DES MOINES — If there was a common theme to what will likely be the final undercard debate for low-polling Republican presidential candidates, it was that nobody on the stage wanted to be relegated to it.
It was the first of two debates in Iowa Thursday night that will allow the major GOP candidates to make their closing arguments to voters before the caucuses. Rick Santorum, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, blew up at the Fox News moderators during the answer to his first question.
“This is called the undercard debate!” the former Pennsylvania senator thundered, after being asked if Monday’s caucuses are his last stand. “The undercard debate!”
Santorum blasted the media for paying more attention to an “entertainer” than serious candidates in the race, a thinly veiled shot at Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Fox News’ Bill Hemmer quickly pointed out that Santorum was one of two candidates on the stage who would be appearing at Trump’s event competing with the prime-time debate (the other was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another past caucus winner).
Santorum shot back that his appearance with Trump wasn’t motivated by “political considerations,” but by the fact it was a good cause and “I’m not doing anything at 9 o’clock tonight,” a reference to his exclusion from the main debate.
Former Gov. Jim Gilmore made his first appearance since the original undercard debate in August. During a question directed to another candidate about the “siren voices of anger,” he angrily asked the moderators if he was being skipped.
When asked about why Iowans should vote for him when he has held few events in the state, Gilmore said that he planned to really start his campaign in New Hampshire. He later accused the media establishment of skewing the whole presidential contest to its advantage through selective coverage. He emphasized his status as the only military veteran debating and chastised Santorum and Huckabee for appearing with “billionaire” Trump.
But the star of the show was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, as is usually the case when she is in the undercard rather than on the main stage. She called for zero-based budgeting as a way of controlling federal spending and repeatedly let loose with acerbic one-liners about Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“The woman needs to be prosecuted,” Fiorina said of Clinton. She lamented that the former secretary of state has never been indicted the handling of sensitive government information on her private email server. “[Clinton] has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo.”
Fiorina also turned an implicit criticism from Santorum about primary opponents who talked pro-life while he walked the walk into an applause line. Santorum took the shot after Fox News’ Martha MaCallum asked him why he missed last week’s snowy March for Life in Washington, D.C. Instead of taking the bait, Fiorina criticized the moderators for “questioning Rick Santorum’s pro-life credentials.”
This kind of rhetorical performance, including strong pro-life arguments and Clinton criticisms from an eloquent conservative woman, elevated Fiorina from the undercard to several primetime debates. But after a brief boomlet, this came with diminishing returns — and dwindling poll numbers.
Seven other Republican presidential candidates with higher poll numbers are set to debate in the same arena later Thursday night. Trump has withdrawn to hold his own event benefiting veterans at Drake University in Des Moines.
