Krauthammer: New Hampshire Will Be ‘Cannibalism of the Mainstream Candidates’

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the Republican presidential primary next week in New Hampshire will turn into “cannibalism of the mainstream candidates” because Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, John Kasich will all be looking to knock Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) down a notch after his third-place Iowa caucus showing.

Krauthammer said “Well, for the four of them really, New Hampshire is pretty fertile territory. Far more secular, far more middle-of-the-road. And you allow a crossover of independents that’s not allowed in Iowa. It looks as if this is going to be the cannibalism of the mainstream candidates. Obviously Rubio has the advantage. He got the big bounce. He was eight points higher than what people expected in Iowa. I think that’s going to be one of the two stories. That’s going to be who comes out on top. If you don’t pass Rubio, and you’re one of the three governors, you really have to go home. And that’s going to be the objective or those. They’re not going to to win, I don’t think it is realistic. The other story is what’s called the anti-establishment lane, which I think it is a complete misunderstanding of what’s going on. That somehow Trump and Cruz are identical because they’re anti-establishment. There’s a huge difference between them. Yes, they’re anti-establishment, but Trump is a populist. Cruz is a conservative. So people say ‘well the anti-establishment vote in Iowa is over 50 percent.’ But that’s the wrong way to look at it. You add up Cruz and Rubio, both of them conservatives, one more conservative fundamentalist if you like than the other. And what you have is 51 percent of Iowa is conservative and one quarter is populist. That tells me that the Republicans are likely to stay with their roots as a conservative party and not be, accept the siren song of the kind of populism that Trump is championing.”