Duprey, who will stay neutral, said Bush has a path to victory in New Hampshire if independents show up for him. But he also predicted that the state’s primary won’t necessarily have the same winnowing effect it has historically.
“I can come up with a plausible scenario where any one of a dozen candidates can win this primary,” he said. “It may very well be that we have three or four people emerge from New Hampshire: someone does well with social conservatives, someone does well with libertarians [and] someone does well with moderate, more mainstream conservatives.”…
“What people miss about New Hampshire right now is that neither race occurs here in a vacuum,” said Republican power broker Tom Rath, a former state attorney general. “If the contest appears to be on the ‘R’ side, independents tend to take Republican ballots. That tends to moderate the Republican electorate…That’s Bush’s territory.”…
“There’s a lane for Jeb here,” said a top Iowa Republican operative with presidential campaign experience, granted anonymity to speak freely. “The evangelicals get all the attention … but most Republicans who caucus are mainstream. They want to shake up government, not blow up government.”
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