Candidates in the already unpredictable and extraordinary presidential race will leave behind the frozen farmland of Iowa and descend on unseasonably warm New Hampshire Tuesday for a frenzied weeklong sprint to the primary.
Advertisement
The results vaulted Rubio to second place.
“For the next eight days you are the most powerful people in the world because the American presidency is the single most important job in the world”, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey told a crowd in Hopkinton on Monday. By contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush released a full-page newspaper ad attacking Trump and was airing a two-minute campaign ad in New Hampshire featuring clips of Trump’s on-air insults. A surging Rubio makes it even more hard for Bush to perform well in New Hampshire, a state he is banking on to revive a flagging campaign that garnered just 3 percent of the Iowa vote.
In the volatile Republican contest, at least four candidates – Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Governor John Kasich of OH, and Christie – will be fighting to emerge as the main alternative to businessman Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, popular outsider candidates who together captured about half of the GOP vote in Monday’s Iowa caucuses. A repeat strong showing from Rubio would all but anoint him as that establishment bet. Their barbs became sharper Tuesday.
Perhaps mindful of Christie’s critique, Rubio’s campaign made a point to hold several brief press availabilities during Wednesday’s town hall swing. “I think his balloon has been punctured”, Viguerie said.
The reality is that Christie, Bush and Kasich are the ones who most need to step up and prove they are viable candidates, said Republican Party of Charlotte County Chairman Bill Folchi. The candidates will have one more chance to improve their standing with New Hampshire voters at a debate Saturday, January 6 starting at 8 p.m. Eastern.
Kasich, who has recently been rising in the polls while scoring key endorsements from the Boston Globe and New York Times, has dedicated as much time to New Hampshire as Christie.
Rubio’s campaign reported more than $1 million that was raised by registered Washington lobbyists in the second half of 2015 – more than double what that group of people raised for Bush in the same time period.
While Rubio was criticizing various rival candidates at times during the interviews, Trump’s name never came up.
Just as Rubio now has a strong argument that he is the preferred candidate of mainstream Republicans, Cruz’s victory in Iowa should help consolidate his support among staunch conservatives and keep him in the top tier of candidates. Newly minted Iowa Caucus victor Texas Sen.
A three- or four-way contest presents a more complicated scenario that likely favors one of the anti-establishment candidates.
Instead, Rubio proposes “finishing the wall” between the United States and Mexico, as well as improving the government’s tracking of foreigners entering and leaving the country. But for now the GOP nomination remains wide open.
Advertisement
“New Hampshire voters expect a personal connection with the people they are going to vote for”.
