Marco Rubio casts himself as the alternative to Donald Trump

About 100 people braved freezing temperatures to hear Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the youngest candidate running for the presidency, at a centre for retirees in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

Rubio (44), on paper, is the perfect candidate for a party looking to stop a Democrat winning the White House for a third successive term and, in doing so, reaching out to independents, young people and minority voters.

Rubio is young, he is Cuban-American and could appeal to Hispanics, he is telegenic and dynamic, and he is a good debater.

The senator is regarded by many as the one to watch in this chaotic race, sitting in third place nationally in the polls behind Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and conservative Texas senator Ted Cruz, although at a distant third, more than 20 points behind Trump.

Rubio is in third place, too, in Iowa where the first votes to pick the nominee will be cast in the caucuses on February 1st.

He also third in New Hampshire, which votes eight days later in the state’s primary.

Terry Daly, a bartender and one of the first into the Rubio event, likes the fact that he is “younger, a fresh face and smart as a whip”.

“He comes from a working-class family so he understands working-class people,” she said.

“He carries a mortgage; I carry a mortgage. I feel like he can be a president that can relate to everyday people.”

This is an image that the senator plays to when he arrives on stage. Eschewing the braggadocio of Trump or the conceit of Cruz, Rubio tries to relate personally to the anger of many Republican voters rather than tap it as Trump does.

“It is not enough to simply nominate someone who is upset and angry about the direction of our country,” he said, acknowledging that voters have every right to be upset.

“I am passionate about many of the issues that we face in America because I face them in my own life.”

He lists off the large student debt he owed until a few years ago, how he has lived “pay cheque to pay cheque” and how he understands immigration better than anyone because his parents were immigrants.

Immigration, however, is Rubio's most vulnerable front. Rival Republicans have attacked him for co-authoring a comprehensive immigration reform Bill that passed the Senate in 2013, describing it as an "amnesty" Bill.

He disowned the legislation once it became clear other Republicans would not support it and has rejected amnesty.

That Bill included a pathway to citizenship for America’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Rubio has distanced himself from that proposal and in recent months has struck a hard line on immigration, pulled right by the popularity of Trump’s hardline position on the issue and the Islamic State-inspired mass shooting on San Bernardino where was one of the co-perpetrators was a Pakistani immigrant.

“This issue now above everything else is about keeping Isis out of America,” said Rubio. He promises that if as president he catches any Isis militant alive, “they are getting a one-way ticket to Guantànamo”.

The senator gets the biggest reaction from his New Hampshire audience with several digs at Hillary Clinton, the expected Democratic nominee, and his promises to repeal Barack Obama's healthcare law so hated by Republicans and rebuild the country's military and economy.

He pitches himself as the best-positioned candidate from his generation to tackle the problems of his generation and create a “new American century”.

Christie criticism

Rubio’s swing through New Hampshire comes at a critical time.

He is under the heaviest fire here from New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has focused his resources on challenging in the state.

Christie has attacked Rubio’s youth and inexperience, questioning his ability to beat Clinton and ridiculing him as “a first-term senator who is still learning where the men’s room is in the Senate”.

The two men held several town hall and meet-and-greet events in Iowa last weekend. Christie has been a more frequent visitor to New Hampshire than Rubio.

Their objectives are similar: score a respectable finish in Iowa and head to New Hampshire as the best-placed establishment alternatives to Trump and Cruz.

"Rubio isn't very well defined in this state," said Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College in western New Hampshire.

“He hasn’t been here a lot. I don’t see folks going for Rubio right now because they don’t have a very good sense of him.”

The strategy of winning the second tier of establishment candidates carries risk.

Following an unorthodox strategy of ignoring losses in early-voting states in favour of winning in later states derailed the 2008 presidential bid of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Rubio will have to score a strong top-three finish in Iowa or New Hampshire if he has any chance of winning further down the primary road.

The way it’s looking now, however, he might not even win his home state; local polls give Trump a commanding lead in Florida.

"He is stuck in the middle of a strategy that isn't working right now so he is trying to determine which way to go: to be the conservative or the moderate and as a result, he is not having success on either end," says Mike Dennehy, who advised John McCain when he caused an upset beating George W Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary.

Rubio concludes his meeting with a conciliatory note, seeking to transcend the anger of the Republican campaign and the divisive politics of his rivals by offering to reach out to opponents if elected.

“I will never ask you to hate another group of Americans in order for me to win an election,” he said in a thinly disguised dig at the contentious proposals of Trump and Cruz.

Supporters respond favourably to his pledge to restore the American dream and to his strong grasp of foreign policy issues, but still believe he has no chance of beating Trump in New Hampshire.

“I don’t think he is going to win here,” said Lloyd Willey, a retiree who liked what he heard from Rubio but is still undecided on how he will vote in the February 9th primary. “Nationwide I think he has a very good chance.”