At second GOP debate, candidates spar over economy, immigration, crime

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 27, 2023 / 23:58 pm

Republican presidential hopefuls on Wednesday night sparred for the second time on the debate stage, arguing over the economy, immigration, and other issues key to the looming presidential contest.

The six candidates — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former Vice President Mike Pence, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott — appeared at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. 

The politicians over two hours traded jabs and touted their records as they labored to distinguish themselves in what is still a crowded GOP primary field. 

Absent again was former President Donald Trump, who has skipped both of the Republican debates held so far, claiming his commanding front-runner status gives him little motivation to appear on stage with his rivals. National polls show DeSantis a distant second.

In contrast to the contentious first debate, Wednesday’s discussion at times seemed to wander across topics as moderators from Fox News and Univision struggled to retain control of the conversation.

Notably missing from much of the discourse were questions on abortion, though DeSantis delivered a highlight late in the debate in defense of pro-life politics, telling the California crowd: “We are better off when everyone counts.”   

Most of the evening was given to policy questions. Asked about the ongoing economic turmoil in the U.S. — including high inflation that continues to drive consumer prices upward — the presidential hopefuls repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for those ills. 

“I really believe what’s driving [these crises] is that Bidenomics has failed,” Pence said, criticizing White House subsidies of green energy technologies and projects. 

Burgum echoed those accusations. “We’re subsidizing the automakers, and subsidizing the cars … and particularly we’re subsidizing electrical vehicles,” he said. Electric vehicles, he argued, depend too much on batteries produced by Chinese supply lines, giving the Chinese Communist Party too much economic power over the U.S. 

The candidates were asked about President Joe Biden’s appearance Tuesday on the picket lines of striking auto workers. Biden is the first sitting U.S. president to have appeared on a strike line.

Pivoting briefly to the immigration crisis at the U.S. border, Scott declared: “Joe Biden should not be on the picket line, he should be on our southern border.” 

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, urged strikers to “go picket in front of the White House” due to what he claimed was the Biden administration’s exacerbation of the country’s economic difficulties. 

Illegal immigration, crime

The candidates were pressed on the ongoing border crisis, which has seen record numbers of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. in recent years. 

“Our laws are being broken every day at the southern border,” Christie said, vowing to send the National Guard to help secure the border states. 

Ramaswamy declared his desire to scrap the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment birthright citizenship clause, which grants citizenship to children born in the U.S. even if their parents entered the country illegally.

“I favor ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country,” he said. Claiming to have “actually read the 14th Amendment,” Ravaswamay said that “the kid of an illegal migrant who broke the law to come here” should not qualify as an American. 

“If you come here illegally,” Scott similarly argued, “you are not [under the jurisdiction of the U.S.].”

The moderators pressed candidates on their response to crime surges in many American cities.

“We can’t be successful as a country if people aren’t even safe to live in places like Los Angeles or San Francisco,” DeSantis said. He said he and his wife met three people in California who had recently been mugged in the streets. He urged support for American police. “In Florida, we back the blue,” he said. 

Haley offered similar support for the police. “You take care of those who take care of you. We have to start taking care of law enforcement,” she said. Citing insufficiently strict criminal policies, she argued: “We have to start prosecuting according to the law.”

Health care, education

At times the candidates seemed to struggle to stay on topic, to the apparent exasperation of the debate’s moderators. 

Asked if the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — would remain as federal health care policy, Pence briefly pursued a tangent about mass shootings, leading moderator Dana Perino to humorously ask: “So does that mean Obamacare is here to stay?” 

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Pence subsequently vowed to return “all Obamacare funding” to U.S. states.

DeSantis, meanwhile, blamed high health care costs in part on the overall economic outlook. “Everything has gotten more expensive. We’ve got to address the underlying problem,” he said. 

Haley vowed to radically transform the U.S. health care system, promising to “break” the current health care paradigm and “make it all transparent.” She also proposed to address current tort law governing medical lawsuits. 

Circling back to his earlier criticism of electric vehicles, Burgum said: “We talk about, ‘Why do we have the most expensive health care in the world?’ It’s because the federal government got involved the same way they did with EVs.”

“Every time the federal government gets involved … things get more expensive and less competitive,” he claimed.

On education, Christie was asked about scoring gaps in New Jersey between minority and white students. “You have to address all students,” he said, arguing that charter schools and school choice policies in New Jersey helped close those gaps. “It can be done when you give people choice,” he said.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, was pressed about whether parents should have the right to know how their children “identify” at school, an apparent reference to transgender-identifying youth. “Parents have the right to know,” he said, calling transgenderism “a mental health disorder.”