Republicans in high stakes fight ahead of New Hampshire primary

With four days until New Hampshire’s presidential primary, the state’s infamously late-deciding voters face a choice between Donald Trump and a five-car pile-up.

On the one end is Trump, the frontrunner who through bombast and showmanship has dominated the polls for months. On the other, a group of candidates vying to salvage the establishment’s standing in a race marked by frustration with Washington and the upper echelons of the Republican party.

Each contender brought a distinct style to the campaign trail this week, seeking to close in on voters who could still be swayed ahead of a contest that will drastically reset the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Marco Rubio pitched himself as the only candidate who could unify a fractured party and defeat Hillary Clinton in a general election.

The Florida senator is enjoying a boost from a stronger-than-expected showing in the recent Iowa caucuses, reflected in burgeoning crowd sizes and an aura of enthusiasm. On Friday, Rubio’s team was forced to move an event from a school cafeteria to its gymnasium, to accommodate the roughly 700 people who braved icy roads to attend one of his final rallies in Derry.

“Hillary Clinton does not want to run against me, but I want to run against her,” Rubio said, making the case that he was the most electable candidate in the race.

“If I am our nominee, we will be the party of the future.”

The evening before, Jeb Bush – once presumed to be Clinton’s inevitable Republican opponent – held a town hall just down the road. Bush, a former governor of Florida and a son and brother of presidents, struck a different tone while dwelling on triumphs of the past.

He was introduced by his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, who called her younger son “the nicest, wisest, most caring, loyal [and] disciplined”.

Bush, who spent much of the last year insisting he was his own man, has latterly embraced his family legacy.

“I’m proud to be a Bush,” he said, drawing applause from a crowd of more than 500. “I’ve seen my brother show his dogged determination to leave Iraq secure – it was fragile, but secure when he left.”

And then there were Chris Christie and John Kasich, governors of New Jersey and Ohio who have pinned their hopes on New Hampshire.

Kasich positioned himself as a steady hand who could lend some sanity to an otherwise raucous competition; Christie sharpened his rhetoric as part of a last-ditch effort to tear down his opponents.

Much of Christie’s fire – if not all of it – was directed at Rubio, who has borne the brunt of his rivals’ attacks while rising in the polls. Christie zeroed in on Rubio’s status as the youngest candidate in the race, at 44.

“We know who the boy in the bubble is up here, who never answers your questions, who’s constantly scripted and controlled because he can’t answer your questions,” Christie said on Tuesday.

In another attack, he likened Rubio’s job in the US Senate to attending grade school – where one is made to show up at a certain time and go through predetermined motions.

Rubio brushed off the criticism as the markings of a flailing campaign.

“When people are having a tough time in a campaign, especially near the end, you see some desperation set in,” he told reporters after a town hall at a college.

Bush took on a bigger rival – Trump – in a bid to persuade voters to reject the anger and pessimism that has defined the Republican race.

“We need a leader with a servant’s heart,” Bush said. “We don’t need the big dog on the stage, barking out stuff.”

New Hampshire has, in many ways, been regarded as the state where pragmatic voters might reject the fringe appeal of Trump and Ted Cruz, the winner of the Iowa caucuses.

But while the state has long been considered to be fertile ground for moderates, the outsiders are hoping to repeat previous conservative victories. In 1996, Pat Buchanan memorably upset Bob Dole in New Hampshire with a message focused on trade and immigration that appealed to blue collar conservatives.

Trump, who said at a recent Republican debate that he has adopted “the mantle of anger”, has sounded the same populist tone and resentment at the so-called establishment that defined Buchanan’s two presidential campaigns.

The real-estate billionaire has focused heavily in New Hampshire on condemning trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well as maintaining his fixation on immigration. The result is that he has led in every poll and, with the aid of his celebrity, drawn large crowds in his visits to the state.

However, after Trump’s second-place finish in Iowa, the question is whether he can keep the sheen of “winning” that has defined his candidacy and whether the crowds that show up at his rallies can be translated into votes on election day by his ragtag organization.

By contrast, Cruz has put together a sophisticated campaign machine and is appealing to New Hampshire voters as the heir to Ron Paul and the Liberty Movement. New Hampshire, which has no state income tax, has long had a deep libertarian streak.

Cruz has been showing a video before his rallies here, in which he shows testimonials from Paul supporters and activists who characterize him as their new standard bearer. In an event on Friday in a packed elementary school cafeteria in Salem, a long-time supporter of Rand Paul, state representative Eric Eastman, recited the pledge of allegiance and then endorsed Cruz.

Cruz, who has been the overwhelming choice of evangelicals, has also subtly changed his tone on social issues, adding a local flair to his push for religious liberty. He compared the fight to keep a cross on government land or to battle same-sex marriage to the struggles of pilgrims and puritans who came to New England fleeing religious persecution nearly 400 years ago.

The senator from Texas also continued to prioritize immigration. He took several opportunities to proudly contrast his position with that of Rubio, who in 2013 championed a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The bill was viewed as an anathema to grassroots conservatives, over its inclusion of a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented migrants living in America.

Rubio, who has disavowed the comprehensive approach, sought to clarify any confusion over how he would approach immigration reform as president.

“When I am president, if we do not know who you are or why you are coming, you are not getting into the United States of America,” Rubio said at his rally on Friday.

It was his largest applause line of the night.

It was enough to convince Laura Collins, from Goffstown, who said she had been deciding between Rubio and Cruz.

“It’s very important to me that we will have somebody who has a really good chance of winning,” she said. “Listening to Marco Rubio today, I see him as young, energetic and electable.”

Even so, conversations with other voters once more offered glimmers of a contest that is still anyone’s for the taking.

Wayne Morris, a Manchester resident who attended Bush’s town hall, said he had walked in as being “on the fence” between Bush and Rubio. But it was the former Florida governor, not his protégé, who sealed the deal.

“I really felt someone with the governor’s background would be needed in the position,” he said. He then paused for a moment, before alluding to Rubio: “Unlike the current president who didn’t have the experience, Bush sold me on his record.”