Bush on Friday condemned Cruz and Rubio with faint praise. Yet he’s not backing off a message focused on religious conservative values, which typically don’t play well in New England.
Advertisement
Each is desperate for a breakout moment that could help him win over New Hampshire voters who have historically made up their minds at the last minute.
He spent months on the campaign trail reading off his own poll numbers – citing them to demonstrate how strong he was and how weak his opponents must be. He showed energy and emotion in front of more than 700 people jammed into the Bedford school. He praised the voters for asking “real” questions, winning laughs and applause when he said “the questions on the debate stage will be probably really stupid to be honest with you”.
Rubio’s momentum after a stronger-than-expected performance in Iowa complicates that hope.
For those teetering on the edge of relevancy – including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – Saturday night’s faceoff in New Hampshire’s largest city marks their last and best opportunity to rescue their White House ambitions.
A Super PAC allied with Rubio, Conservative Solutions PAC, returned fire mocking the lavish spending by Bush and his allies and faulting him for attacking other Republicans. The three, however, are within the poll’s margin of error of 5.8 percentage points.
Bernie Sanders is expressing confidence about his chances in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Donald Trump also was rejoining his competitors in the debate arena Saturday night after having skipped the previous faceoff in Iowa.
He finished second to Ted Cruz in the leadoff caucuses last Monday and some rivals sense weakness even though the billionaire businessman is the favorite in New Hampshire polling.
That appears to have irked candidates who have put in substantially more legwork than Cruz in the Granite State.
The Cruz campaign’s decision to suggest in the midst of the Iowa caucuses that Ben Carson was dropping out of the presidential race is causing the candidate headaches in New Hampshire.
Christie was combative from the start, ripping Rubio’s record in the Senate and accusing him of turning his back on his immigration proposal.
“All of the sudden, we see polls that see Sen”.
Rene Paquin, a middle-aged mobility instructor for blind people, said he thought this year’s election was so important that he went for the first time to a campaign rally. The former Florida governor mocked Sen.
During a town hall in Henniker on Thursday, Christie mercilessly mocked the fact that one of Rubio’s newest surrogates, former Pennsylvania Sen.
So far, Bush’s “adult in the room” argument (a version of which, Marco Rubio is also trying to make) has failed to resonate as his campaign of inevitability has been overshadowed by Trump’s wild pronouncements and Cruz’s sharp rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean he should.
But Christie said the USA has to boost its profile on the global stage, but he fell short of saying he supports military action against North Korea.
And some Kasich fans shared a resignation that Cruz had politically outfoxed their preferred candidate. “The guy needs therapy”, Bush said of Trump.
“See Marco, Marco, the thing is this, when you’re president of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person”, he said.
Advertisement
Republicans at Christie and Kasich events described Cruz as out of touch with the area’s values.
