Donald Trump defended his call for a halt on Muslim visitors to the U.S., taking credit for having ignited a needed conversation over the roots of terrorism, as he and the rest of the Republican presidential field faced off Tuesday in their final debate of the year with fear of another terrorist attack growing among the electorate.
One of his fellow candidates apologized to the Muslim world for Mr. Trump’s proposal, and another called him a “chaos candidate,” but the billionaire businessman was undeterred, saying his Muslim pause wasn’t an attack on religion but a defense of American security.
He also defended his idea of shutting down part of the Internet to keep terrorists from using it to inspire attacks and stood by his call to kill the families of terrorists if they are found to have had knowledge of attacks.
“People like what I say, people respect what I say,” Mr. Trump said, kicking off the prime-time debate in Las Vegas, sponsored by CNN.
The debate is the first since the terrorist attacks in Paris and California reshuffled voters’ priorities and shot national security to the top of the agenda, and it produced some of the sharpest divisions of the campaign over how big a threat the Islamic State group poses, and how best to try to prevent another attack in the U.S.
Hawkish candidates were on the ascent in the debate, demanding a deeper commitment to ground troops in Syria to roll back the Islamic State there, and a more intrusive monitoring regime in the U.S. to try to stop terrorist plots before they can be carried out.
SEE ALSO: Republican debate winners and losers
Sen. Marco Rubio, who has become the most prominent hawk in the field, said it was a mistake to let the National Security Agency’s phone-snooping program expire last month, saying the San Bernardino attack exposed the dangers.
“I bet you wish we would have had access to five years of his records so we could see who he was working with,” the Florida Republican said.
But Sen. Ted Cruz, who along with Mr. Rubio has emerged as a top competitor to Mr. Trump, said the National Security Agency’s program had to be replaced because it wasn’t broad enough, and said the new program — which leaves the phone metadata in the hands of telephone companies rather than in NSA databanks — is better.
Mr. Cruz and Mr. Rubio sparred over how deeply the U.S. must be involved in the effort to retake the territory the Islamic State now holds in Syria and Iraq. Mr. Cruz said a massive air campaign is the key, and Mr. Rubio said it will take a grand coalition of Arabs, with some assistance from American special operations forces, to oust them from their conquests.
Gov. Chris Christie mocked both men, saying that as members of Congress they were part of the problem and lacked the executive experience of making tough decisions that he has learned as a U.S. attorney in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Let’s talk about how we do this, not about which bill each of these guys likes more. People don’t care about that,” he said.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump, Republican candidates stoking bigotry, violence, Muslim voters say
Mr. Christie was part of the hawkish side of the Republican field, which also included Ohio Gov. John Kasich and businesswoman Carly Fiorina.
Sen. Rand Paul, whose libertarian philosophy puts him at odds with the hawks, said he was stunned at the pro-war talk from fellow candidates including Mr. Christie, whom he called “reckless” after the governor said he would have no problem shooting down Russian planes that violated a U.S.-led no-fly zone.
Also on the main stage Tuesday was retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who said American leadership was being threatened by “all this PC stuff.”
“We need to be on a war footing,” he said, making his pitch for a non-politician to take the reins as president.
Mr. Cruz and Mr. Rubio also sparred over their records on immigration. Mr. Rubio defended his 2013 bill to grant eventual citizenship rights to most illegal immigrants — an unpopular stance among many Republican primary voters.
He said Mr. Cruz shared the same stance, but the Texan vehemently denied that, saying he not only opposes citizenship but wouldn’t even grant a lesser legal status to illegal immigrants.
“I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization,” Mr. Cruz said, pushing back against Mr. Rubio’s claim that the two men at root share a similar stance.
Still, it’s Mr. Trump’s Muslim proposal that has dominated the conversation over the past week, deeply dividing the country.
It’s proved popular with Republican voters, with polls showing as much as 65 percent of the primary electorate backing him — even as it’s drawn stern rebukes from President Obama, world leaders and Republicans in Congress and within the presidential field.
“This is not a serious proposal,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said. “Donald is great at the one-liners, but he’s a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.”
Democratic presidential front-runner, Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, offered her own homeland security plans in a speech ahead of the debate and blasted Republicans as foreign policy amateurs.
“We can’t afford another major ground war in the Middle East. That’s exactly what ISIS wants from us,” she said. “Shallow slogans don’t add up to a strategy. Promising to carpet-bomb until the desert glows doesn’t make you sound strong; it makes you sound like you’re in over your head.”
Weighing in on the philosophical underpinnings of the war, Mrs. Clinton defended Mr. Obama’s approach of declining to identify radical Islam as the enemy. She also blasted Mr. Trump’s calls for restricting immigration based on religious identity.
“Demonizing Muslims also feeds a narrative that jihadists use to recruit new followers around the world, that the United States is at war with Islam,” she said at the University of Minnesota. “This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between civilization and barbarism, and that’s how it must be seen and fought.”
Republicans say voters’ growing uncertainty over security is a judgment on Mr. Obama’s policies.
They said Mrs. Clinton — who helped craft the president’s strategy as his chief diplomat during his first term — will have to answer for those failures.
Fear of an attack has gripped the U.S. in recent weeks and is beginning to interfere with the normal pace of life in America. Los Angeles on Tuesday closed the nation’s second-largest school system and sent students home after a threat was made.
New York City received a similar threat, also via email, but education leaders there quickly concluded it was a hoax.
Republicans entered the debate with the field looking somewhat different from the previous showdown. Mr. Cruz is surging in the polls, claiming a lead in at least some of the latest surveys in Iowa, where he has unseated Mr. Trump as the undisputed king of the hill.
Mr. Trump still leads in New Hampshire, South Carolina and nationally — where his support has increased in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, and his call for a pause in approving Muslim admissions to the U.S. has proved incredibly popular with rank-and-file Republican voters.
Tuesday’s face-off was the final Republican showdown of the year, providing the nine candidates with a chance before the holiday season to distance themselves from their rivals in front of a national television audience.
Mr. Christie was back on the main stage after being demoted to the undercard debate last time. Mr. Paul also kept his spot on the main stage after CNN adjusted the criteria to make sure he was included.
Mr. Carson, meanwhile, has tumbled from his perch as the top competitor to Mr. Trump, suffering a decline as his campaign faced more scrutiny from the press.
The next debate is scheduled for Jan. 14 in South Carolina.
Earlier in the evening, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former New York Gov. George Pataki took part in an undercard debate.
Mr. Graham led off the debate by apologizing to Muslim world leaders for Mr. Trump’s comments, saying “he does not represent us.”
“Donald Trump has done the one single thing you cannot do: declare war on Islam itself,” Mr. Graham said, though he acknowledged that he would support Mr. Trump if he is the ultimate Republican nominee.
Mr. Trump did have one semi-defender in former Sen. Rick Santorum, who said he didn’t think the businessman’s proposal for a Muslim pause was the right one but the sentiment was clear.
“What Donald Trump was saying was nothing against Muslims. His comment was against this administration that doesn’t have a policy to properly vet people coming into this country,” Mr. Santorum said.
Most of the candidates said they wanted tougher surveillance inside the U.S., including letting investigators sit in at mosques to try to spot radicals in training.
“If Islam is as wonderful and peaceful as its adherents say, shouldn’t they all be begging us to come and listen to these sermons?” said Mr. Huckabee, a Baptist preacher before his life in politics.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.