Winners:
Christie: pummeled the snot out of Rubio, but did not come off as a bully. Stayed on message, didn’t falter.
Kasich: successfully portrayed himself as a happy conservative, cheerful, warm and fuzzy.
Trump: didn’t fight too much with Cruz, but got his shots in. Otherwise, was content to see Rubio get used as a punching bag. If he doesn’t win Tuesday night, I’ll be shocked.
Meh:
Cruz: on the defensive early, fought back fairly well, but never really got himself going in a positive way. He’s not going to win in any event.
Bush: just sounded like a boring drone. Answers weren’t bad but lacked any punch or memorable words or phrases.
Losers:
Rubio: God, what an embarrassment. Repeated himself four times in less than ten minutes. Got rattled and retreated to memorized lines. Played right into the conventional wisdom of the criticisms of him.
Carson: managed to screw up walking on stage. Then seemed shocked whenever he was called on. Kept wanting to talk about the question from ten minutes ago.
Bottom line: any chance that Rubio wins New Hampshire went out the window tonight. He may fall precipitously depending on the spin coming out of this evening. Trump will win, the margin may matter as a verdict on Trump’s ground game. Christie may move up as well, but that remains to be seen - Kasich may block him. Bush probably can’t spin his performance into anything particularly significant. Cruz might get the chance to argue that he overperformed depending on where he ends up.
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