This last debate of the year comes as the future of the undercard debates is uncertain with the Iowa caucus approaching, therefore it was a crucial debate for these candidates who have been struggling to gain traction.
The debate featured: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and former New York Gov. George Pataki.
Throughout the debate, Sen. Graham argued that America must send U.S. ground forces into Syria. “If you don’t hit them first, they’re going to hit us,” Graham said - noting his concerns of another 9/11 scale terrorist attack.
All the candidates blasted President Obama’s strategy on ISIS arguing that the United States needs to take a much larger role in fight against ISIS. Many of them blasted Trump for his proposed ban on Muslims coming to America, saying that the ban only helps ISIS recruitment.
Most candidates agreed that Muslims should enjoy religion freedom but noted that radical Islamic sentiments are out there. And the U.S. needs to better vet the people coming into America.
When Santorum was asked if he supports religious freedom for Muslims he said, “Of course I do. But what Donald Trump was saying was nothing against Muslims. His comment was against this administration who doesn’t have a policy to properly vet people coming into this country.”
While they disagreed on the feasibility of vetting candidates, they all agreed that prohibiting officials from looking at the social media pages of those who want to come to America was wrong.
This comes after news surfaced from the Department of Homeland Security that alleged shooter, Tashfeen Malik, had posted radical statements online. However, officials missed those posts because they were prohibited from doing so in order to be politically correct.
Santorum argued for the collection of phone records, to allow law enforcement to detect if people are communicating with terrorists. He argued that this collection of data would not be recording phone calls, just recording the phone numbers being called.
Sen. Graham was notably very emotional, continually arguing that there will be more terrorist attacks if the U.S. does not intensify its fight against ISIS.
All of the candidates agreed that there needs to be a modification to U.S. national security measures, such as increasing law enforcement's ability to read encrypted messages between suspected terrorists.
Overall, former Gov. Huckabee and former Sen. Santorum had strong debate performances.