What to Expect from Tonight’s Republican Debate

Tonight’s Republican debate is the first of the new year, and, while it might seem on the surface as if not much has changed, the dynamic between the candidates and the issues they will be debating are significantly different. New political issues—and new fiery comments from Donald Trump—have arisen since the last debate, and viewers can expect a stage that will not suffer for its smaller size in the entertainment department. The ‘kids table’ and primetime debates will air at 6 and 9 P.M. Eastern respectively on the Fox Business Network.

Perhaps most noticeably, there will be fewer candidates on the big stage—Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul, the candidates polling 8th and 9th, were sent back to the kids table. Following the announcement of the primetime debate lineup, Paul’s campaign announced that Paul would ‘boycott’ the debate as they believed he met the polling criteria. Fiorina, however, still plans to participate, and she along with Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum will take the stage tonight at 6 P.M. Paul’s campaign perhaps has a legitimate complaint—Fox Business Network was notably and perhaps intentionally vague about their criteria for debate stage qualification—but the network has refused to back down, and accordingly Paul will not be onstage tonight.

Expect also to hear significant discussion about Hillary Clinton and the latest updates in her email scandal. The most recently-released batch of Clinton’s emails contains one email in which Clinton instructs an aide to convert and send a classified document through nonclassified means to bypass security restrictions. While this fact in of itself may earn Clinton a long-awaited FBI investigation, there is no evidence to suggest that her instructions were carried out. However, expect all the candidates to mention Clinton frequently as they each attempt to rile the ire of voters.

Another issue guaranteed to come up at the debate is the recent detainment of American sailors in Iran. The capture of the Navy sailors, which occurred the day before the Iran nuclear deal was set to go into effect, was slammed by opponents of the multinational nuke deal, who believe the agreement would embolden Iran and its leaders to act more aggressively toward the United States. Likely to be cited is the video of the fleet commander apologizing to the Iranians for treading on their waters, as both his likely coerced apology and the female sailor wearing a hijab in the background will be drawn upon to showcase the perception among Republicans of Obama’s foreign policy ineptitude.