Another Debate Tonight…!

February 6th, 2016

Awake Goy

Donald Trump will return to the presidential debate stage Saturday night in New Hampshire — trying to reclaim his front-runner status and momentum after a surprise loss in Iowa earlier in the week.

Saturday’s debate, which will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC, is the last one before Tuesday’s crucial New Hampshire primary. Trump, who skipped the debate before the Iowa caucuses because of a feud with Fox News, is still ahead in this state’s polls.

“So many things to say, so much at stake,” Trump tweeted Friday. He didn’t make it to New Hampshire to campaign on Friday, as planned, because of a snowstorm. “It will be an incredible evening!”

Trump will be returning to a different race — and an emboldened group of challengers. Iowa proved, after all, that the race’s bombastic front-runner could be beaten.

On Saturday, Trump is likely to face new attacks from Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the winner in Iowa, who has been mocking Trump for what Cruz calls “Trumpertantrums.” Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), the third-place finisher in Iowa, is also closing the gap between himself and Trump in some New Hampshire polls.

But Rubio himself could face serious attacks, from a group of three other “establishment” candidates who see him pulling away from them.

“This isn’t a student council election, everybody. This is an election for president of the United States. Let’s get the boy in the bubble out of the bubble,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said this week, lambasting Rubio as a media creation, too young and too inexperienced to be president.

Christie — along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush — are all in a desperate situation here. All three had counted on New Hampshire as the state that would launch their campaign. But it can’t launch all of them; each, at least, has to beat the other two.

“I’ve got to beat Jeb and Kasich here, and if I don’t beat Jeb and Kasich here, I have to think long and hard about whether I go forward or not,” Christie said in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this week.

But, in the most recent polls, Christie is running behind Rubio, Bush and Kasich. That means Christie will need to make a memorable impression in Saturday’s debate.

In past debates, Christie has sought to stand out with brusque put-downs of other candidates, frequently mocking Rubio and Cruz as congressional gasbags who would rather talk than face hard decisions. On the campaign trail recently, Christie has compared Congress to grade school, saying that senators are told where to sit, what to talk about and when to go to recess.

The good news for all of these second-tier candidates: One-third of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire said they could change their minds before Tuesday, according to a Suffolk University-Boston Globe poll released Friday.