match among the contenders that seemed out of control.

Literal finger-pointing. Attack lines and sharp responses such as, “Don’t interrupt me!” and “Ron continues to lie because he’s losing,” and “Nikki, if you can’t tell the difference between where Israel is and where the U.S. is on a map, I can have my 3-year-old son show you the difference.”

“No one can hear you!” moderator Megyn Kelly said at one point.

The candidates don’t bother to follow the rules anymore. And other than Christie’s defense of Haley’s intelligence, the moments of civility were few and far between.

Two hours is too long. Way too long. The energy of these debates has palpably dropped during the final 30 minutes.

Cornell University, BA in English

Dartmouth College, MA in Liberal Studies (History)

Maeve Reston is a national political reporter for The Washington Post covering the 2024 presidential race and the politics of the West. She joined The Post in 2023  after covering politics and five presidential campaigns at CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Austin American-Statesman. 

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