5 takeaways from the heated GOP debate in Alabama

Four Republican presidential candidates traded barbs Wednesday night during a fiery GOP debate as they looked to position themselves as the best alternative to former President Trump in the primary.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) participated in the fourth primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Ala., which was hosted by The Hill’s sister organization, NewsNation.

The debate, the last Republican National Committee-sanctioned one of the year, at times turned nasty, with Ramaswamy at one point comparing Haley’s campaign launch video to “a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad” and Christie calling the entrepreneur an “obnoxious blowhard.”

The event also comes more than a month before the Iowa caucuses. All four candidates are still trailing Trump in national and early state polling, raising questions about whether a path can be cleared to take on the former president one-on-one.

Here are five takeaways from the fourth GOP debate:

Knives out for Haley

Haley was the night’s top target, particularly for Ramaswamy and DeSantis.

The Florida governor, who has faced a threat from a surging Haley for weeks now, took a swipe at her straight out of the gate, accusing her of being weak when dealing with Democrats.

DeSantis said he was “sick of Republicans who are not willing to stand up and fight back against what the left is doing to this country,” accusing Haley of caving “every time the left comes after her, anytime the media comes after her.”

Additionally, DeSantis accused her of opposing bans on transgender surgery and of sending a “love letter” to the Chinese ambassador when she was governor of South Carolina in a bid to get Chinese businesses to move to the state.

Haley pushed back on both of those claims. But the most vitriolic criticism against Haley came from Ramaswamy, who has emerged as her main nemesis in each of the previous debates.

The entrepreneur attacked Haley over her donors and foreign policy, but his attacks also once again came with a personal edge. He referred to Haley as the “only person more fascist than the Biden regime” and said his 3-year-old could show her the difference between the U.S. and Israel on a map.

All in all, the night underscored the degree to which Haley is seen as a threat from her fellow debate participants — though it remains to be seen what effect their attacks will have on her momentum.

DeSantis has a strong night

The Florida governor had arguably his strongest debate performance so far during the primary cycle, taking an active role in the conversation throughout the night and landing attacks on multiple opponents.

His strong showing came days after he participated in a unique Fox News-hosted debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), which also earned him plaudits.

One of the most prominent moments for DeSantis on Wednesday came when he sought to draw a contrast between himself and Trump.

“The idea that we’re going to put someone up that’s almost 80 and there’s going to be no effects from that — we all know that’s not true. And so we have an opportunity to do a next generation of leaders,” DeSantis said.

He also criticized Trump over certain policies during his administration, arguing that the former president fell short of what he promised to accomplish. He slammed Trump for not “cleaning up ‘the swamp’” and not having Mexico pay for a wall on the southern border.

DeSantis went on offense throughout the night. At one point during the debate, he attacked both Christie and Haley in a discussion over gender-affirming care for minors, drawing applause from the largely Republican-leaning audience over his stance on the issue.

In his closing statement, DeSantis made a strong case for why he was the best candidate to help the Republican Party “win again,” pointing to his own success in Florida during an otherwise disappointing election year for the party in 2022.

“Nobody has defeated these people more than what I have done in the state of Florida on issue after issue,” he said, referring to Democrats. “We have won and we have won big, and that’s what we’ll do for you.”

Christie takes fiercest stand yet against Trump

Christie also had a strong showing Wednesday night, offering a full-throated criticism of Trump, whom he called a “dictator” and a “bully.”

He also stepped up pressure on his fellow candidates to denounce the former president.

“The fact is that when you go and you say the truth about somebody who is a dictator, a bully, who has taken shots at everybody whether they’ve given him great service or not over time, who dares to disagree with him, then I understand why these three are timid to say anything about it,” Christie said. “Maybe it’s ’cause they have future aspirations.”

Christie has been polling in third place in New Hampshire, according to RealClearPolitics’s polling average of the state’s surveys, but he’s been trailing many of his contenders by larger margins in Iowa and South Carolina. The former New Jersey governor has faced pressure to drop out of the race as some Republicans look to coalesce around either Haley or DeSantis in order to take on Trump.

But Christie has so far refused to do so. Instead, he used the fourth debate to underscore the threat Trump poses if reelected again — a message he has leaned into throughout his campaign, but never as forcefully as Wednesday night.

“Let me make it clear. His conduct is unacceptable. He’s unfit, and be careful of what you’re gonna get,” Christie said in Alabama. “If you ever got another Donald Trump term, he’s lettin’ you know, ‘I am your retribution.’ He will only be … He will only be his own retribution. He doesn’t care for the America people. It’s Donald Trump first.”

Other GOP rivals pull their punches against front-runner

Christie wasn’t the only one who criticized Trump on Wednesday, though his rivals were not nearly as forceful in denouncing the former president.

Haley, for her part, did seek to make a case against her former boss, arguing that she would steer clear of the “drama” and “vendettas” that came with a Trump presidency.

“We have to stop the chaos but you can’t defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. And that’s what Donald Trump gives us. My approach is different. No drama. No vendettas. No whining,” Haley said.

DeSantis, too, showed he was willing to make a case against Trump, whom he has been generally careful not to criticize too harshly. At one point, he alluded to the former president’s age, saying that “Father Time is undefeated.”

Overall, though, DeSantis and Haley were both reluctant to go after Trump in the way some Republicans have been arguing they must in order to win. Their cautious approach to the former president underscores the predicament they face, in which they need to knock Trump off his perch while also not alienating his loyal base.

DeSantis was also quick to brush aside recent concerns over remarks Trump made about not being a dictator except on “day one” if elected president.

“The media is making a big deal about what he said about some of these comments,” DeSantis said. “I would just remind people, that is not how he governed — he didn’t even fire Dr. Fauci. He didn’t fire [FBI Director] Christopher Wray. He didn’t clean up the swamp. He said he was gonna drain it. He did not drain it. He said he was gonna build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. We don’t have the wall.”

“Some of these policies he ran on in ‘16 — I was cheering him on then,” DeSantis said. “But he didn’t deliver it.”

Debate was nasty

All of the primary debates have had their tense moments, but Wednesday’s event was arguably the nastiest so far.

The candidates were attacking one another throughout — and some of those attacks got personal.

The most intense moment came when Christie lambasted Ramaswamy for repeatedly interrupting the other candidates and going after Haley.

“This is the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America. So shut up for a little while,” he told Ramaswamy.

Christie also accused Ramaswamy of insulting Haley’s “basic intelligence” instead of her policy positions, saying he has known Haley longer than Ramaswamy “even started to vote in a Republican primary.”

Ramaswamy swiped at Haley on multiple occasions, too, continuing the ongoing feud between them. One moment came during a discussion over the war between Ukraine and Russia, when Ramaswamy said Haley, as well as President Biden, could not name three provinces in Ukraine.

“Neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for,” he said.

DeSantis, meanwhile, went after Haley over her support from large donors, alleging that she would “cave” to their wishes; he and Christie also bickered over each other during the debate on Trump’s fitness for office.

The feistiness of Wednesday night’s debate demonstrates just how little time remains for the candidates to score knockout blows against each other before the Iowa caucuses.

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