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Hopefuls take aim ahead of primary
WASHINGTON — Ohio Gov. John Kasich seldom stands out for debate zingers or high decibel confrontations with his rivals. His campaign failures and triumphs rarely spark breathless media accounts.
But, after spending months in New Hampshire, the low-profile Midwesterner boarded a plane to South Carolina on Wednesday with a chance to win the mantle as the establishment’s best hope against Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.
His strong second-place finish in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday means donors and voters elsewhere will size him up anew — or maybe for the first time — assessing whether his message of pragmatic, upbeat conservatism will resonate in a time of voter anger and whether his plodding electoral strategy will hold up long enough to survive a national campaign.
Though few expect him to win South Carolina, which holds the next primary Feb. 20, he could benefit as his two main rivals from Florida — Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush — continue their fierce battle to remain viable long enough to reach the Florida primary next month.
“Kasich appeals to people who desperately want to identify themselves as Republicans but can’t bring themselves to do it with Donald Trump as the frontrunner,” said Joel Sawyer, a GOP strategist in South Carolina not working for any of the candidates. “Maybe Kasich can have a good showing there.”
More likely, Kasich is hoping the field narrows further in South Carolina, with either Bush or Rubio losing out, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz continues his efforts to chip away at Trump’s anti-establishment support.
Another top rival, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, dropped out of 2016 contest Wednesday after his sixth-place finish in New Hampshire. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief who finished seventh, also left the race Wednesday.
For now, the still-splintered and unstable nature of the competition benefits Trump, who leads the polls handily in South Carolina and solidified his status as the national GOP frontrunner after his resounding victory in New Hampshire. As long as multiple candidates remain in the primary, Trump’s support from 30 to 40 percent of the voters is enough to win every state easily.
But a one-on-one matchup is trickier, with nearly half of New Hampshire voters in an exit poll saying they’d be dissatisfied with Trump as the party’s nominee. Even that number is not all that bad, as both Rubio and Cruz drew higher disapproval from GOP voters.
The nominating contest is likely to get nastier in South Carolina, which has a reputation for rough and tumble politics.
The Cruz campaign has already begun attacking Trump as a faux populist with a cheeky online video featuring children playing with action figures of the billionaire, which it expects to run on South Carolina television stations soon, according to a Cruz adviser who demanded anonymity to discuss strategy.
During a campaign swing Wednesday through Myrtle Beach, Cruz attacked the celebrity candidate as “not conservative” and warned South Carolina to look for one who has “walked the walk.”
Rubio, whose weekend debate performance subjected him to relentless mockery and helped sink his prospects in New Hampshire, promised he would rebound.
Bush, who has alternately rejected and embraced his family name, is once again depending on it. Both his brother and father have done well in prior elections in South Carolina, a state with a strong presence of active and retired members of the military.
Wednesday, Bush began airing a radio ad in the state featuring George W. Bush touting Jeb’s strength during “troubled times.”