Washington: In their last debate of the year, the Republican Party's presidential candidates gathered in a casino in Nevada and spoke of little else but fear and strength.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
America's enemies were closing in, each of them suggested, and each of them argued that they were the only person who could keep the nation safe.
"Look, the problem is we need toughness," said frontrunner Donald Trump at one point, capturing the mood of an event held in the wake of the attack in San Bernardino with characteristic simplicity. "We need tough people. We need toughness. We need intelligence and we need tough."
Senator Ted Cruz, his only serious rival, spoke in similar terms.
"ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism will face no more determined foe than I will be. We will utterly destroy them by targeting the bad guys," he said.
Senator Marco Rubio joined in: "If you're an American citizen and you decide to join up with ISIS, we're not going to read you your Miranda rights. You're going to be treated as an enemy combatant, a member of an army attacking this country."
Ben Carson, whose placid campaign has slumped as the focus of the campaign shifted from America's culture wars to its shooting wars, added: "We need to be on a war footing. We need to understand that our nation is in grave danger."
Even Ohio governor John Kasich declared that "frankly it's time to punch the Russians in the nose, they have gotten away with too much in this world".
Amid all the bluster there were moments of revelation.
It was telling, for example, that Senator Cruz chose to stick with his strategy of cuddling up close to Mr Trump rather than attacking him, presumably in the hope of inheriting his support should his campaign implode. Mr Trump proved happy enough to play along.
But Senator Cruz and Senator Rubio, both hoping to emerge as a consensus candidate, went at each other hard.
Jeb Bush, the establishment candidate who has pocketed over $US100 million in donations and remains stalled at around four per cent support, went out of his way to attack Mr Trump.
"You're not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency," he said to cheers at one point, perhaps his most effective line in a debate so far.
He attacked Mr Trump as a "chaos candidate" who would become a "chaos president".
Though the lines appeared to go down well in the Nevada ballroom, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz tweeted moments later that they had failed to move people in his focus group.
It was also telling to see the growing divide in foreign policy between the surging anti-establishment candidates and those who embrace Republican Party orthodoxy and so far trail them.
Both Mr Trump and Senator Cruz advocated bombing IS while unnamed allies and partners prosecuted the ground war.
At one point Mr Trump even argued that the removal of dictators in the region had lead to the current state of chaos that seeded IS.
By contrast, Senator Rubio and Mr Kasich argued for American forces being deployed on the ground.
Senator Cruz was scathing about this. "One of the problems with Marco's foreign policy is he has far too often supported Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama undermining governments in the Middle East that have helped radical Islamic terrorists," he said.
"We need to focus on killing the bad guys, not getting stuck in Middle Eastern civil wars that don't keep America safe."
Equally telling was what was not mentioned. Gun control was not raised, though it has become an issue in the debate over counter-terrorism in the US since Republicans in Congress voted against a bill that would ban people on the terrorism watch list from buying assault-style rifles.
Nor did climate change rate a mention.
It is hard to imagine that the debate will have an immediate effect on the standing of the candidates.
Five went into the debate with an apparent path to the nomination – Mr Trump, Senator Cruz, Senator Rubio, Mr Bush and perhaps New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
None did themself a serious disservice.
