The New York Times previews Saturday night’s “get Rubio” debate, reporting that the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are informally collaborating on methods and lines of attack in an effort to reverse the Florida Senator’s momentum in the race. (UPDATE: Christie denies the story, see below). It’s not official collusion, per se, but the mutual interests at play within the so-called ‘establishment wing’ of the field are obvious and urgent:
For Mr. Christie, the verbal barrage is a carefully calibrated attempt to damage Mr. Rubio’s standing in New Hampshire before Tuesday’s primary — and to set up a showdown with him in Saturday night’s Republican debate, possibly Mr. Christie’s best chance to impede Mr. Rubio’s surging candidacy. Mr. Rubio’s strong third-place performance in Iowa on Monday night, and his steady improvement in the polls days before the voting there, alarmed Mr. Christie and his mainstream Republican rivals, including Mr. Bush, who fear Mr. Rubio’s emerging as a breakout figure in New Hampshire. The shared concern has even prompted the opening of a back channel: Members of the Bush and Christie campaigns have communicated about their mutual desire to halt Mr. Rubio’s rise in the polls, according to Republican operatives familiar with the conversations. While emails, texts and phone calls between operatives in rival campaigns are not uncommon in the tight-knit world of political strategists, the contact between senior aides in the two campaigns has drifted toward musings about what can be done to stop or at least slow Mr. Rubio, the operatives said. In a sign of a budding alliance, the aides have, for example, exchanged news articles that raise potential areas of vulnerability for Mr. Rubio. There is no formal coordination, the operatives stressed, but rather a recognition of a shared agenda. “We do have similar goals,” an adviser to Mr. Christie said. For their part, Mr. Christie and Mr. Bush are finding ways to praise one another in public and cozy up to each other in private: Mr. Bush telephoned Mr. Christie on Monday to wish him good luck in the caucuses.
AAN Staff
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