Top Moments of Final GOP Debate Before New Hampshire

Marco Rubio on Sunday defended his performance in Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, in which he was widely panned for coming off as scripted in a tense exchange with Chris Christie.

Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who are vying with Rubio for support from establishment Republicans in Tuesday’s New Hampshire nominating contest, compared Rubio’s experience in the Senate to that of President Barack Obama, who also was a first-term senator when he was elected.

“It’s abundantly clear that he didn’t fight for the legislation”, Christie sternly said, accusing Rubio of running away from his own bill. The governor lunged: “Marco, the thing is this”, he began, “when you’re president of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorised 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person”. “There it is everybody”.

“Here’s the bottom line: This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true”, Rubio said.

Stephanopoulos noted that when Chris Christie called Rubio for delivering canned speeches, Rubio repeated the speech. Rubio is in second place, behind front-runner Donald Trump.

Mr Rubio was booed for lashing back at Mr Christie by accusing him of dragging his feet over returning to New Jersey when his state was hit by a deadly East Coast snowstorm last month.

We’ve heard Donald Trump swear, insult and offend. Over the summer and through the fall, billionaire reality TV star Donald Trump led in national polls and dominated news coverage.

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”, Rubio told anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump is “going to have to show some in depth knowledge of the foreign policy issues” in order to alleviate his reservations about Trump being ready to be commander in chief.

On the Democratic side, New Hampshire favorite Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton who narrowly won Iowa are avoiding predictions about Tuesday and looking beyond to SC and Nevada, the next two states up in the nomination process. Marco Rubio’s performance at Saturday’s GOP debate on ABC. But he called Kasich a good governor – but said “I’m just better“. “That is downright wrong”, said Mr Bush. He claimed Sunday that the debate hall was filled with donors, particularly Bush’s. “The reason they’re not loving me is because I don’t want their money”, Trump said. “I can’t say the same thing, I can’t say it. My mind works differently”, Bush said. “But his ideas are going to create incredible dangers for young people”, Bush told the crowd.

Cruz bypassed an early chance to tussle with Trump, refusing to repeat his criticism from earlier this week that he did not have the temperament for the White House. “While Trump’s placement as the top finisher seems fairly secure at this point, the margin of victory and final order of the remaining candidates are still very much up for grabs”, Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth polling, said in a release.