US Republican frontrunner Donald Trump faced attacks from his rivals in the final TV debate of the year as candidates fought to prove which of them could best keep America safe.
The property billionaire is still leading the national polls with Texas senator Ted Cruz in second place. However, Cruz is leading in the all-important Iowa polls.
Trump's rivals lined up to oust him from the top spot.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was the most aggressive toward him, saying: "So Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners, but he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe."
Trump later hit back saying that with Jeb Bush's attitude, America will never be great again - a line that was booed by members of the audience.
Trump was unrepentant over his call for Muslims to be banned from America, explaining: "We're talking about security. We're not talking about religion. We're talking about security.
"Our country is out of control. People are pouring across the southern border. I will build a wall. It will be a great wall. People will not come in unless they come in legally. Drugs will not pour through that wall."
The focus of the debate was on a single question - who can protect America from the terror threat? Texas senator Ted Cruz outlined his hawkish approach on how to tackle IS.
"Right now, Obama is launching between 15 and 30 air attacks a day," he said.
"It is photo op foreign policy. We need to use overwhelming air power. We need to be arming the Kurds. We need to be fighting and killing ISIS where they are."
Marco Rubio criticised Cruz for voting for a bill that allowed the end of the National Security Agency's program collecting and storing phone metadata.
"This is not just the most capable, it is the most sophisticated terror threat we have ever faced," Rubio said. "We are now at a time when we need more tools, not less tools. And that tool we lost, the metadata programme, was a valuable tool that we no longer have at our disposal."
Florida senator Marco Rubio is pitching himself as the slick, informed and decisive Trump alternative - but he and the eight others on the stage know that time is running out to steal the celebrity billionaire's thunder.
Amid the bickering and personal insults there was no clear winner. Trump offered much of the same lines he's delivered in the past: he's going to make America great again by building a wall and keeping out Muslims.
He could shut down the internet and target IS fighters' families. Ideas that might sound too outrageous to garner much support, but Trump is proving that theory wrong over and over again.
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