Before the results for the Iowa caucuses were even tallied, Rubio’s fellow Floridian had already begun launching attacks. The Donald has demanded that Iowa throw out Senator Cruz’s vote and move the remaining candidates up one position.
Advertisement
Then there are the three governors, clumped together in the second tier. Most polling before the Iowa caucuses included a wide range of contenders including Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who stood at 10 percent in this poll, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who stood at 9 percent; these seem to have fallen further behind in post-Iowa polling, leaving Rubio and Cruz to duel for the spot.
“I don’t think he’ll endorse anybody when he drops out, unless it is clear who is going to win the nomination”, said Dworkin. “That is what we’re doing and anything that I have to say in this campaign is in my voice and not anybody else’s”, Christie said in a Fox News interview.
Dominick Rubio, 7, joins his father, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. speaks during a town hall meeting in Laconia, N.H., Wednesday Feb. 3, 2016.
The debate will put an exclamation point on two exhaustive weeks of campaigning and comes at a time when candidates like Christie are clawing to hang on.
Donald Trump maintains a substantial lead in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary, but his two principal rivals, Sens. And, according to the ABC rules, Carly Fiorina doesn’t have enough support in the polls to earn herself a podium onstage.
The survey included 653 likely Republican voters. This indicates a stable lead for Trump, who took 31 percent in the same poll last week.
Bush, the former Florida governor who was an early favorite but has languished through the fall and winter, is on a crucial mission to stage a comeback.
Bush hasn’t reserved his attacks for Rubio. If there is a mutually beneficial relationship to be found in a Christie endorsement for Bush, Dworkin said that opportunity will arrive if and when the Christie campaign runs out of money and Bush completely reverses his slide in the polls – not after the returns come in on Tuesday. Bush asked at an event Thursday in Derry. Christie has trained a series of deeply dismissive comments at Rubio. All week, he has called Rubio “the boy in the bubble”. But it also can make him look weak and callow.
“You all decided that he’s now all of a sudden become the anointed one”, Christie said.
But this past week, they’ve homed in on one particular punching bag: Marco Rubio.
In another ad, Rubio is a human weathervane: “Just another Washington politician you can’t trust”.
Rubio is trying to stay on message.
Marco Rubio, who has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, is trying to cast Hillary Clinton as the extremist on the issue.
Advertisement
Ashcraft, 51, president of a nonprofit organization that supports people with disabilities, has his own advice for New Hampshire voters. And it’s much harder to dodge the blows when everyone will be in the same boxing ring. Instead Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas whom Trump had systematically worked to savage in the final weeks before the caucuses, rolled to victory on the strength of his very un-Trumpian focus on building a grass-roots turnout organization.
