Sen. Joni Ernst, the junior GOP senator from Iowa who won her seat with strong Tea Party support, on Wednesday stressed the importance of Thursday’s GOP debate amid fallout over Donald Trump’s decision to skip it.
While Ernst repeatedly declined to react to Trump’s decision and fellow GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz’s offer to debate Trump one-on-one, she stressed the importance of the final Republican match-up before Monday’s Iowa caucus.
“It’s the last opportunity before the Iowa caucuses to get the word out,” she said, noting that she’s not endorsing anyone in the GOP presidential primary.
Instead, she underscored how important national security and the economy are to Iowa voters.
“In Iowa right now, national security and jobs and the economy, those are the top issues. that’s all I’m going to say,” she noted.
Ernst, who has insisted she is remaining neutral in the race, appeared at a campaign rally for Senate GOP colleague Marco Rubio on Monday.
“Our nation faces exponential threats, and over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside Marco Rubio on issues critical to our national security,” Ernst said in a statement. “Marco is not only a strong conservative and a good friend, but someone that I trust to secure our country.”
Sen. John McCain the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, was not as diplomatic about his thoughts on Trump skipping the debate and thumbing his nose at Fox News.
The Arizona Republican, himself a regular media favorite, credited the billionaire businessman’s rocket-shot to the top of the polls to a cowed media that is caught up in his TV ratings spectacle and failing to ask him tough questions.
“I think it shows his incredible influence over the media. The media are the ones that let him call in on the Sunday shows, they’re the ones that pander after him to get a few words,” McCain told reporters Wednesday.
“They’re the ones that never ask the tough questions like, ‘how do you deport 11 million people?’ like ‘how do you build a wall and get [Mexico] to pay for it?’ No one ever asks him the tough questions so he is now, thanks to the media . . . he can do whatever he wants to do.”
Others weighed in and simply commented on Trump’s unexpected rise and whether he or Cruz would make a better general election candidate.
Sen. Shelley Moore-Capito, R-W.Va., said she didn’t think the big topics making headlines on the campaign trail were helping Republicans broaden their appeal.
It was an apparent reference to such tougher policies on immigration and a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country – both major Trump themes.
“I think the Republican nominee has to appeal to a broader swath than what you see in the conversations and the topics you’re seeing in the GOP primary,” she told reporters Wednesday. “And I think that’s a real challenge.”
She went on to point out that a similar dynamic is happening in the Democratic presidential primary contest, where Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., is leading a populist charge, but doing so by criticizing Wall Street and big business.
“What’s the appeal? Is the appeal just that you’re going to shake it up and something [big]?,” she asked. “Sanders would really shake it up, Trump would really shake it up, Cruz would really shake it up so I just don’t know.”
