Signs of ‘Marco-mentum’ for Rubio In New Hampshire

Bush took the reaction as a sign that he’s doing well enough in New Hampshire to merit attention from rivals – even though on Wednesday he had to implore a town hall audience to “Please clap”. Thursday night’s intensifying jabs and pokes gave voters something to talk about. One or more of them might have to make a decision between committing resources to the Florida or the OH primaries, which are the same day. As NPR’s Scott Detrow recently reported, there is Marco-mentum in the Granite State – something a flurry of new polling data support. His leading opponents, Trump and Cruz, have both taken more moderate “let states decide” attitudes. Both Christie and Bush have been making the case that Rubio lacks the experience needed to be president, and Bush has especially been trying to compare Rubio to Barack Obama circa 2008. The candidate who has openly boasted about running a non-traditional campaign admitted Tuesday that he “didn’t have much of a ground game” in Iowa, and that he is attempting to be more “understated and statesman-like”.

Cruz, the victor in last week’s Iowa caucuses, was struggling to put complaints about his campaign’s tactics in the rearview mirror, as new evidence emerged of what challenger Ben Carson has dubbed “dirty tricks”.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham of SC, who is campaigning for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, said Rubio could not win a general election because of his positions on abortion and immigration.

And in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Christie’s attacks grew more personal.

“He’s honest, dependable, loyal, relatively amusing”, she told CBS as the younger Bush beamed.

“What happened to Jeb Bush?” one of them begins, stressing that Bush’s campaign “spent millions” and then “tanked”. In contrast to the throngs of Donald Trump supporters who appear to applaud at the drop of a hat, Bush appeared to beg for applause after his latest speech to New Hampshire voters.

The Democrats, meanwhile, were still locked in a bitter dispute over who was the better advocate for the party’s liberal agenda.

But that’s what you’ve had to do for someone who’s never done anything like that. Sanders countered that Clinton “does represent the establishment”.

The punches are varied – some say the first-term Florida senator is inexperienced. He spoke of Wall Street executives who destroyed the economy and walked away with no criminal record.

“Believe me, she’s going to look back at her fight with Bernie Sanders as the good old days”, he said. “We’d love to have her endorsement, but I’m not sure that she’ll even be endorsing”, he said.

All four campaigns are banking on elected officials and high-powered donors to rally around whichever campaign emerges on top in New Hampshire. “We have to look at the threats that we face right now”.

Cruz, in third place with 13 percent, didn’t get any kind of a bump despite his Iowa win.

“I understand that in the media newsrooms and in the Washington establishment circles, Marco is the chosen one”, Mr. Cruz said outside a sports bar here.

Williams also says Kasich can “rise above the din of toxicity infecting our national dialogue” and appeal to a wide array of voters within what he sees as a divided Republican Party, which he sees as “in trouble”.