Marco Rubio’s New Hampshire Crucible The Florida senator has become everyone’s target as he pitches optimism and conservative unity to build on his Iowa momentum.By Joseph Rago
http://www.wsj.com/articles/marco-rubios-new-hampshire-crucible-1454715788
Laconia, N.H.
Lake Winnipesaukee has a monsoon season, apparently, but sheets of rain did not prevent voters from packing the former mill where Marco Rubio spoke Wednesday. The fire marshals closed the doors, as they did the night before in Exeter and would later that evening in Dover. Fresh off his surge in Iowa to a stronger-than-anticipated third, the senator is drawing crowds beyond the merely curious that feature some ineffable, heightened quality—something approaching genuine enthusiasm.
Mr. Rubio’s message is the same as it always was, with a well-rehearsed rap that matches Ted Cruz’s. But his political bet is that some New Hampshire voters want their anger tempered by optimism and a cheerful note or two.
The Florida senator’s combination of optimism and despair can nonetheless be contradictory. America is the greatest nation in the history of the world, he says, but it’s at risk of decline amid extraordinary challenges, and by the way if the present is terrible, look forward to the glorious “new American century” of the future.
Mr. Rubio can be as acid as Mr. Cruz or Donald Trump about the failures of President Obama and the diminished potential of American life, and he says the election is no less than “a referendum on our identity as a nation and a people” (as he says at every stop).
But he cuts the gloom with his inspirational life story, and unlike the Texan or the billionaire, he also promises to “bring the conservative movement and the Republican Party together.” He says he’ll broaden the GOP’s appeal, but without compromising conservative principles. He’ll persuade but also fight. He’ll “modernize” the government, whatever that means.
New Hampshire’s primary has emerged as the proving ground to learn if Mr. Rubio’s something-for-everyone approach can succeed. The Granite State also may be the last stand for the second tier of candidates— Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich—mired in the high single or low double digits in the polls. The state could loft a fourth candidate into what Mr. Rubio’s spinners now call a “three-man race,” or, if one of the governors maims Mr. Rubio, Tuesday’s primary could narrow the field to Messrs. Trump and Cruz.
The Floridian’s rise has therefore inspired an especially brutal assault, even for this political year. Mr. Christie’s invective about “the boy in the bubble,” referring to Mr. Rubio’s “canned speeches,” got national attention, but there is plenty more. At a town hall in Epping, N.H., the New Jersey governor actually said a Rubio presidency would be more of a fiasco than—Mr. Obama’s.
“Do not send another well-intentioned, well-spoken, untrained person into the chair in the Oval Office,” he said, “because I guarantee you the result will not be the same—it will be worse. Because the problems this president will inherit will be worse.” Mr. Christie hardly has another theme lately other than Mr. Rubio’s inadequacy.
Mr. Bush also likens Mr. Rubio to Mr. Obama, but most of the anvils are dropping from his super PAC, Right to Rise, whose omnipresent TV ads savage his former Florida comrade as an untested amateur and absentee senator. Even John Kasich, the self-deputized “prince of light,” is backed by a super PAC that put up a TV spot accusing Mr. Rubio of being soft on domestic violence.
Mr. Rubio’s support in Iowa was pan-ideological but tipped toward voters who describe themselves as “somewhat conservative.” To finish second in New Hampshire and build “Marcomentum” ahead of South Carolina, he must reassemble a larger version of the same coalition to defeat the governors and inflict another wound on Mr. Trump.
The billionaire businessman maintains a 16-point state lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average, but he didn’t promise so many second-place finishes that you’ll get sick of second-place finishes. He promised winning—and after his magnanimous Iowa concession speech, he’s returned to full-attack form, accusing Mr. Cruz of stealing the caucuses.
Mr. Cruz has continued to mock such “Trumpertantrums” in New Hampshire, though his style of hard-edge politics isn’t a natural fit for the state, and he knows it. The senator needs to make a creditable showing, but the more consequential contest for his candidacy will be South Carolina.
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Attacks such as Mr. Christie’s may be a threat because they have an element of truth. Mr. Rubio really is a career politician, starting as a city commissioner of West Miami and rising to become speaker of the Florida House. But he can also plausibly claim, as he usually does, that he is antiestablishment because in his 2010 Senate race he did the national service of entombing Charlie Crist, a career politician in the pejorative sense.
Likewise, Mr. Rubio’s discipline is also a strength—the GOP hasn’t been led by an articulate orator in three decades—that can be preternatural. He’s a gifted speech maker who’s made no especially memorable speeches and seems to consult a mix-and-match assortment of views and observations.
At a town hall in Bow, N.H., Mr. Rubio is asked by a World War II vet, at length and philosophically, if he is troubled like Eisenhower about the military-industrial complex. “If you’re talking about the military industry and the defense industry, then yes, I think our procurement programs are broken. I think there aren’t enough contractors and therefore we’re not getting enough bids,” the senator replies.
He goes on to invoke the space program, a lack of funding for weapons systems, a military buildup in Asia, Russian adventurism, “the smallest U.S. Navy in a century,” the South China Sea, global shipping lanes, a terror enemy that wants to fight “until the black flag of ISIS is flying over our cities and towns.” Even as a nonanswer, it was unconvincing.
Mr. Rubio’s tendency to have it both ways can also be less than coherent. He says he’ll zero out taxes on capital gains and dividends but also create a whopping new child tax credit. The architect of the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration bill that he left marooned in the House now supports a border-security-first policy as he invokes the hardscrabble background of his Cuban-exile parents.
In Laconia, N.H., a man asks Mr. Rubio about the controversy that has most bitterly divided Republicans. “I hire an illegal alien named Fernando almost every weekend,” he says. “He hasn’t raped anybody, he hasn’t stolen from anybody. How about a pathway for immigration for the Fernandos?”
“This is why I think I understand this issue personally better than anyone running for president, because I know stories like that are heartbreaking,” Mr. Rubio replies. “I know the story of a gentleman who’s in the United States illegally, and working, and you know why? Because he sends money back every Friday for cancer drugs for his mother. . . .
“The flip side of it, however, is that we have to have an immigration policy. There’s no nation on earth that can absorb everyone who wants to come, and the truth is that if we opened it up and said anyone who wants to come can come we’d have 100 million people show up overnight. We can’t sustain that. It has to be a system that’s manageable for us and good for Americans. So I do sympathize with the story you told, but I also sympathize with the American people who have to bear the burden of people coming into this country illegally.”
Mr. Rubio concludes: “This is a complex issue, and there are stories of people who are in this country illegally that will outrage you, and there are stories that will break your heart. But we ultimately have an immigration policy that’s good for America.” Well, yes.
Then again, the issues are complex, and Mr. Rubio has a point that a divided GOP is unlikely to defeat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. A certain incoherence may be the price of unity and a Republican Party that attracts more than the base. And if a candidate as conservative as Mr. Rubio is the “establishment,” then the word has ceased to mean very much.
Messrs. Bush, Christie and Kasich are all making their versions of the same pitch, with the benefit of varying records of accomplishment in office. Their campaigns sometimes have the poignancy of a cause everyone knows is hopeless except for the candidate, but they’re hanging in and awaiting a late-breaking groundswell.
Mr. Bush is plainly discouraged that his image and record are so disconnected, that his detailed policy ambition hasn’t attracted more of a following. At an event in Henniker, N.H., he jokes ruefully that his book of proposals at least allowed his deputy policy director, knocking on doors in Manchester, to fend off an attack by a dog, which “grabbed the plan and started eating it, so she escaped.”
Yet Mr. Bush has improved dramatically as a candidate, perhaps recovering some of the self-assurance he had as Florida governor. “Are you going to take a chance?” he asks. “Are you going to squander this incredible first-in-the-nation privilege to take an untested person to be the Republican nominee?”
Mr. Kasich’s town halls often feel like group therapy: “I’m free,” the Ohio governor said at a middle school in Derry, his 95th. “I’m not, like, worried about what’s going to happen.” He’s hoping his inclusive, late-Baroque campaign style can differentiate himself.
“These are serious issues, but they’re not that hard to fix,” he explains. “You know why we can’t fix ’em? People come in here and tell you everything is going down—we’re fine. We have challenges, but we’re fine. You know what the problem is? People. People that don’t want to put the country first and get hung up on politics or party or whatever. . . . I want you to know that if I become president, I’m going to give you a warning: Go and get a seat belt, because there’s going to be so much change coming that it’ll make your head spin.”
Mr. Kasich is in the habit of placing personal follow-up phone calls to the people he meets at hotels, diners and his town halls, and they seem to show up everywhere and give him updates on their problems. There are hugs. Given the demands on a candidate’s time, this testifies to his decency, however inefficient it is for acquiring votes. But one by one, Mr. Kasich may be building a larger reputation as the candidate who cares enough to make the effort.
‘Polls don’t vote. They proved that in Iowa,” Mr. Christie likes to say. “I mean, gosh, pollsters and weathermen—the only people who continue to get paid no matter how many times they’re wrong.”
He says his volunteers knocked on 1,100 doors last weekend, and 52% were still undecided. New Hampshire voters can change their minds quickly, they like their state character as defiers of the received order, the ground game and field organization still count, and they may yet decide to unsettle a race that so far has only awarded 1.2% of the 2,472 Republican delegates. The “three-man-race” wisdom may be overdone.
Mr. Rubio’s challenge is to consolidate his support as the non-Trump, non-Cruz alternative into something more tangible than a media anointment. The GOP calendar and delegate allocation process is front-loaded with more conservative states where he may get less traction, and he needs some momentum to propel him to the later winner-take-all primaries in the larger states with more moderate Republicans. In New Hampshire, Messrs. Bush, Christie and Kasich need to justify their continued campaign existence.
But as Mr. Rubio often says, America is a country where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything. In New Hampshire, the candidates will get their chance to prove it.
Mr. Rago is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
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