[Solecismic]

It gets a little harder to analyze these after a while, because we're familiar with the various styles.

I think everyone can agree that Rubio punk'd himself with the 25-second sound byte. It was a particularly strong one because Rubio has distinguished himself with these eloquent summaries, always turning positively to his vision. That's his style. All he needed to do was recognize that when Christie hit him on it, he needed a different answer at that moment. He didn't have one.

At that moment, Rubio became the establishment, and everyone else on that stage was the outsider.

What will this do to Rubio's campaign? New Hampshire turns on a dime, but not in ways we can always predict. I'll return to this thought later. New Hampshire hates canned responses, though. Will this cost him second place on Tuesday? It might.

What about Trump? We've had a month or so of Trump 2.0 - the Trump who no longer scares small children and seems to recognize what's working for him. But he's also easy to provoke. And he can't seem to go into much detail on anything, even when he's specifically taken to task for speaking in generalities.

Hard to blame him for this approach when he keeps gaining in the polls. So, the question here is whether those who support him in New Hampshire polls, assuming these Likely Voter measures are accurate, will turn out on Tuesday. I think they will. They did in Iowa, but what we found in Iowa was that there are a ton of not-so-likely voters who turned out as well, and they are making their decisions closer to the primary date. What will they do? Trump has been in New Hampshire. He was at this debate. New Hampshire is a place that will have a lot of respect for his entrepreneurship.

Surprisingly, Trump was the one who had the strongest anti-Obama message because it was in response to Rubio's standard 30-second sound byte on the topic. In the end, especially since he took on the audience itself and didn't lose with an accusation that the RNC stacked the audience with insiders, he might actually have had his best performance of the entire season.

Ted Cruz had his usual solid performance on the issues, but his message is far to the right, which doesn't play well in New Hampshire. Will New Hampshire voters notice that Cruz (and Rubio, for that matter) played down their strong Iowa appeals to evangelical voters? Will that seem like hypocrisy? Cruz is just trying to hold on to double digits in New Hampshire.

Dr. Ben Carson is running out of time, and even when he was peaking over 20% nationally and 30% in Iowa, he didn't break 15% in New Hampshire. I don't know how he can stay in the race much longer, which, incidentally, becomes a validation of Cruz if he does drop out in the next couple of weeks. If he does stay in, he will have to scale back staff and won't be able to advertise, and that will have the same effect.

Christie seems to be the guy lately who has the strongest performance on exchanges - the guy who seems to be able to talk semi-intelligently on any subject without sounding rehearsed. I think he'd be deadly with fewer candidates. However, he isn't getting anywhere in any poll. I keep expecting him to make a move, and he doesn't. He keeps putting his best foot forward in these debates and it doesn't move the needle. You just have to conclude that America doesn't want a prosecutor as President right now. Maybe he'd make a good Attorney General?

Jeb Bush has put everything into New Hampshire, and maybe the answer is that even a candidate who seems like a very good fit for the state won't gain traction if his name is Bush. Or maybe people can't forget how bad he was in August and September when he could have been the guy to stem the Trump tide? Point being that even though he's doing everything right, he had only a couple of opportunities to get the momentum moving and he lost them. He could win in a cycle where it's "last one standing," but this isn't that cycle. Who, of these candidates, is most likely to make another decent run ni 2020 if the Democrats win in November? Probably Bush.

That leaves John Kasich, who has also put everything into New Hampshire. Commentators keep saying he tailored his message for New Hampshire and independents, and that will work. Well, yes, New Hampshire has a plurality of independents. And, yes, unlike most states, you can walk in the door of a primary as an independent, register as a Republican, vote, and, on your way out the door, revoke your membership in the Republican Party. I've only voted in one primary in my life - I did so as a three-minute Democrat in the 2004 New Hampshire Primary.

However... New Hampshireites hate pandering. They really hate it. And they will see Kasich's message as somewhat panderful (I've always wanted to invent a word - maybe this is to politics what Solecismic is to company names). I don't think he hurt himself at all. His message is solid enough. But will New Hampshire see him as a leader? I think he's stuck in the low teens.

No one really won this debate, unless you're inclined to consider Trump, and then Trump 2.0 is fairly effective. Rubio and Carly Fiorina certainly lost.

I was going to make a prediction, but now I'm not sure. Rubio really had momentum, and could have soared with a strong performance tonight. And my gut says Kasich didn't soar (again, my gut is always wrong). I think I'm going to wait until Monday (but before Dixville Notch takes center stage).