Saw about 2/3 of it. This one is pretty simple to classify.
Loser: Marco Rubio, who seemed to have a software bug and kept repeating himself. He'll be ridiculed for weeks about it. And should be.
Also losing: The great stampede of people and politicians who endorsed Rubio in recent days. Y'all look as stupid as your guy did.
Winners: Well, everyone else, except maybe Carly Fiorina, who was kept off the stage for reasons that escape most of us. No one else hurt themselves much. I expect Donald Trump to win in New Hampshire, but it's possible someone else might sneak up on him.
3 comments:
i am proud to say that i have not watched a single debate for so much as 5 minutes. the spousal unit had the first one on in the other room, so i over heard enough of that to know that i had heard enough.
(but i have seen snippets during news coverage... usually the next day.)
It was a bad moment, there's no doubt about it. Was it a "Rick Perry I forgot my line" campaign killer moment? Eh, probably not, although I think it without question kills any longshot hopes Rubio had of winning New Hampshire. Of course, we've had a handful of supposed "awful" debate performances that didn't apparently hurt the candidates involved (I'm thinking Trump in August and Cruz right before Iowa), so who knows.
For those voters not interested in signing up with Cruz or Trump, the pickings are looking mighty slim. Kasich has so micro-targeted his appeal to Democrats and Indies (he joked himself that he should be running in the Democrat's primary) that he's this cycle's Jon Huntsman - even a strong NH performance probably doesn't buy him much more time on the primary circuit. Bush has the second highest negatives after Trump, and while he's got the money to continue to campaign forever, I don't see any realistic path forward, especially if he finishes a distant third or fourth in NH.
I could see Christie regaining some of the national appeal that he had four years ago, but he seems even less likely to survive NH. As one pundit wrote, his dismantling of Rubio definitely injured Marco, but didn't seem to actually help himself. Christie isn't even averaging in the top 5 in New Hampshire - don't know how that significantly changes in 72 hours.
Gino, that's one of the advantages of giving up blogging. You can ignore it completely.
FR, I pretty much see it the same way. It's tough to see a way forward for most of them.
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