Jeb Bush is actively exploring a run for the U.S. presidency in 2016, making the former Florida governor the first major Republican to move toward a possible candidacy. While Cruz, the Son of a pastor, won in the predominantly white Midwestern state of Iowa, where 28% of the population self identifies as evangelical Christians, he will not have an easy run in the liberal northwestern state of New Hampshire which holds its primaries on February 9.
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New Hampshire’s primary is where many “establishment” candidates – Bush, Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich – have staked their campaigns.
He’s decent, honest – everything we need in a president.
He will resume his place at center stage as the leader in most recent polls, but his rivals sense weakness. Marco Rubio in a surprisingly strong third right on real estate mogul Donald Trump’s tail, the three governor candidates remaining in the race are specifically targeting Rubio as their biggest competitor. But reports in The New York Times this week that Bush is teaming up with Christie to try to knock Rubio out in New Hampshire make Bush seem like a sore loser, not the honorable man he’s always been.
There will be no undercard debate.
Cruz has the benefit of low expectations in a state where the GOP electorate is less conservative than in Iowa. ABC didn’t invite Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive whose scrappy showing at an early undercard earned her a prime-time spot; she’s protested her exclusion to the Republican National Committee. “We’re seeing voters and they were seeing results and earning delegates”. Cruz is a close third at 15 percent.
“If you want to come visit me from the next week after New Hampshire, I’ll be in SC”. Carson and Cruz share a much of the same voter base. Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson criticized Cruz for his campaign apparently telling Iowa voters Carson had suspended his operation.
“The questions on the debate stage will probably be really stupid”, he said.
TRUMP: Which Trump will show up? But his perceived appeal to those voters may be the very thing that limits his potential in primaries beyond New Hampshire.
Donald Trump, who finished second among Republicans in Iowa, stepped up the pace of his campaign and acknowledged he should have had a stronger ground operation in Iowa. Will the debate be on the issues or on Trump, who acknowledged this week that skipping the face-to-face debate to instead host a fundraiser for veterans’ organizations likely cost him votes?
“I don’t advise him, but if I gave him advice, I would say: “Why don’t you interrupt like the other people do” during the debates, she said. “Yet ever Trump, he insisted it was worth it, as he raised “$6 million for the vets in one hour”. He needs to be able to show he can participate in the fray. Rick Santorum, who has endorsed Rubio, stumbling in an interview to name one Rubio accomplishment.
“There’s nothing personal about this at all”, Bush said.
GOP consultant Ron Bonjean said they have to “get into the top three or four”; Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, asserted that someone needed to get ahead of Rubio, “and right now that means at least a second-place finish”; and Anderson asserted that “by placing in the top three, there is a path to viability”.
Barbara Bush said she spends “half the year, minus a day” at the family’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. When you’re running for office, you have to be positive.
So Mrs. Bush if you are listening and have some extra time and money on your hands I think the American people would like a sweet no-nonsense gal as our first female President and if you do win maybe you could invite us over for some lemonade.
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Christie has made the exchange with Ashcraft a staple of his New Hampshire stump speech. He was scheduled to hold his 100th on Friday – on track to surpass the 100 that John McCain held in 2008.
