Trumping Donald: Cruz and Rubio have a better chance of beating Hillary Clinton

I sat through last week's televised debate on FoxBusiness between seven Republican presidential contenders - all 2.29 hours of it. The debate was the last before the opening primary in Iowa on February 1.

The main takeaway? Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio came through as the most impressive of the seven men on the stage.

Donald Trump is still leading in national opinion polls but Cruz is catching up fast. The two men are in a dead heat in Iowa. If Cruz pulls off a win in Iowa and even if he loses the next primary in New Hampshire to Trump (which every poll predicts), he will gain critical momentum.

Early primaries in Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and other conservative southern states will give Trump a solid start as well though Democrat-leaning states like California could stall his charge. In the latest national opinion polls Trump continues to lead Cruz by 34 per cent-19 per cent with Rubio a distant third.

Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton, despite Bernie Sanders' late surge, should win her party's nomination comfortably. So which Republican candidate has the best chance of beating Clinton in the November 2016 Presidential election?

Polls suggest 44-year-old Rubio has the best head-to-head numbers against Hillary. He's charismatic, policy-driven and could eat into the traditional Democratic Hispanic vote. In a Real Clear Politics average of several national polls, Rubio beats Clinton head-to-head by nearly three percentage points. Cruz, also 44 and a highly-regarded senator, beats Clinton as well in Real Clear Politics' poll of polls.

Paradoxically, while Trump leads both Cruz and Rubio in national polls he does badly in a one-on-one match-up against Clinton. A recent poll showed him closing the gap with Hillary to 36 per cent-37 per cent, but he remains the only leading Republican to lose consistently in opinion polls head-to-head against Hillary.

Trump appeals to blue collar Americans, many without a college education, who are fed up with President Barack Obama's "effete" leadership. Trump's braggadocio resonates with them. His anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric could, however, be a double-edged sword. It has alienated not only liberal voters but centrists as well.

However, anger over Obama's muddled Middle-East policy, the deeply unpopular Obamacare health insurance scheme, and stagnant middle-class wages could wound Hillary's campaign. As Obama's secretary of state in 2009-13, Clinton bears the cross of a failed Iraq exit policy and the Benghazi disaster where the US ambassador to Libya, J Christopher Stevens, was killed in an Islamist attack on the American diplomatic enclave.

The deep rivulets of anger running through the US electorate make Hillary vulnerable on three counts: anti-incumbency against two-term Obama with whom she is inextricably linked as a former secretary of state, her own record on Benghazi, and a strong rightwards shift in US political discourse. If the Republicans come up with a strong, credible presidential nominee, the White House is theirs to lose.

Republican party insiders worry though that Trump is not the man to beat Hillary in November 2016. And yet, if there are more terror strikes on US soil - or if American citizens are killed in terror attacks abroad - Trump may himself be tough to beat.

Cruz and Rubio are both extremely impressive candidates. Either could beat Hillary in November and complete America's shift to the political centre-right. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have Republican majorities. Islamist terrorism and refugees from the Middle-East have gripped mainstream America's attention. Trump is riding that emotive wave.

For India, a Republican victory would be a positive. Republicans believe in three credos: low taxes, minimum regulation and fiscal discipline. These resonate strongly with the Modi government in theory. In practice it hasn't quite worked out. "Minimum government, maximum governance" remains a work in progress, though of late there are signs the government is moving in the right direction with, for instance,  its "Start-up India" initiative.

Tax reform in India, as in heavily-taxed America, meanwhile remains stuck in a black hole. Fiscal discipline too is wobbly with the fiscal deficit target of 3.5 per cent of GDP acknowledged recently as "challenging" by minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha.

In many ways, therefore, India and the US face similar problems: high budget deficits, terrorism and fractured politics. Both countries too are on the cusp of political and economic change. In India Prime Minister Modi is struggling to get the economy moving again. In the US, the economy has begun to recover but President Obama, according to opinion polls, is one of the most unpopular US presidents in decades. Race relations have paradoxically deteriorated on his watch. Gun ownership continues to climb.

Obama broke down during his recent speech on gun control. Though his State of the Union address a week ago (the last of his presidency) was widely praised, Obama has aged visibly in his seven years as president. He is still only 54.

In contrast, Hillary is 68, Trump 69. If they win their respective parties' nominations, they will be among the oldest rivals to contest a US presidential election in over a generation.

Two 44-year-old senators, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, will be hoping to change that, come November.