For front-runners in Republican debate, winning isn’t everything

At the start of the event — held at St. Anselm College, a Roman Catholic institution in southern New Hampshire — all eyes appeared to be on Marco Rubio, the first-term Florida senator whose strong third-place finish in Monday’s Iowa caucuses had campaign handicappers anointing him the candidate best positioned to take on so-called outsiders Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Rubio had seen a bump in New Hampshire opinion polls this week, and his smooth-yet-forceful speaking style, hawkish foreign policy and Tea Party roots appeared to give him the inside track on uniting the establishment vote and securing establishment cash.

The swig of water the infamously dry-mouthed Floridian took the moment he reached his lectern may have quickly communicated to voters (and donors) that Rubio was feeling the heat of the moment. Even if it didn’t, his exchange a few minutes later with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie clearly dialed up the thermostat.

Christie, who staked practically his entire 2016 presidential campaign on his ability to do well in the New Hampshire primary, has spent almost all of the past three months in the Granite State. But despite the effort — and occasional, albeit tiny, surges — he has consistently polled in the single digits, languishing well behind the other pugnacious Easterner in the race, Trump, and a number of the other more establishment-allied challengers.

So, it is perhaps not surprising that Christie looked, Saturday night, like the player whose coach told him, “Just go out there and have fun.” Or have whatever substitutes for fun in the combative political style of the governor.

“Marco, Marco,” interjected Christie when Rubio attempted to score easy points by attacking President Obama. “The thing is this: When you’re president of the United States, when you are a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech when you talk about how great America is at the end of it — it doesn’t solve one problem for one person.”

The line was no doubt rooted in careful campaign research — with consultants identifying for Christie a perceived Rubio weakness — but the Newark native (and lifelong New York Mets fan) hammered it like a batting-practice fastball. And when Rubio tried to get back to his point by reiterating the line he had used just seconds before, Christie was waiting on the pitch.

“There it is,” he said, turning to the camera, “there it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.” And when Rubio again returned to his talking points, everybody — or at least many in the hall — booed.

Playing to the crowd, another establishment governor jumped in, eager to take his hacks. Jeb Bush — nine years removed from Florida’s statehouse and five months beyond the last time he polled nationally in double digits — asked Christie, “Chris, why don’t you mention my name so I can get into this,” then criticized Rubio’s lack of experience.

But Ohio’s John Kasich, the other governor left in the field, and another candidate that needs a solid showing in New Hampshire to keep his hopes alive, chose a different approach. As he has been doing on the campaign trail, Kasich avoided directly attacking the other establishment candidates, spending most of his time portraying his own record as positive and pragmatic, and saving any criticism for what he has typified as the extreme positions held by Trump.

His approach may have lacked Christie’s pyrotechnics during the debate, but it appears to be playing better with New Hampshire voters. While the New Jersey governor has actually lost ground in recent weeks, Kasich has nudged up slightly, and talks like a man who has internal polling that says, come Election Day, he might do even better.

Such was not the general tone of Trump, who clearly felt the pressure to re-establish his primary primacy after finishing second to Cruz in Iowa. Though much of the post-debate analysis deemed the night vintage Trump, the TV reality star did not appear to have his classic command of the crowd. After a testy exchange with Bush over the real estate tycoon’s self-professed enthusiasm for land acquisition by eminent domain elicited boos from the audience, Trump turned on the crowd inside the college auditorium.

“That’s all of his donors and special interests out there,” Trump said, implying the room was filled with GOP insiders. “The reason they’re not loving me is, I don’t want their money.”

It seemed an odd strategy for the usually media-savvy mogul — but one that sounded less rehearsed than another of the evening’s misfires. That one was another from Rubio, who early on thought a joke about the age of Vice President Joe Biden would be a slam-dunk applause line. It was not, and the lack of audience reaction left Rubio awkwardly hanging on the rim.

The two other candidates allowed on the court, Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, played a little one-on-one themselves. Following the Texas senator’s first-place finish in Iowa, controversy erupted as evidence surfaced of the Cruz campaign’s last-minute hijinks, with press leaks and phone messages implying Carson had quit the race before the final caucus votes were tallied. Though Carson had flown home to Florida on Monday night (reportedly for a change of clothes), he had not quit the race — and the revelations about Cruz’s dirty tricks have resulted in rebukes from both Carson and Trump. And it likely breathed some new (if, perhaps, temporary) life into the Carson campaign.

That life was on display Saturday. Cruz was questioned about the controversy, and after the senator offered a qualified apology, Carson, still low key, but appearing freer than in recent debates, played at taking the high road while still reminding his supporters — and perhaps other so-called “values voters,” too — that Cruz was not to be trusted.

It was a surprising burst of athleticism for the usually lethargic doctor, and also stood in contrast to Cruz, who appeared to be playing it safe all evening. The Texan deflected questions about his assertion that Trump lacked the “temperament” to be president — an attack Cruz had leveled earlier in the week. Instead, said the Senator, he would leave it to the voters to decide who was more “levelheaded.”

In doing so, Cruz, who has a reputation as a ruthless debater dating back to his college days, appeared as if, instead of playing to win, he was just “playing not to lose.”

It is tactic, or an attitude, that sports coaches say will likely lead to bad results — the kind of approach that kills momentum, vexes fans and lets the other team hang around, working its way back into the game.

In a game, a coach might call a time out, give a rousing speech and tell the team to play the way it did when it tallied the big lead. But even in a game, that’s not always easy — and in a presidential campaign, there aren’t any timeouts.

But the real difference for Rubio, Trump and Cruz — and for all the candidates — is, in this contest, it will be the fans who decide the final score.