DES MOINES — Ted Cruz finally got his moment in the center of the debate stage — but with Donald Trump absent, he became the main target who had no one else to punch.

As the Republican poll leader commanded a rival event down the road, part of Trump’s boycott of the debate just four days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Cruz engaged in some shadowboxing while withstanding tough criticism from a number of rivals on the stage.


Responding to Fox moderator Megyn Kelly's question about what kind of message it sends the people of Iowa to skip the primetime debate, Ted Cruz vowed to make the state "fly-to country" when he becomes president in 2017, not "flyover country."

He then launched into a deadpan impression of Trump, his chief rival in the polls. “Now secondly, let me say, I’m a maniac, and everyone on this stage is fat, stupid and ugly. And Ben, you’re a terrible surgeon. Now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way,” Cruz remarked, “I want to thank everyone here for showing the men and women of Iowa the respect to show up and make the case to the people of this state and the people of the country why each of us believes we would make the best commander in chief.”

Marco Rubio, who is rising in the polls and likely to finish third behind Cruz and Trump in Iowa, followed Cruz by turning from Trump, who he dismissed as “an entertainer” and “the greatest show on earth,” to Hillary Clinton, a target who enables him to emphasize his primary selling point—electability.

“If I’m our nominee, we will unite this party and we will win this election,” Rubio said.

Sparring intensified between Rubio and Cruz later during a contentious exchange over immigration reform and the 2013 Gang of Eight legislation Rubio co-sponsored.

Fox News put both candidates on the defensive with questions, featuring video clips, that felt like attack ads. After a sequence of clips showing Rubio vowing as a Senate candidate to oppose a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, something he then supported when it became part of the bill he helped write, Cruz and Bush went on the attack. Cruz blasted Rubio for “standing with Barack Obama and Chuck Shumer” and “supporting amnesty,” while Bush, who supported the bill, criticized Rubio for changing his position and now opposing a path to citizenship.

“You cut and run,” he told Rubio, who came back at Bush by pointing out that he, too, used to support a pathway to full citizenship and no longer does.

But Cruz got the same treatment, as Fox News played a clip of his speech on the Senate floor in support of an amendment to that 2013 immigration reform bill that he framed as a “compromise” to allow people to come out of the shadows.

“Was that all an act?” Kelly asked Cruz as the clip finished.

From there, Rubio and Rand Paul both piled on, asserting that Cruz isn’t the ideological purist he claims to be but an opportunist.

“This is the lie Ted’s campaign is built on,” said Rubio, turning to his rival. "The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign you've been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes."

As a number of candidates were criticizing him early on, Cruz snapped at moderator Chris Wallace, complaining that too many of the questions were inviting his rivals to dump on him.

Which led, of course, to another crack about Trump.

“If you keep asking these mean questions, I may have to leave the stage,” Cruz joked.

Following up, Rubio played it straight.

“Don’t worry, I’m not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me,” he said.

But Cruz, who had clearly prepared for a debate with Trump and the possibility that he might make a late, surprise appearance, remained on the defensive much of the night. Near the end of the debate, Fox cut to a shot of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad in the crowd before asking Cruz why the governor urged Iowans against voting for him because of his opposition to subsidies for the state's ethanol producers.

Cruz was left spending his final moments on camera before giving his closing statement explaining a position that may be his biggest liability with Iowa voters. “I don’t believe Washington should be picking winners and losers, and I don’t believe there should be any subsidies and tax credits whatsoever," he said.

After the debate wrapped, Cruz said the event had an undeniably different feel. "I will say this, the exchanges were much more civil. You didn't have any gratuitous insults," he said.

But Trump still dominated the night, leading searches on Google and mentions on Twitter, even though he wasn’t on stage.

An ebullient Trump took the stage at his fundraiser for veterans — held at Drake University, just three miles from the debate venue — and declared victory in his war with Fox News. Trump boycotted the debate after Fox refused to remove Kelly as a moderator and then mocked Trump for threatening to walk.

The businessman announced that Fox had changed its tone and been “very nice to me” in recent hours and boasted about the media swarm at his event. “We’re actually told we have more cameras than they do by quite a bit,” he said, comparing the media presence at his event to the Academy Awards.

He also announced that he had asked his pregnant daughter, Ivanka, to give birth in Iowa. “It would be so great,” he said. “I would definitely win! I want that to happen so badly!"

The world won't know if Trump's boycott bet has paid off until Iowans head to the caucuses on Monday. Trump’s appeal, to many of his fans, is in his strength and negotiating skills, and his rivals — in particular, Cruz — have portrayed his boycott as cowardice.

But for Trump, boycotting is a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose proposition: he’s still dominating the political narrative while side-stepping a last-minute barrage of attacks on his conservative credentials.

As the night, a made-for-TV split screen political moment unlike any in recent memory, came to an end, Trump expressed his satisfaction on Twitter, again differentiating himself from the “politicians” who participated in the debate. “An unbelievable night in Iowa with our great Veterans! We raised $6,000,000.00 while the politicians talked! #GOPDebate” he tweeted.

Ahead of the debate, the latest polls from Iowa showed Trump with a slight edge over Cruz, his closest rival. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is ahead by about 6 points, 33 percent, to Cruz’s 26, with Marco Rubio in a distant third with about 14 percent support but showing signs of late momentum.

The latest feud between Trump and Fox apparently started after the real estate mogul tried to pressure the network into booting Kelly from the debate, claiming there was no way she could be unbiased. Kelly gained heightened notoriety after pointedly asking Trump at the first debate about his supposed “war on women.”But Fox refused to give in, issuing a biting press statement on Tuesday saying, “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

That mocking statement was apparently the turning point for Trump, who claimed Thursday evening that Fox News had apologized to him.

"I've been in six debates. I've done well in every debate, everybody said the last one, but they said I won most of them," Trump told CNN's Brianna Keilar aboard his plane on Thursday evening, remarking that he "enjoyed the process" of the debates, as long as they were fair.

"And by the time they apologized, I said look, the problem is we now have a big event scheduled," Trump said, as Keilar interrupted to confirm that someone from the network had called to apologize.

Trump responded, "Yes, Fox could not have been nicer."

"You got an apology?" Keilar asked.

"Yes, and they could not have been nicer," Trump said, declining to say who provided the apology, though saying later that he talked to "top people."

Asked whether he would have attended the debate had he not already scheduled his event for veterans, Trump said, "I might have." But he hastened to add that the situation by now "had taken on a life of its own."