Marco Rubio Speaks at 4 Town Halls in New Hampshire

That’s a very bad thing for an establishment badly in need of finding a unity candidate soon if they want to have any hope of unseating the two favorites – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz – as the race moves into March (and probably later).

By contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush released a full-page newspaper ad attacking Trump and was airing a two-minute campaign ad in New Hampshire featuring clips of Trump’s on-air insults.

Opening a town hall meeting at a pub in Lebanon on Wednesday, Christie labeled the 44-year-old first-term senator as the untested “boy in the bubble” while Christie himself is an old “nicked-up pick-up truck”.

But, as Rubio criss-crossed New Hampshire, holding back-to-back town halls, he seemed reluctant to fight back. Including Huckabee, five either current or former governors – Texas’ Rick Perry, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and New York’s George Pataki – have dropped out on the Republican side (and two on the Democratic side).

Rubio said he can appeal to evangelicals, who make up 60 percent of S.C. GOP voters.

“He needs to coalesce the vote before he can challenge Trump”, said Republican pollster Greg Strimple, who is unaligned with any of the campaigns. And when Bush spoke at the Alpine Club, among those introducing him was Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator and governor whose father was also governor. His brother, former President George W. Bush, also appeared in a new ad on Friday praising Jeb as having “a good heart and a strong backbone” and being able to unite the country. Be vague. Insist that you are going to shock the world right up until the time you don’t. He has set out to blunt Rubio’s momentum going into the first-in-the-nation primary the after Rubio took third-place in Iowa.

Cantor says Bush sticks “to the principles of limited government” and “is the one who will never let you down”.

So why all this animus expended on an alleged lightweight who finished third in Iowa, and whom polls suggest might finish second and possibly third again in New Hampshire?

But Bush’s performance as a presidential candidate has been viewed as awkward even among his supporters, and there is now a stronger sentiment swirling around establishment Republican circles than loyalty to the Bushes: terror of the notion of a Trump or Cruz nomination.

But there was no phenomenon like Trump in the 2012 race, and there have been rumblings that the GOP establishment is already urging Republicans to coalesce around one candidate. People cheered Rubio’s arrival. Cullen says that’s a big question facing Rubio this week. “Maybe as I walk into the ballot box”.

“Young Rubio must think New Hampshire a bunch of rubes”, McQuaid wrote. The signal they are getting from Romney allies is that he is unlikely to endorse before the New Hampshire primary.

He slammed the “fawning stories of how the Republican “establishment” seeks to coalesce behind him” and downplayed Rubio’s recent polling surge. “Rubio has done while he is in the United States Senate; I can’t find one”, Christie said at a news conference after accepting the endorsement of the New Hampshire Speaker of the House. Other Republicans are hammering Rubio for being too inexperienced.

“Almost all of these candidates have never lost an election”.