Columnist Charles Krauthammer said Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “sisterhood of the marching pantsuits” “is going to have to dress light” if women who don’t support each other are going to hell and that New Hampshire was “a huge night for Trump” and GOP presidential candidate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s attack on fellow candidate Florida Senator Marco Rubio helped Trump the most and Rubio’s going to have “a very hard slog for him” on Tuesday’s coverage of the New Hampshire primary on the Fox News Channel.
Krauthammer said, “I think the main — the most striking elements are race and gender. Of course, race doesn’t show up, because Iowa and New Hampshire are lily white, which is why I think in the end, even though this is a terrible night for Hillary, I do think in the end, it’s not going to matter, because a large part of the Democratic constituency is African-American, and Sanders is going to try to appeal to it by pandering tomorrow. He’s going to be meeting in New York. But I’m not sure that’s really going to help him. The other one that struck me in the exit polls, is the gender issue. Sanders wins the men by almost 30%, and Sanders also won among the women. Which I think is a refutation of Madeleine Albright, who said, just a couple days ago, that women who don’t help women, essentially who don’t support Hillary, have a special place in hell. Well, I think it was Mark Twain who said, ‘Heaven for the climate, hell for the company.’ It looks like the sisterhood of the marching pantsuits is going to have to dress light. If she loses women, it shows you how much of a shellacking she took.”
Krauthammer added, “On the other side, of course, this is a huge night for Trump. … His margin over number two is really astonishing. But the most interesting element is, the one event in the debate, the hit that was put on Rubio by Christie, who incidentally appears not to have been helped. It was something like a suicide attack. But the others have been helped. But the one who’s helped the most is trump, because now you have a muddle among the so-called mainstream lane. It’s easier to see four of them, three of them, possibly four proceeding. And as we saw, with the late deciders, Rubio won them in Iowa, which gave him a strong kick, but he lost them in New Hampshire, lost by 8 points to Kasich. Imagine if those numbers were switched, Kasich and Rubio, he would likely be number two now, and have the momentum. So he looks like he’s been stopped in his tracks right now. And imagine one other thing, Trump gets over 30%, which is extremely impressive in a big field, but had the field been winnowed today, tonight, to one person for the mainstream lane, Cruz, and Trump, 30% or so means a dead heat among the three. The longer that is postponed, and New Hampshire has postponed it, the better it is for Trump.”
He concluded that if Rubio comes in 5th or 6th, he would still continue his candidacy, but the debate “terribly hurt” him, and there have been times where one event has killed a candidacy. Krauthammer added that Rubio will have to overcome his debate performance, which he thinks Rubio can, but that the election will be “a very hard slog for him. Much harder than it would have been otherwise.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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