Marco Rubio pummeled in New Hampshire: What now for the Republicans?

Chris Christie wrote a check to Planned Parenthood.

My first thought was, “I hope the neighbors don’t keep me up late as they celebrate”.

He’s holding a party for supporters to watch the results come in Manchester Tuesday evening.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was headed for fifth place. “For example, a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Obamacare”, Cruz told reporters as he walked into the diner.

She already began pointing ahead to the next primary, in SC.

Rubio’s shaky performance Saturday is likely to cement the impression that he lacks an intangible quality, some part of that elusive amalgam that makes a candidate “presidential”.

The view in the top echelons of the Rubio campaign has always been that debates can’t help candidates, they can only hurt. A win here would have made hm the consensus favorite. Then the debate happened, and Christie quashed the long-awaited Rubio moment.

That’s because the USA senator from Texas, fresh off an expectations-beating showing in New Hampshire, is now staring down a string of contests with much higher stakes, beginning with the next primary on February 20 in SC. But they’re also hungry, they’re hungry for solutions, ‘ she said. “He is a very messed up man to say that”. Cruz also sent a warning shot at any other candidates shifting their sights south. But the other big victor could be Bush.

For weeks, Cruz has talked about SC as the site of a rubber match between himself and Trump, assuming they would each notch a win in the first two early voting states.

“You want to have a president who went through adversity in a campaign”, Rubio said.

Not only that, he’s got the money. And the OH governor is not particularly well-suited to pick up votes in the next primary, which is in SC. It is a “dirty trick” that is clearly being used to torpedo the proven Washington outsider, Ted Cruz. Cruz isn’t competing in the establishment lane.

Marco Rubio came into New Hampshire with the hope of consolidating establishment Republican support behind him.

But he lines up well against the Donald in SC, a good chunk of which is in the original Bible Belt.

Speaking on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday, Rubio seemed to acknowledge he had squandered an opportunity in New Hampshire.

He’ll be remembered for having finished off Rubio.

As for Christie, he performed his role in this drama and he performed it well. All I’m saying is our next president has to be someone that undoes the damage Barack Obama has done to this country.

UPDATE: Christie just finished what was a pretty classy concession speech – though he did not yet fully concede.

In the two-person race for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen.

She was excluded from the ABC debate the weekend before New Hampshire, and she is not expected to rise above single digits in Tuesday’s vote. “Nobody is going to mess with us”.

He added “We need a change of clothes” to inject a bit of levity into the situation. With just $1.1 million in the bank, Christie has the smallest war chest left in the field and he notches a measly 2.3 percent polling average in SC according to Real Clear Politics.

But Christie went out gracefully. A woman in the audience shouted something, and Trump stopped his speech.

“Winning isn’t easy”, he said.

“Not surprised; that’s who he is”, the New Jersey governor said Tuesday of the Rubio town hall moment Monday where the senator followed a sentence saying “we know how hard it is to instill our values in our kids, instead of the values they try to ram down our throats” with this similar sentence – “In the 21st Century it’s become harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church, instead of the values they try to ram down our throats in the movies, in music, in popular culture”.