Trump and Cruz fiercely clash at debate as Iowa caucuses near

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina: Eighteen days before Iowa voters cast the first ballots of the presidential race in their caucuses, six Republican candidates launched steady attacks on front-runner Donald Trump, yet appeared to gain little ground.

The attempts to bruise the billionaire, who leads national polls of GOP voters and also most state surveys, ranged from his proposal to slap a tariff on Chinese goods to his call to ban Muslims temporarily from entering the US to his attacks on one of his chief rival’s eligibility to run for the nation’s highest office.

During a lengthy and heated back-and-forth at Thursday’s Republican presidential debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, Donald Trump admitted that he’s bringing up US Senator Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace “because now he’s doing a little bit better” in the polls, and insisted that Cruz receive a judgment from the courts because it would be bad for Republicans to have the issue hanging over their presidential nominee.

The Texas senator chuckled when asked to respond to Trump’s taunts that he may be ineligible to be president of the US. Then he swatted them away deftly. Trump, on the other end of the exchange, faced many boos from the crowd.

“I’m glad we’re focusing on the important topics this evening,” said Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and has been a US citizen since birth. He noted that Trump had last year he’s a natural born citizen.

“I don’t care. I think I’m gonna win fair and square. I don’t have to win this way,” Trump said.

Trump also ruled out suing Cruz himself. “I’m not bringing a suit, I promise,” he said. “But the Democrats are going to bring a lawsuit.” In fact, one of Cruz’s constituents did on Thursday.

At several points in the debate, Trump’s rivals suggested that the billionaire businessman doesn’t understand the nuances of governing and diplomacy. While Trump said that The New York Times was “wrong” in reporting he’d favour a 45 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, he later acknowledged “I’m totally open to a tariff,” accusing China of engaging in unfair trade. “We don’t have to continue to lose $505 billion [Dh1.85 trillion] for the privileges of dealing with China,” Trump said.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush — whose father, former president George H.W. Bush, served as an envoy to China—and US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida differed. “We are all frustrated with what China is doing but we need to be very careful with tariffs. China doesn’t pay the tariff. The buyer pays the tariff,” Rubio said.

The sparring over China provided a rare on-stage triumph for Bush in his long-running feud with Trump, who was booed by the crowd when he said the country does not need “a weak leader” on trade like Bush.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, citing his blue collar roots in the steel towns of Western Pennsylvania, expressed more sympathy with Trump’s point of view, saying that it takes trade courts years to settle cases when countries send cut-rate goods into the US, undermining jobs. “What do we tell the workers?” he said. “They’re Americans and they carry the load.”

Later in the debate, Trump won applause from the audience for answering with a terse “No” when asked if he would reconsider his controversial proposal to ban Muslims from travelling into the US. “We have to stop with the political correctness,” he said.

But some of his rivals on stage said the businessman’s proposal threatened to alienate the very Arab allies the US needs in its war on Daesh. The attack was led by Bush, who called Trump’s statement “unhinged.”

“Are we going to ban Muslims from India, from Indonesia, from other countries we need to build a partnership against Daesh?” asked Bush. Kasich agreed. “We need the Saudis, Egyptians, the Gulf States and Jordan,” he said, naming other US allies in the region.

Other candidates on the stage, while not endorsing Trump’s proposed travel ban, avoided criticising it. Rubio said Trump is reflecting anger over Obama’s policies. “The president has consistently underestimated Daesh,” he said, adding: “If we do not know who you are and we do not know why you are coming when I am president you are not getting into the United States of America.”

Heading into the debate, the spotlight was on the surging insurgents, Trump and Cruz, who are locked in a dead heat for first place the February 1 caucuses and who have recently dropped the elaborate truce they maintained for most of the campaign in favour of all-out attacks on each other.

Trump is accusing Cruz, born to an American mother and a Cuban father north of the border, of being a Canadian. Cruz has labelled Trump something considered even more alien in many parts of the country: a New Yorker.