{"id":26098,"date":"2016-02-10T11:03:15","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=26098"},"modified":"2016-02-10T11:03:15","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:03:15","slug":"new-hampshire-fallout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=26098","title":{"rendered":"New Hampshire Fallout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming out of Iowa, it looked we had a firm consensus on the shape of the Republican race: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio as the top three contenders going forward, with everyone else as also-rans.<\/p>\n

And then a week later New Hampshire comes along to declare “Psych!”<\/p>\n

  • “It’s hard to imagine the New Hampshire primary going any worse for establishment Republicans<\/a>.”
    \n

    Desperate to find a candidate to coalesce around in hopes of stopping the populist insurrection of Donald Trump and the conservative uprising championed by Ted Cruz, the establishment instead got the opposite: a three-way split decision between John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio that ensures an extended, nasty and expensive fight simply to emerge as the third guy in the top tier.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Snip.<\/p>\n

    What New Hampshire did was ensure that the fight to be the establishment candidate wasn’t going to be a knockout but rather decided on a decision after 12 rounds of boxing. That’s a terrible thing for a party who faces not one but two existential threats in the form of Trump and Cruz.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    If Ted Cruz is an actual “existential threat” to the Republican Party, for actually being for the things the Republican Establishment merely claimed they were for all these years, then the Republican Party deserves to die…<\/p>\n

  • “My guess is that Tuesday night will be the highlight of Kasich\u2019s 2016 campaign…I think the big winner of the night is Ted Cruz<\/a>.” (Hat tip: Conservatives for Ted Cruz<\/a>.)\n
  • Jeb Bush claims he’s not dead yet<\/a>.\n

    \"g1405367126531047048\"<\/p>\n

    It’s going to take more than Miracle Max to revive his campaign… (Hat tip: Instapundit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

  • Indeed, “Bush plans scorched earth attack<\/a> on Kasich, Rubio.” Because why go after the guy in first place when you can go after the guys who placed second and fifth? Also this from the Bush campaign: “Rubio has demonstrated no respect for the nomination process and expects this to be a coronation.” Which is pretty rich coming from Jeb…\n
  • Ace of Spades HQ does some math<\/a>:
    \n

    Jeb “Low Energy” Bush spent $1,150 per vote in New Hampshire only to come in fourth place. At that rate, it will cost him $74,500,000,000.00 to get sixty five million votes in the general election. Jeb and his superpac have spent $70,400,000.00 this cycle and they’ve won 3 delegates. That’s $23,466,666.66 per delegate. At that rate, he would need to spend $26,845,866,666.66 to win the 1,144 delegates necessary for the nomination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  • The tea leaves suggest Chris Christie will drop out<\/a>. If Rick Perry hurt his chances by running poorly in 2012, Christie hurt his by not<\/i> running in 2012, where he was riding high as a Republican hero. Now? I’m glad he won’t be the GOP nominee, but he probably is about the most conservative Republican who can get elected governor in New Jersey…\n
  • Republican turnout is shattering records<\/a>. Democrats? Not so much.\n
  • Five takeaways from New Hampshire<\/a>:
    \n

    1. Hillary is in real trouble. Will she panic? The Clinton team, hunkered down in a grubby Manchester Radisson saturated in booze and overrun by ill-kempt Morning Joe groupies, knew it was going to be a terrible, not-good night by mid-afternoon: The exit polls showed big turnout among young voters and, ominously for her, liberals who think Barack Obama isn\u2019t liberal enough. It was a complete and humbling defeat: Sanders beat Clinton among all demographic groups \u2013 including all women, a remarkable rebuke eight years after she \u201cfound her voice\u201d by tearing up at New Hampshire diner.<\/p>\n

    Clinton prides herself on hanging tough through adversity, and she\u2019s got her share now. How does she react? If history is any guide, she\u2019ll freak out at first, then grudgingly make adjustments. But what adjustments can she make when many progressives think she\u2019s so day-before-yesterday.<\/p>\n

    On Monday, my colleague Annie Karni and I reported that the Bill and Hillary Clinton were pressuring campaign manager Robby Mook to enact strategic, \u201cmessaging\u201d and staffing shifts that would take place if Sanders trounced the former secretary. Duh, that\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

    Forget staff. The problem is, as I’ve written over and over again, with the candidate herself: She\u2019s a less limber, more tone-deaf politician than she was in 2008 (after years of being kept sharp by the New York tabloids) and she has blown past staff suggestions that she simplify her message to match Sanders\u2019 pound-one-nail anti-Wall Street mantra.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Plus: “Marco Rubio isn\u2019t the droid you\u2019ve been looking for.”<\/p>\n

  • Hillary goes all in<\/a> on race-pandering to black voters. “Clinton is set to campaign with the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner.” Because there’s no possible way that might alienate independent voters…\n<\/li>\n

    My own analysis? Every week Kasich and Bush stay in is a bad week for Marco Rubio. It’s looking more and more like a Trump vs. Cruz race, and if Rubio can’t win at least one primary between now and March 1 (when the “SEC Primary” of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia occurs), he’s toast for this cycle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Coming out of Iowa, it looked we had a firm consensus on the shape of the Republican race: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio as the top three contenders going forward, with everyone else as also-rans. And then a week later New Hampshire comes along to declare “Psych!” “It’s hard to imagine the New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":25,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13,18,2463],"tags":[1980,2091,838,2806,1167,2862,1988,779,1873,2916,728,741,2881,950],"class_list":["post-26098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-elections","category-republicans","category-social-justice-warriors","tag-2016-election","tag-2016-presidential-race","tag-chris-christie","tag-chris-cillizza","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-george-zimmerman-trial","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-jeb-bush","tag-john-kasich","tag-marco-rubio","tag-new-hampshire","tag-social-justice-warriors","tag-ted-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26098"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26117,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26098\/revisions\/26117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}