Republican debate: The four biggest takeaways from NBC’s Miami matchup

The third Republican presidential primary debate saw five candidates square off onstage in Miami, Florida, Wednesday night.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fielded questions from NBC moderators Lester Holt, Kristen Welker, and Hugh Hewitt for two hours.

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Their answers to questions, ranging policies both foreign and domestic, drilled home a simple message perhaps best summed up by former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green: “They are who we thought they were.”

Though none of the five seriously deviated from their performances in past debates this cycle, the evening did produce a number of noteworthy moments.

Here’s what you need to know.

THE ELEPHANT NOT IN THE ROOM

Former President Donald Trump, the faraway front-runner for the GOP nomination, chose not to participate in Wednesday night’s affair but remained a topic of conversation throughout the event.

To open, and later close, candidates were asked to make the case why they, and not Trump, should earn the Republican nomination.

While all five stuck to their general stances regarding the former president, Ramaswamy declined to answer the question, instead choosing to attack Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for shepherding the party to losses in every election since gaining her position, and the moderators pushing the “Trump-Russia hoax.”

As for the other four candidates, DeSantis knocked Trump for skipping out on his third debate this cycle and failing to make good on all his campaign promises while in office, Haley blamed Trump for tacking trillions to the national debt, Christie continued his lines of personal attacks against his former boss, and Scott claimed to be the only leader capable of restoring America’s “Judeo-Christian foundation.”

Still, Trump leads his challengers by more than 40 points in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, and time is running out for a serious challenger to emerge before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15 of next year.

NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN NIKKI AND VIVEK

In a night of prepared answers, the biggest fireworks by far came from a series of tense exchanges from Ramaswamy and Haley.

They have steadily increased their sparring throughout the cycle — Haley responded to one of Ramaswamy’s answers in the California debate by claiming to feel “a little bit dumber” every time he spoke — but that hit a boiling point Wednesday night.

On two separate occasions, Ramaswamy sought to mock Haley. First, he looped her into a supremely internet-y scandal surrounding DeSantis by referring to them both as “Dick Cheney in 3-inch heels.”

Haley held her return fire through an entire commercial break, before telling Ramaswamy that her heels were actually 5 inches and that she wore them not as a fashion statement but as “ammunition.”

However, responding to a later question on TikTok, Ramaswamy invoked Haley’s 25-year-old daughter to draw a distinction between his heavy campaigning on the platform and the other candidates’ disapproval of the Chinese-backed social media app.

“She made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time,” Ramaswamy claimed.

“Leave my daughter out of your voice,” Haley snapped back. “You’re just scum.”

CHINA, CHINA, CHINA

Speaking of TikTok, China was clearly the top issue in each candidate’s mind.

Though moderators asked about a bevy of international topics, including the wars in Israel and Ukraine, candidates managed to weave their staunch opposition to Beijing’s creeping economic warfare and very public military buildup into a bulk of their answers.

Asked about the economy, several pointed to reversing the trade and manufacturing imbalance with China.

When it came to immigration, multiple candidates discussed the need to prevent fentanyl components from being shipped from China to Mexico.

In fact, every candidate sought to position China as the top global threat to U.S. national and economic security, ahead of Russia and radical Islamic terrorism.

THE GOP’S ABORTION PROBLEM

A series of questions on abortion drew a wedge between candidates and showed that the GOP appears to be, at least politically, as divided on it as the rest of the country.

Democrats, pundits, and even Trump himself have consistently pointed to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as a top motivator for voters across the political spectrum. The results of both Tuesday’s elections and the 2022 midterm elections would seem to back that claim and lend credence to the idea that President Joe Biden could survive a Republican challenger despite broad dissatisfaction with the economy and international affairs.

Circling back to Wednesday night, abortion policy split the candidates as evenly as five can possibly split. On one side, Christie and Haley backed away from the idea of federal abortion restrictions, albeit for different reasons, while DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Scott pushed for new bans.

Christie and Haley both proclaimed themselves to be personally “pro-life.” And while the former New Jersey governor expressed indignation at his own state’s acceptance of abortion up until nine months, he still argued that abortion is wholly a state concern.

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Meanwhile, Haley urged her fellow candidates to be “honest” with voters about the extreme unlikelihood of passing any type of federal abortion ban, given the historical makeup of the Senate and public opinion on the topic, and her closing remarks on it drew, perhaps surprisingly, arguably the loudest applause moment of the night.

“[Pro-lifers] haven’t had 60 Senate votes in over 100 years. We might have 45 pro-life senators, so no Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president can ban these state laws, so let’s find consensus. Let’s agree on what — how we can ban late-term abortions. Let’s make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions,” she said. “Let’s make sure we make contraception accessible. Let’s make sure that none of the state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion. Let’s focus on how to save as many babies as we can and support as many moms as we can and stop the judgment. We don’t need to divide America over this issue anymore.”