GWEN IFILL: After the votes are counted today, Republicans will be one step closer to settling on a nominee. But there may be even more at stake, as distinct factions fight for the future of the Grand Old Party.
Political director Lisa Desjardins is back with that from New Hampshire.
LISA DESJARDINS: The clusters of signs and intense campaigning show a Republican race that has been unpredictable, even by New Hampshire standards.
WOMAN: I’m a volunteer calling on behalf of Ted Cruz for president campaign.
LISA DESJARDINS: Phone banks are in high gear at Cruz headquarters in Manchester. Their candidate may have won Iowa, but he has not been the headline here.
The slightly younger senator from Florida is. Marco Rubio has seemed to find his groove and a big response at his events.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), Republican Presidential Candidate: Hillary Clinton attacks me more than any other Republican because she doesn’t want to run against me, but I can’t wait to run against her.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
LISA DESJARDINS: But his performance at Saturday’s debate has raised a new question mark.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), Republican Presidential Candidate: There it is. There it is, the memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.
LISA DESJARDINS: Playing into ads like this one from the super PAC supporting Jeb Bush.
MAN: Repeating the same answer.
MAN: And then he did boy in the bubble. I have to go to my robotic talking points.
LISA DESJARDINS: Rubio has also been on the attack.
NARRATOR: Jeb Bush’s ideas are old and wrong.
LISA DESJARDINS: With his super PAC going after Bush in one ad.
NARRATOR: What is Canadian about Ted Cruz? His tax plan.
LISA DESJARDINS: After Ted Cruz in another.
NARRATOR: Chris Christie could well be Obama’s favorite Republican governor.
LISA DESJARDINS: Chris Christie in still one more.
Rubio has found himself in the middle of a much larger party divide here in New Hampshire. While, in Iowa, some 85 percent of Republicans call themselves conservative, here in New Hampshire, roughly half of Republicans identify as moderate or liberal. That makes this vote not just a fight between candidates, but between opposing party philosophies.
STEVE MACDONALD, Host, GrokTALK!: Welcome to another edition of GrokTALK!. It is February already.
Steve Mac Donald hosts GrokTALK!. It’s a home-grown conservative radio show in Concord that is actively supporting Ted Cruz. Mac Donald actually embraces the label “extreme,” because he says Republicans in office, like Rubio and Chris Christie, have become compromised.
STEVE MACDONALD: We are extreme because we believe in smaller government, local control. We’d rather keep the money here and go talk to our legislators and our town councils about how to spend the money. And there is an extreme difference in that philosophy, and that’s why extremist is an appropriate word.
LISA DESJARDINS: But these Republicans see the word extremist as the problem.
Renee Plummer is here to win business votes for Chris Christie, along with his wife, Mary Pat.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE: There are some people who, based on their life experience, their work experience, their experience in public life, are prepared and ready to take on Hillary Clinton and then become president of the United States. And some people are not.
LISA DESJARDINS: Christie is considered establishment by some, and Plummer says that shouldn’t be a bad thing.
RENEE PLUMMER, Real Estate Developer: When you talk about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, you’re talking about establishment. At some point, something has to be established.
LISA DESJARDINS: Plummer is a real estate developer. At her home in Portsmouth, she shows me photos of the must-do luncheons that she hosts for nearly every candidate.
RENEE PLUMMER: So, Governor Scott Walker was the first one.
LISA DESJARDINS: She fears that the right wing of the party only wants control, not results or compromise.
RENEE PLUMMER: I think people become very selfish, you know? They want their small group to be the ones that are going to dominate. How are you going to govern if you think that your group is right, and everybody else is wrong? It’s not going to work.
LISA DESJARDINS: Dante Scala is a professor at the University of New Hampshire who’s written a book on the Republican divide.
He says the 2016 GOP fight highlights a real problem for the party and its presidential candidates.
DANTE SCALA, University of New Hampshire: So, the Republicans are grappling with both left-right divisions, but then in vs. out. And so that’s complicating things. So, Republicans have become very good at building a coalition of voters that excels in midterms, when the electorate is older and whiter, but they are having real problems building a coalition that can win presidential elections.
LISA DESJARDINS: Here’s what the divide means in today’s primary. The hard right is pushing for Cruz and Ben Carson, but that’s just 20 percent of Republicans here. The bigger group in New Hampshire is moderates.
Fighting for those votes are three governors, John Kasich, Christie and Bush. Hoping to gain from both sides are hard-to-define Donald Trump and Rubio, who is both conservative and established. This all makes for a particularly wild intraparty fight for voters, from moderates.
PAUL EDMONDS, New Hampshire Voter: It’s directionally incorrect with the guys like Trump and Cruz, I think. You need — quote — “more establishment” kind of guys like Kasich and Christie or Bush.
LISA DESJARDINS: To Trump voters.
CYNDI TUITE, New Hampshire Voter: It needs somebody that’s got some balls, who is not a regular politician, and can get this country back on course.
LISA DESJARDINS: To conservatives.
ROBERT HODGMAN, New Hampshire Voter: This country is slipping away from the Constitution very rapidly. And if we don’t win this election, we’re going to have a lot of problems.
LISA DESJARDINS: And to the seemingly many late-deciders.
RICHARD TUITE, New Hampshire Voter: Actually, I really don’t have to make up my mind yet.
LISA DESJARDINS: New Hampshire has been a sprint for candidates to try and stay in the Republican race, and it’s a test likely to swing at the last minute.
In Manchester for the PBS NewsHour, I’m Lisa Desjardins.
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