The battle for the Republican nomination appeared more splintered than ever between two halves of a bitterly divided party as several candidates scrambled on Friday to consolidate the support of more moderate conservatives a day after a raucous debate.
With Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas finally engaged in an open feud for the most disillusioned voters, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, were battling to win over a group of more traditional Republicans that is showing little sign of coalescing around any single candidate.
This fracture was most vividly apparent in New Hampshire, where both Mr. Bush and Mr. Rubio campaigned on Friday, and polls show that no one is emerging as the obvious alternative to Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz, two candidates who many Republicans fear would doom their party in the general election.
Mr. Bush sought to highlight his image as the candidate of his party’s seasoned, sober-minded wing with the endorsement of a former rival in the presidential race, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as Mr. Rubio went on the attack against Mr. Cruz and Mr. Christie
The jockeying to become that alternative came a day after a Republican debate in which simmering tensions between Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump exploded, opening up the harshest and most antagonistic phase of the Republican presidential race yet.
Mr. Rubio, who in the earlier phase of his campaign vowed to remain above any intraparty bickering, engaged in repeated broadsides against his rivals.
Questioning Mr. Cruz’s devotion to conservative principles, he said on Fox News, “The only thing consistent is the consistent political calculation.” He added, “So don’t run as a consistent conservative if in fact you have consistently calculated your position. And that’s what he’s done.”
Speaking later to voters in Derry, N.H., Mr. Rubio whipped out a piece of paper from his pocket to read a quote from Mr. Christie in support of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal Supreme Court appointee of President Obama’s.
“I support her appointment to the Supreme Court and urge the Senate to keep politics out of the process,” Mr. Rubio read from the page, adding sarcastically, “That sounds like support.”
“Let me be very clear and very blunt,” he continued. “When I am president of the United States, we are not appointing justices like that to the Supreme Court.”
The pressure is growing on Mr. Rubio to break out as the choice of Republicans who cannot stomach the thought of voting for Mr. Cruz or Mr. Trump. He trails Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz in Iowa, and polls show a tight race with Mr. Cruz in New Hampshire and South Carolina. While Mr. Rubio has won backing from some of theRepublican Party’s wealthiest and most influential donors, he has not yet charted a clear path to winning the nomination.
As he campaigned on Friday, he presented himself as the person who could best stitch back together a divided party.
“We can elect someone that is angry and frustrated about what Barack Obama has done to America,” he said, a nod to Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Cruz’s angrier appeals. “But also someone that knows what to do about it, to fix it, someone who will unite our party and also attract new people to our cause.”
Mr. Bush, who lags behind Mr. Rubio in national polls as well as those in Iowa and New Hampshire, made his own play on Friday to be the alternative to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz with the endorsement of Mr. Graham. At their event in North Charleston, S.C., Mr. Graham extolled him as a sensible and steady choice who has not given in to anger and despair. “He’s the one guy to push back against Donald’s demagoguery at a time when somebody needs to push back,” he said
Talking to reporters after the event, though, Mr. Graham was more sober about Mr. Bush’s prospects with a Republican electorate that seems to have little appetite for candidates advocating conciliation. And he confessed he did not know whether a party so divided could repair itself in time to win the White House.
“I don’t know if he’ll win; I want him to win,” the senator said, adding, “I don’t know how it’s going to end for the party.”
In Republican circles, many see the division in the center-right coalition as partly Mr. Bush’s own doing. There has been a bitter debate lately about whether his strategy of trying to take out Mr. Rubio is futile and ultimately destructive to both men. Mr. Bush reserved much of his fire for Mr. Trump during the debate and in his
remarks on Friday morning.
But as Mr. Bush prepared to leave South Carolina to campaign in New Hampshire later in the day, ads by a “super PAC” supporting him were running across both states accusing Mr. Rubio of being soft on immigration.
Mr. Bush said he would not be leaving the race anytime soon. “I’m not a cut-and-run politician,” he said at the news conference with Mr. Graham. “I see the fire and I move toward itIn the escalating battle between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz, how aggressively the two men continue to feud is likely to be the theme that dominates the campaign before the Iowa caucuses.
On Friday, Mr. Trump was clearly still nursing a grudge from Thursday night’s debate.
Mr. Trump, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” accused Mr. Cruz of being “inappropriate” in raising questions about whether Mr. Trump’s mother’s citizenship status — she was born in Scotland — disqualifies him from running for president. And Mr. Trump said the remark about his “New York values” by Mr. Cruz, a dig at Mr. Trump’s perceived liberal tendencies, was “disgraceful.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign displayed a flurry of activity on Friday. In the morning, after his television appearances, he spoke to Iowa voters just outside Des Moines. He announced that he had rented a movie theater nearby for people to attend a free screening of the new film about the attack in Benghazi, Libya, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”He also released his second television ad, an upbeat spot compared with his dark and foreboding first one, saying he would spend $2 million to air it in Iowa and New Hampshire. It shows him at a rally delivering his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“We are going to make it great again,” he says. “We are going to make it greater than ever before.”
A Republican contest that has been more national in scope than any in recent history — taking shape in contentious exchanges on the debate stage, in cable television interviews and through taunts and insults on Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed — will now narrow into a more local and intimate contest as the candidates focus intensely on the first caucuses in Iowa on Feb. 1 and the first primary in New Hampshire eight days later.
“I’m going to be here so much,” Mr. Trump said in Iowa, “you’re going to be sick of me.”
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