For leaders of the Republican establishment, things could not look much worse. They desperately need one of the four conventional, mainstream candidates—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, or Marco Rubio—to pull away and consolidate that wing of the party, the way Ted Cruz has done on the Right. But after Rubio’s robotic debate showing, it looks less likely now that the New Hampshire primary will winnow the field as much as they hoped. We will all know a lot more by Tuesday night, but a few things are already apparent. While Donald Trump will almost certainly win the New Hampshire primary, he is not going to dominate it or many other places the way polls were showing just a month or two ago. Trump was averaging about 35 percent of the GOP vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and nationally, meaning that 65 percent of Republicans were not for the bombastic real-estate mogul. Presumably his supporters were familiar with him, and they liked at least some of what he said, the way he said it, and the way he positioned himself
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