“She is the probably the most meaningful endorsement”, Bush said, according to CNN.
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And the campaign benefited from a subtle reboot – including more press access and less debate prep – after Rubio’s disastrous showing in New Hampshire almost torpedoed his campaign.
The incident was not the first time Cruz has come under fire for alleged campaign tactics. The bigger question will be whether Rubio’s detour into loserville in the Granite State and Cruz’s inherent limitations have given Trump the high and easy road to the nomination. Tim Scott, who had grown close to Rubio over the years, including when the two attended Scott’s church just outside of Charleston a couple years back. In September, she indicated that she would be interested in filling out the Republican ticket as the 2016 vice presidential candidate – a prospect that now carries a distinct possibility if Rubio secures his party’s nomination.
Explaining her decision, Haley said “I wanted somebody with fight, I wanted somebody with passion, I wanted somebody who had conviction to do the right thing”. She knuckled under to political pressure and she went too quick and didn’t care what SC residents thought.
“I was watching and it was incredible, some of the pundits said, ‘If a couple of the candidates drop out, you add their numbers together, it would equal Trump, ‘” he said. Marco Rubio for president, lending Rubio a major boost as his campaign continues to recover from his disastrous run in New Hampshire.
“South Carolina is a microcosm of the bigger struggle of the party”, says Mr. Felkel.
The same poll, just days earlier and prior to the Haley endorsement, had shown Trump with 35 percent, Cruz at 19, and Rubio at 15.
Nikki Haley’s endorsement this week of Florida Sen. “I think everyone now acknowledges that’s me”, he said.
An outside group backing Ted Cruz is training its sights on Marco Rubio in the final days ahead of Saturday’s S.C. GOP primary. Rubio tweeted Wednesday afternoon, along with a link to the news on his campaign’s website. But Sullivan was hardly the only operative with deep SC ties – even Rubio’s super PAC had hired Jon Lerner, a consultant with deep ties to Haley.
As the candidates prepare for a contest that is quickly turning from individual battles into a nationwide race, Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich could begin to appear as afterthoughts as both polled in the single digits Saturday.
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Rubio’s success in SC dates back to 2009, when he was running as a tea party insurgent in the 2010 midterms against then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the then-Republican who later became a Democrat. To him, the trio of endorsements for Rubio carried some weight. “There is one person to blame here, a person filled with hate, a person that does not define SC, and we are going to focus on that one person”, she said immediately after the shooting.
