4 takeaways from the fiery final GOP debate between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis before Iowa — and Trump's town hall

And then there were two.

The battle to become the leading alternative to former president and prohibitive 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump entered its latest — and possibly its final — phase Wednesday night when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley debated one-on-one in Des Moines, Iowa, ahead of Monday’s Iowa caucuses.

Just hours earlier, the only other GOP candidate displaying even the faintest signs of life in an early state — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has long polled ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire — dropped out of the race.

Neither Christie nor the two other remaining Republicans, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, qualified for Wednesday’s showdown.

That left Haley and DeSantis alone — both on stage and in the polls — as the only GOP candidates with any chance, however distant, of usurping the former president.

Did either Haley or DeSantis make discernible progress? And what about Trump himself, who skipped the debate for a Fox News town hall? Does he have any new reason to fear that his nearly 50-point lead in the national GOP primary polls could slip away?

Here are four key takeaways from Wednesday’s debate and Trump’s town hall.

Haley and DeSantis called each other liars — a lot. But only one of them had a website to tout.

Each debater came to Des Moines with the same goal: to elbow the last person standing between them and Trump out of the race — if not by the end of the night, then at least by the end of the month, after Iowa and New Hampshire have weighed in.

They even chose the same line of attack: accusing their opponent of being untrustworthy.

But there was a big difference between how Haley and DeSantis chose to make their case — a difference that could determine who earns the lion’s share of media attention and momentum heading into caucus night.

On issue after issue — China, Ukraine, taxes, education, immigration — DeSantis argued that while Haley claims to be a conservative, she’s really just “another mealy-mouthed politician who tells you what she thinks you want to hear just to get into office and then do her donors’ bidding.”

“We don’t need … the pale pastels of the warmed-over corporatism of Nikki Haley,” the Floridian said multiple times throughout the night, riffing on a phrase used by Ronald Reagan.

The problem for DeSantis? His catchphrase wasn’t quite as clear — or repeated nearly as often — as Haley’s “DeSantisLies.com.”

Whenever DeSantis launched a broadside about Haley’s reliability — which happened more than a dozen times throughout the debate, on topics ranging from school choice to abortion to LGBTQ rights — she said it was false and steered viewers to DeSantisLies.com.

“Every time he lies, Drake University, don’t turn this into a drinking game,” Haley quipped in the opening minutes, “because you will be over served by the end of the night.”

DeSantis claimed to be a leader; Haley called him a loser

Make no mistake: Haley entered Wednesday’s debate as the only Trump challenger with any real momentum.

On the back of her previous strong debate performances, she has nearly tripled her support in national GOP primary surveys (from an average of about 4.5% to more than 11%). In Iowa, Haley has gone from about 6% to about 17% (putting her in a tie for second with DeSantis); in New Hampshire she has gone from about 4% to about 30% (putting her within striking distance of Trump, who is averaging about 42%).

And now that Christie has dropped out, many of his voters are likely to swing to Haley.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has stalled both nationally and in Iowa over the same period. In New Hampshire, his support has fallen by half, to about 5%. A strong Haley showing in Iowa followed by an even stronger showing a week later in New Hampshire could be enough to force DeSantis from the race.

So DeSantis’s task Wednesday night was to change that trajectory. To accomplish this, he told viewers that “we don’t need an accountant in the White House, we need a leader in the White House” — and that only he could be trusted because he’d already gotten the job done by passing rafts of MAGA legislation in Florida.

But Haley was ready with a comeback.

“If leadership’s about getting things done, how did you blow through $150 million in your campaign — and you were down in the polls!” said a smiling Haley, who went on to mention his penchant for private planes. “You are not a manager!”

When a flustered DeSantis tried to defend himself by talking over Haley, CNN moderator Dana Bash reminded him that it was Haley’s turn to speak.

“I think I hit a nerve,” Haley added gleefully. “If he can’t handle the financial parts of a campaign, how’s he going to handle the economy?”

Eventually, DeSantis countered that Haley was focusing on “process — things no voter cares about.” Leadership, he added, “is about producing results.”

The criticism of Trump got a little sharper — but probably not sharp enough

Both Haley and DeSantis have long tiptoed around Trump because they’re afraid to offend Republicans who voted for him in the past but who are open to other options now.

Yet with the Iowa caucuses only days away, they both upped the ante a bit Wednesday night — particularly when it comes to the political implications of his upcoming criminal trials.

“That election, Trump lost it. Biden won the election,” Haley said in response to a question about whether she agreed with the former president’s argument that he should be immune from prosecution (which she called “absolutely ridiculous”). “Jan. 6 was a terrible day and President Trump will have to answer for it.”

DeSantis went even further.

“I think the D.C. Circuit is going to rule against Donald Trump on that issue,” DeSantis said. “Donald Trump’s going to lose that appeal. He’s going to end up going to trial in front of a stacked left-wing D.C. jury of all Democrats. ... I don’t think he gets through that. So what are we going to do as Republicans in terms of who we nominate as president? If Trump is the nominee, it’s going to be about Jan. 6, legal issues, criminal trials.”

Will Republicans suddenly dump Trump in Iowa (where he leads by nearly 35 points) or New Hampshire (where he leads by more than 12) because of that argument? No. But it does explain why DeSantis and Haley are still fighting to be the last non-Trump Republican standing — just in case the former president’s legal issues stir second thoughts among primary voters before he sews up the nomination.

Trump again avoided the kinds of clashes that have defined and sullied the Republican primary debates

The clear frontrunner was once again a no-show on the debate stage. Instead, he participated in a Fox News town hall with Iowa voters. And once again the decision to skip the kinds of clashes that have defined and sometimes sullied the 2024 primary debates paid off.

Trump fielded relative softball questions from voters, many of whom said they planned to caucus for Trump. Moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum only rarely pushed Trump on his answers, but allowed him to ramble his way through the hourlong event without challenging his assurances that he would not become a dictator if elected to a second term or that the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic was Chinese laboratories in Wuhan.

The former president did tease a little news, however, saying that he had decided who his running mate would be.

The closest thing to a challenging question for Trump came from a woman who sought reassurance that he would be sufficiently anti-abortion if reelected, given his remarks that the issue was a loser for Republicans.

“For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it,” Trump said, before adding, “I will say this: You have to win elections. Otherwise you’re going to be back where you were.”