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- Former UN Amb. Nikki Haley and Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis faced each other on a cold Iowa debate night.
- Both sought to make their cases to become the GOP presidential nominee, but they focused heavily on attacking each other.
- The result was Donald Trump skating by with a minimal amount of scrutiny that broke no new ground.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley ripped into each other during the Iowa GOP presidential debate on Wednesday, but in a classic version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, the payoff for each side appears to be minimal.
For DeSantis, the CNN debate was a chance to make his case in a state where he has basically staked his campaign, and Haley sought to make the case that she would be the best hope for Republicans looking to move on from former President Donald Trump's "chaos."
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's exit from the race on Wednesday would appear to give Haley some more time to test that theory, based on the potential for her to pull off a win in New Hampshire.
Instead of meaningfully assailing the frontrunner in this election, they traded barbs at eachother
But with both candidates attacking each other on everything from education and funding for Ukraine to immigration and their respective records on taxes, the debate in many ways left Trump — whom both candidates are trailing by significant margins in Iowa — relatively unscathed.
DeSantis needled Trump over the lack of a full border wall at the US-Mexico border and for what he said was the continuation of a political "swamp" in Washington. And Haley said that the country couldn't endure four additional years of Trump in the Oval Office.
But these were all statements that DeSantis and Haley have repeatedly said in the past, and by training the majority of the attacks on each other, Trump basically did a cakewalk without even being in the room.
Neither DeSantis or Haley offered the sort of scrutiny that would have seriously threatened the former president's hold on the Iowa GOP primary electorate.
Meanwhile, Trump was having a great time vamping over on Fox News.
In FiveThirtyEight's weighted polling average of the Iowa GOP caucuses, Trump is currently averaging 51.8% support among likely voters, with DeSantis and Haley effectively tied at 17% support each.
With less than a week to go before the caucuses, the Wednesday debate likely did little to shift this dynamic in a significant way.