The Republican presidential candidates will debate for the eighth time tonight in New Hampshire. You can watch on ABC News starting at 8 p.m. ET.
The GOP field has winnowed since the Iowa caucuses and will almost certainly do so again after votes are cast in New Hampshire on Tuesday. This may be the most important debate of the Republican nomination fight.
For members: Why Trump is a bigger target than Rubio.
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Feminist icon Gloria Steinem — a supporter of Hillary Clinton — says young women are supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders because “the boys are with Bernie,” CNN reports.
Said Steinem: “They’re going to get more activist as they get older. And when you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”
“I ought to be running in a Democrat primary, I got more Democrats for me — you have any Republican friends?”
— Gov. John Kasich, quoted by CBS News, campaigning in New Hampshire.
“Look, I’ve never done this before. I’ve been a politician for seven months. I’m against governors and senators. They’ve done it their whole lives. It would seem to me that people would just go out and vote.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the Associated Press, explaining that he “never realized” the need to encourage supporters to actually take part in the Iowa caucuses.
A Republican source provided the Huffington Post with “a decades-old guide, that the RNC printed and distributed, which offers a slew of condescending advice to the wives of Republican men who sought higher office.”
An excerpt:
“Campaigning, especially in a hotly contested race, can be very nervewracking. If you do go into it, keep your cool. Your husband’s election chances won’t be served by your loss of composure. And, whether you are out on the campaign or at home keeping things in order, your husband will need your cool head and manner to help him relax and unwind.”
“You are not the best judge of how his campaign should be run. Defer to the experts.”
“That’s an odd collection of words: impressive third-place finish.”
— Ted Cruz, quoted by the New York Times, on Marco Rubio coming in third in Iowa.
Donald Trump is back in the saddle for tonight’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, telling ABC News that he expects it to be an “incredible evening.”
Said Trump: “So many things to say, so much at stake.”
Politico: “Donald Trump may be back on the debate stage but Rubio’s the candidate everyone’s looking to take down.”
“Iowa Democratic Party officials are reviewing results from the Iowa caucuses and making updates where discrepancies have been found,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“The latest development follows widespread questions among Iowa Democrats and national media about the accuracy of the counts reported on caucus night, which saw the second-highest number of participants and closest result in Democrats’ caucus history.”
“ABC News has no plans to give Carly Fiorina a last-minute invitation to Saturday night’s Republican debate, despite mounting protest from her and some of her fellow candidates,” CNN reports.
Former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) says if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had called him a liar on the Senate floor, as he did to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) last year, he would have taken a much harder line, The Hill reports.
Said Lott: “Having been majority leader, I’ve never had someone stand on the Senate floor and call me a liar. In fact, if I had been in the Senate at that time I would have moved to have him removed from the Senate chamber physically.”
Associated Press: “An Iowa couple whose son is heading to Iraq made such an impression on GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie that he’s made them a staple of his New Hampshire stump speech this week. But while the couple came away from the encounter just as impressed, they supported rival Marco Rubio in the state’s caucuses.”
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.”
— Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, quoted by Space Flight Insider.
“Hillary Clinton is way behind in New Hampshire, and she is running there like a candidate prepared to cede the first-in-the-nation primary,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“As polls show Sen. Bernie Sanders continuing to hold a sizable lead here, Clinton strategists are positioning their campaign to weather a loss here, shifting their focus to holding Latino voters in Nevada, which votes Feb. 20, and then win in South Carolina, with its large black population, the following week.”
Politico: Can New Hampshire’s political class save Clinton?
Donald Trump “once boasted that he could someday be the only person to turn a profit running for president. He may be closer than anyone realizes,” the New York Times reports.
“What remains is a quintessentially Trumpian endeavor that blurs the line between campaigning and brand-building and complicates Mr. Trump’s claims that he is funding his own White House campaign. About three-quarters of Mr. Trump’s total campaign spending has either gone to reimburse his own businesses or has been covered by funds from grass-roots donors… Virtually all of the money Mr. Trump himself has put into the campaign was lent, rather than donated outright, meaning that he could potentially sell enough hats and T-shirts to pay himself back down the road.”
Gov. John Kasich said that he “would be the worst vice president anybody could ever imagine,” Politico reports.
Said Kasich: “I’d be worse than Biden. Because I’m my own man. I’m not going to take orders from these people. It’s not what I do, it’s not who I am.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal told Fox News he was endorsing Marco Rubio for president, calling him a “principled conservative.”
“As Iowa Republicans headed to the caucuses on Monday night, Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign left recorded messages for supporters with ‘breaking news’ that Ben Carson would drop out of the race, and told them to “inform any Carson caucus-goers of this news and urge them to caucus for Ted instead,'” the New York Times reports.
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.