And the loser is ... Hillary Clinton.
That's how Republicans cast their debate on Sunday night, when they were not feuding with one another in their most direct and contentious exchanges yet.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani used humor to hit Clinton, exclaiming, "You gotta be kidding!" when asked if he differs with her abortion and gay rights.
"There are two things I agree with Hillary Clinton on. First of all, we're both Yankee fans," he said to laughter, referring to the New York baseball team.
"Well, wait a second -- I became a Yankee fan growing up in New York. She became a Yankee fan growing up in Chicago," he said of the former first lady, who moved to New York to run for the Senate in 2000.
Then Giuliani quoted her as saying, "I have a million ideas; America cannot afford them all."
"I'm not making it up," he said to more laughter. "No kidding, Hillary -- America can't afford you."
Relaxed, smiling and conversational, Giuliani reinforced his image as a front-runner much as he does on the campaign trail, by disparaging the Democratic New York senator and former first lady as much as he criticizes other Republicans.
"He's got that riff down well, and it was really funny and very effective," Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. "Don't underestimate the value of experience in these forums -- he's obviously a bright man and has gotten very comfortable."
Clinton makes an easy target among Republicans, despite, or perhaps because of, her lead in polls against Republican contenders. The audience of more than 3,300 party faithful cheered at every Clinton line in the debate, which was sponsored by Fox News Channel and the Florida Republican Party.
"Scoring points on Hillary in this group -- hell, that's like a 5-foot basket. You're just dropping the ball in," said David Johnson, a Tallahassee political strategist and former head of the Florida Republican Party.
Mitt Romney, dominant in polling in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, challenged Clinton's experience.
"She hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't run a state. She hasn't run a city. She has never run anything," the former Massachusetts governor said.
The biggest applause line of the night, delivered by Senator John McCain, also came at Clinton's expense. McCain, a foe of congressional spending, mentioned Clinton's effort to spend US$1 million on a Woodstock Museum to commemorate perhaps the most famous counterculture event of the 1960s.
"Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event," McCain said.
"I was tied up at the time," he deadpanned, and the audience rose, applauding the reference to McCain's years as a Vietnam prisoner of war.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist known for his folksy one-liners, said: "Look, I like to be funny. There's nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president."
When they were not focused on Clinton, the candidates emphasized their conservative credentials, putting Giuliani and Romney on the spot.
Former Senator Fred Thompson said: "Mayor Giuliani believes in federal funding for abortion. He believes in sanctuary cities. He's for gun control. He supported Mario Cuomo, a liberal Democrat, against a Republican who was running for governor, then opposed the governor's tax cuts when he was there."
Thompson also mentioned Romney's 1994 campaign against Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, when Romney cast himself as a defender of a woman's right to abortion, an issue on which Romney has changed his mind.
"Actually, Mitt, I didn't know there was any room to the left of Ted Kennedy," Thompson quipped.
Thompson was confident and easygoing, and quick to defend himself when Giuliani questioned his own conservative credentials. Giuliani called Thompson the "single biggest obstacle" in the Senate to curbing frivolous lawsuits.
Thompson responded by saying it's a matter of federalism, the concept of power divided between national and state government. "Local issues belong at the state level. Most states have passed tort reform," he said.
Thompson even managed a graceful response to a question about whether, as some critics have suggested, he is lazy. He described his trajectory from teenage father to factory worker to federal prosecutor and Watergate counsel and finally to the Senate, and he mentioned his help since then shepherding Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' nomination through Congress.
"If a man can do all that and be lazy, I recommend it to everybody," he said to laughter and applause.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the