Donald Trump told WMUR that he felt the pressure at last night’s debate.
Said Trump: “I’m very, very happy the debate is over with, but I enjoyed the experience. It was a lot of pressure. It was a lot of pressure on the debate, to be honest with you, for everybody, not just for me.”
He added: “I’ve always like pressure to be honest with you, I actually like pressure and we came out very well.”
From the new Monmouth poll in New Hampshire:
Barely half (49%) of likely Republican primary voters say that they are completely decided on their candidate choice just days before Tuesday’s election. Another 31% have a strong preference but are still open to considering other candidates. One-fifth either have only a slight preference (12%) or are really undecided (9%).
Franklin Foer: “With his few remaining breaths as a candidate, however, Bush may have a path out from his debacle, an actual shot at the nomination. For months, he tried and failed to crush Sen. Marco Rubio. But he wielded the hatchet like a man who would rather be sailing. What he needed was a wingman. Last night, Gov. Chris Christie, with his bully’s instinct for weakness, baited the golden boy into choking—thereby, relieving Bush of all the throbbing pressure to stage a miraculous New Hampshire comeback.”
“Nobody — not the media, not the GOP establishment — can now consider Rubio a fait accompli. Republicans can see the fear in Rubio’s eyes, and it has panicked them, confirming all their nagging anxieties. There was a reason that the party has resisted its urge to fully rally around the perfect paper candidate.”
“As Republicans scrounge for their center-right tribune, they will find themselves coming full circle. Christie has no cash and no organization beyond New Hampshire. Kasich is out-of-synch with his party; his moderation won’t play outside a few suburban pockets. Which only leaves one.”
A new Monmouth University poll in New Hampshire finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 30%, followed by John Kasich at 14%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Jeb Bush at 13%, Ted Cruz at 12% and Chris Christie at 6%.
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton, 52% to 42%.
A new Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce poll finds Trump leading with 31%, followed by Cruz at 16%, Rubio at 15%, Kasich at 11% and Bush at 10%.
One the Democratic side, Sanders leads Clinton, 51% to 44%.
Hillary Clinton went after Sen. Marco Rubio over his defense of his opposition to abortions, Politico reports.
Said Clinton: “It’s really quite sad to see what Senator Rubio is becoming in this campaign. Everybody understands that he is diving as far right as he possibly can. I’ve been on record for many years about where I stand on abortion, how it should be safe and legal. And I’ve had the same position that I’ve had for a very long time. But what’s really going on here is an effort by the Republicans to keep pushing as far as they can to overturn Roe v. Wade, to defund Planned Parenthood, to make accusations and attacks that are really extreme.”
“The Iowa Democratic Party has discovered errors in the results from five precincts, but the outcome of the Iowa caucuses remains the same,” the Des Moines Register reports.
According to the new tally, Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders, 49.84% to 49.59%
Joe Scarborough: “Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign has spent the past six months shopping a story to news organizations that suggests my reporting has been influenced by some long-held personal grudge between Rubio and myself. It’s an interesting narrative, but it’s not true… I have never met Rubio.”
“I think the whole race changed last night. There was a march among some of the chattering class to anoint Senator Rubio. I think after last night that’s over.”
— Gov. Chris Christie, quoted by Politico, suggesting there “could be four or five tickets now out of New Hampshire, because the race is so unsettled.”
Jeb Bush “didn’t hesitate to join the pile on of Sen. Marco Rubio’s debate performance on Saturday night,” Politico reports.
Said Bush: “He’s so scripted, he’s so gifted. He’s a great speaker, but he came across as totally scripted and kind of robotic.”
The 7News/UMass Lowell New Hampshire tracking poll finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 36%, followed by Marco Rubio at 14%, Ted Cruz at 13%, Jeb Bush at 10% and John Kasich at 9%.
Interestingly, Rubio’s “surge” seems to have stalled even before last night’s debate.
Brian Beutler: “The Republican establishment’s fondest hope before Saturday night’s debate was that Marco Rubio would deliver yet another solid (if unmemorable) debate performance, and that Donald Trump would fall on his face—compounding the damage he suffered in Iowa, and surrendering more, if not all, of his lead in New Hampshire over to Rubio, who’s in second place and climbing.”
“Instead, the establishment got almost exactly the opposite.”
James Hohmann: “Rubio’s loss means that there will be at least four tickets, and maybe even five, out of New Hampshire on Tuesday night.”
Jonathan Chait, back in March 2011:
“Do you get the feeling that ‘Marco Rubio’ is not an actual human being at all but some kind of computer program designed by the Republican Party? Imagine they had the technical know-how to create a candidate like this. What would they come up with? They’d come up with Marco Rubio, a cinematically handsome Latino from Florida who hews to the Tea Party line while spitting out patriotic cliches that sound as if they were programmed like a computer.”
“I’m not saying I’m sure Rubio is a robot. I’m just saying that I want to watch him walk through a metal detector.”
The botched introductions of the GOP presidential candidates was one of the more memorable moments of last night’s debate.
Politico: “Marco Rubio knew exactly what he was doing on Saturday night. The problem was he flubbed it.”
“Rubio awkwardly pivoted four times to a well-rehearsed line that President Obama ‘knows exactly what he’s doing’ as he tried to drill home the idea that he’s the inevitable general election candidate – an unforced error that his rivals pounced on and that quickly went viral.”
Dan Balz: “Rubio knew the attacks were coming, but instead of answering them directly, he sought to change the subject. Once, twice, three times he offered a quick counterpunch and then slid off the criticisms to turn to an attack on President Obama, repeating his language almost word for word and drawing boos from the audience.”
“Frustration inside Bush world has begun to spill into open view, with even the most outspoken family loyalists admitting it may soon be time to move on,” Politico reports.
“Many donors and influential supporters, bound by a deep and longstanding connection to the patrician clan, say they will remain with Bush no matter what. Yet others, deeply distressed by the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and eager for the Republican Party to rally around a mainstream candidate with viability, say they have come to terms with Bush’s long odds and the possibility they will eventually get behind someone else.”
The Onion: Advisors hopeful Jeb Bush finally has momentum to end campaign
“Sen. Ted Cruz knowingly misstated CNN’s reporting during Saturday’s Republican primary debate, despite the fact that CNN’s reporting was correct all along,” Dylan Byers reports.
“The controversy stems from a CNN scoop that was broadcast last Monday night, minutes before the Iowa caucuses began. Reporter Chris Moody received information from the Carson campaign that he would be taking a break from the campaign trail after Iowa… Nevertheless, the Cruz campaign sent a message to supporters in Iowa suggesting that Carson might be suspending his campaign.”
Daily Beast: “When things go wrong, always blame the media... That very well may be true but the fact is that Cruz’s campaign went ahead and intentionally told potential caucus-goers that Carson was dropping out despite clarifications to the contrary from Carson’s campaign.“
New York Magazine: “Chris Christie, whose strategy for the debate was clearly to take out Rubio, repeatedly called attention to the senator’s canned speech and accused him of using memorized sound bits to cover up for his complete lack of executive experience. That strategy worked. The exchange became an instant classic in the history of political smackdowns, especially because, incredibly, a clearly rattled Rubio continued to use his canned speech, repeating his attack on Obama a total of five times over the first half of the debate.”
James Fallows: “Most self-destructive debate performance since Quayle ’88 and J.B. Stockdale ’92.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.