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Rubio braces for attacks in debate, Trump returning to stage


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Rubio braces for attacks in debate, Trump returning to stage

JULIE PACE, Associated Press
JULIE BYKOWICZ, Associated Press


MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (AP) — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio headed into the latest Republican debate ready for an onslaught of attacks about his experience and readiness for the White House, while a trio of his rivals sought a breakout performance before Tuesday's New Hampshire primary — an election critical to their presidential hopes.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump also was rejoining his competitors in the debate arena Saturday night after having skipped the previous faceoff in Iowa. He finished second in the leadoff Iowa caucuses and has spent the past week complaining bitterly about the result.

While Iowa shook Trump's grip on the Republican field, he has led New Hampshire preference polls for months and the state is still seen as his to lose in Tuesday's voting. However, Rubio appears to be gaining steam following his stronger-than-expected third-place finish in Iowa, drawing big crowds across New Hampshire — as well as a flurry of criticism from other contenders who say the first-term Florida senator lacks accomplishments.

"He's a great guy, but he's not a leader," said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has repeatedly derided Rubio as a "bubble boy" whose staff protects him from having to answer tough questions about his record and what he would do as president.

Bush, Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have largely staked their presidential hopes on New Hampshire. Those falling short of a standout finish in New Hampshire will face party pressure to quit the race, particularly if Rubio has another strong night.

Bush in particular has struggled in many of the previous Republican presidential debates. While many of his rivals spent Saturday huddled in debate preparations, Bush spoke to an overflow crowd in Bedford, where he thanked people for asking substantive questions.

"The questions on the debate stage will probably be really stupid," he said. "I'm not very optimistic."

Rubio and the trio of current and former governors are fighting to emerge as the more mainstream alternative to Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the fiery conservative who won Iowa. Cruz is so loathed by party leaders that some have openly said they would rather see Trump win the nomination despite his inflammatory comments and sometimes erratic behavior.

For Cruz, New Hampshire is less of a natural fit than Iowa, where he had strong support from the state's many evangelical voters. Still, he sees an opportunity for a strong showing that could send him into the coming Southern primaries in a commanding position.

The Republican field was for months a large and unwieldy collection of candidates seeking to put the party back in the White House for the first time in eight years. But the pack has already started to narrow following the Iowa caucuses, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum all ending their campaigns.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is fighting to avoid joining that group. After a disappointing showing in Iowa, he took time off from campaigning and hasn't been a major presence in New Hampshire this week.

With fewer candidates, debate host ABC News scrapped an undercard debate for low-polling hopefuls. But their rules for the main event left former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as the only candidate without a spot on stage.

Fiorina, the only Republican woman running for president, has protested her exclusion, and party leaders such as 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney have come to her defense.

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-- (c) Associated Press 2016-01-07

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Rubio was attacked by Chris Christie and his response was weak. He just kept repeating himself. I know that he can think on his feet as I have seen him rise to the occasion many times, but I think he was told not to attack back and he shouldn't have listened. Chris Christie has plenty of grist for the mill concerning his own screw-ups.

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The truth about Rubio came out tonight. His answers are canned. And during the pressure of the debate, he forgot his lines and kept hitting the restart button. Either that, or he forgot to download his donors' software update and had to think for himself for a change. With really bad results.

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The truth about Rubio came out tonight. His answers are canned.

I hate to be the one to break this, but they ALL have canned answers and he is no worse than anyone else. Unfortunately, he made it a little too obvious tonight. He did fine the rest of the debate, but no one will remember that.

Edited by Ulysses G.
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The truth about Rubio came out tonight. His answers are canned.

I hate to be the one to break this, but they ALL have canned answers and he is no worse than anyone else. Unfortunately, he made it a little too obvious tonight. He did fine the rest of the debate, but no one will remember that.

Aside from that little disturbance from Mr. Booth, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

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Rubio is in fact canned.

One can see him picturing his lines in his mind's eye while it is also obvious Marco is thinking moment by moment of his rehearsed stage directions.

Christie has been all over Rubio all week yet Rubio walked right into exactly every negative personality or intellectual trait or characteristic that Christie had been banging on The Rube about. The Boy Rubio was completely unprepared for what everyone knew was coming.

The boy's recited lines fell instead on deaf ears and simply vanished into the large hall.

Wait till Trump and Cruz go after Marco if they continue to see the helpless one as an electoral threat in the primaries after NH. They'll separately but in combination knock Rubio back to Scott Walkerville.

I think btw Jeb has more reason to hang in there as each debate occurs and more victims of the process fall out.

Edited by Publicus
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The Fatman seems to have a real hair up ass for Li'l Rickie. Cruz joined him, and even Jeb kicked him. Jeb does not shine at these things at all, even the one last week, where I thought that without Nelson Trump he'd have a little more space. Nope. He had a good pre-packaged attack on Trump on eminent domain, and that was about it for the Jeb Show.

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It might be too late for Rubio's many and massive failures in today's debate to negatively impact him in the NH primary voting on Tuesday.

Still, a good number of voters make up their minds at the last minute so Marco's pathetic robotic demonstration today might impact some voters against him.

It should be obvious now however to the Republican establishment in Washington and its moneybags in the South and West, and to the few more centrist R voters, that Marco the Boy Wonder looks very shaky as the guy to line up behind.

Christie really pricked Rubio's bubble on this day. It took someone a long time to come along to do it, so this may be Christie's legacy in this campaign cause The Fat Man ain't gonna win nuthin. Not unless he attracted or converted a lot of shaky Rubio voters today which is unlikely.

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Have to agree with UG in that it is all canned and also that he put on a poor show in doing it but he always puts on a poor show in doing it. I thought this debate was better than others in that the hopefuls actually spent a little of the time talking about policy. It is however still sad that most of the time is spent just saying variants of Obama bad or Hillary bad and it could have been this that prompted Christie to bring it up. I did have to laugh when just minutes later Rubio started the same speech and Christie said 'look, he's doing it again'. After that his debate was over. Cruz seemed to whimper any time Trump looked at him with jeb! doing the same when anybody looked at him. Carson was a no show as usual while Kasich likely had his best debate yet even though he did not get to speak much.

For me: Trump was the biggest winner with Kasich close behind. The biggest 'loser' I find a tough call between Cruz and Rubio. Cruz was around 15 points down in Iowa some 6 weeks before winning it so expected him to come out fighting. He was 'low energy' tonight. Rubio came a close 3rd in Iowa and looked like he might actually catch and pass Trump at one stage late on. He too was on an upward trend and he too just zoned out during the debate. Christie coshed him with the 25s sound-bite remark and he never regained whatever sense he started the debate with.... Trump didn't even have to lift a figure which is quite interesting.

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So I've been closely following this election cycle since early last year. Some months after when Hillary entered the race I put £6000 on her to be the next U.S. President at 11/10. Just over double my money. Now U.S. politics is a joke but I've money on it so Hell yeah I'm going to follow the race. Rubio is a fiend for water which some people are, not an issue. Then a few times I watched him speak and he was going nuts with something like the dry horrors... it happens. This is him in 2013.

People have commented for quite some time that he could be taking Adderall but that is a pretty damn long guess and way too rich for me and most others. No reason to think it is true. Well, it has come back again because usage can also cause excessive sweating and he was sweating like a rapist in the dock during the debate. I'm still not buying into the Adderall theory because it is no better than countless others and sweating profusely would actually be a cause of large water intake.

I noticed (reason for this post) an hour or so ago that TYT done a short segment on it.

All sounds a bit far fetched to me.

Edited by notmyself
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Marco had a pretty bad night, that's for sure, but it shouldn't have been a surprise to his campaign staff that after his showing in Iowa he was going to be targeted. Clearly he, or his handlers didn't prepare him well for what even for a layman was the obvious attacks.

Jeb! had a decent night, although nothing is going to help him now. Clap Pleeeeeeease.

Cruz, I thought looked strangely uncomfortable and and little unsure of himself

Christie, not a bad showing, certainly landed good pushes against Rubio, although I fear much more to the advantage of his rivals than for the Big Boy himself.

Trump, well what can I say? he seemed more intent on insulting the non donating audience.....COS I DON'T NEED YOUR MONEY, I'M FRIKKEN RICH....LOOOOSERS

Carson....was he there????

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Marco had a pretty bad night, that's for sure, but it shouldn'tChristie, not a bad showing, certainly landed good pushes against Rubio, although I fear much more to the advantage of his rivals than for the Big Boy himself.

From my earlier post.....

Trump didn't even have to lift a figure which is quite interesting.

Aside that it should have been finger there is a lot of chatter that Christie has sold out to Trump.

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There isn't one Western government right now that's doing what its people want it to do. I've never seen it worse.

The DC insiders including Repub party and the MSM anointed Bush and the people said "No". Now they've tried to anoint Rubio and the people will say "No".

I don't think a lot of people realize just how strong this insider backlash is.

The big issues are jobs and immigration. Gone are the days when it might have been some minorities' rights or some war or some other pressing issue. It's immigration and middle class jobs.

Now, who is focused like a laser on those two issues? I've seen two polls on the winner of last night's debate. One had Trump at 65% and another at 76%. The others couldn't get out of single digits.

Just sit back and watch what it will be that wins this election. It isn't going to be an insider or one of the insiders' choices. If it was we'd be down to Hillary and Bush - two worn out lumps.

Cheers.

Edited by NeverSure
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It was a brutal night for Senator Rubio. Quite frankly, I don't see how he will be able to be taken seriously for the remainder of this cycle. It will be interesting to see how much of a bump Governor Christie gets from his effective attack.

By the way, Trump somehow managed to appear less informed on the details than he usually does.

Edited by up-country_sinclair
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It was a brutal night for Senator Rubio. Quite frankly, I don't see how he will be able to be taken seriously for the remainder of this cycle. It will be interesting to see how much of a bump Governor Christie gets from his effective attack.

By the way, Trump somehow managed to appear less informed on the details than he usually does.

Christie did everything but take Marco's lunch money from him.

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It was a brutal night for Senator Rubio. Quite frankly, I don't see how he will be able to be taken seriously for the remainder of this cycle. It will be interesting to see how much of a bump Governor Christie gets from his effective attack.

By the way, Trump somehow managed to appear less informed on the details than he usually does.

I didn't think that was possible. He manages to hog most of the talking time without actually saying anything.

But once again he made Jeb look spineless.

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The Boston Herald today:

Under fire, Marco Rubio crashes and burns

MANCHESTER, N.H. — "A malfunctioning Marco Rubio crashed as he was overloaded by attacks last night from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who tried to portray the Florida U.S. senator as a Washington robot pre-programmed by political consultants during a high-stakes Republican debate.
“See, Marco — Marco — the thing is this,” Christie said, “when you’re president of the United States … the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person.”
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Time magazine poll on debate winner:

attachicon.gif12509.jpg

Of all the types of polls, this is he most asinine. There is nothing scientific or statistically significant about the data. For all we know, Trump paid his fanboys to keep voting for him on the website. In theory, it could have been just one fanboy repeatedly clicking on Trump's name. And we don't even know if that particular Trump fanboy is even a NH resident or registered primary voter.

Such silliness.

Edited by up-country_sinclair
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There isn't one Western government right now that's doing what its people want it to do. I've never seen it worse.

The DC insiders including Repub party and the MSM anointed Bush and the people said "No". Now they've tried to anoint Rubio and the people will say "No".

I don't think a lot of people realize just how strong this insider backlash is.

The big issues are jobs and immigration. Gone are the days when it might have been some minorities' rights or some war or some other pressing issue. It's immigration and middle class jobs.

Now, who is focused like a laser on those two issues? I've seen two polls on the winner of last night's debate. One had Trump at 65% and another at 76%. The others couldn't get out of single digits.

Just sit back and watch what it will be that wins this election. It isn't going to be an insider or one of the insiders' choices. If it was we'd be down to Hillary and Bush - two worn out lumps.

Cheers.

Republicans want it to be about jobs and immigration. I don't think the electorate cares much about those issues.

I can't see it being Bush. Hey man, I'll defer to you on this one. I don't see the scenario where Bush's candidacy suddenly takes off. I can't see any viable Republican candidate and it really doesn't matter.

These Republican debates are truly amazing political theatre. All these terribly flawed candidates going after each other. Wow!

It's hard for me to get behind Bernie now. I'd love to see him get the nomination. No matter who it is they'll be enthusiastically supported by the Democrats and you can't say that about the Republican candidate.

I still think it's going to be "Madam President." Democrats will have a walk in no matter who it is.

10 months out I can't say who the candidates are. I know who wins.

Edited by Pinot
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