Now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Just 11 days till the Iowa Caucuses. The first actual voting of 2016. And man, it is getting nasty out there. The war of words between donald trump and ted cruz, who until recently refused to attack each other, has gotten downright ugly. After trump won the endorsement of former politician and reality star sarah palin and cruz countered with Upcoming Campaign appearances by radio host glenn beck, trump responded this morning on twitter, wacko glenn beck is a sad answer to the sarah palin endorsement that cruz so desperately wanted. Glenn is a failing, crying, lost soul. He later retweeted a photo putting a spin on cruzs recent book, which is called a time for truth, showing cruz with a photoshopped, decidedly receding hairline. Loath to be left out of the celebrity bidding war, today marco rubio announced a shiny new endorsement of his own. From rick harrison. Host of the a e reality show pawn stars. The people see for themselves i dont have to convince them its a good investment. I dont have to show them the value for their family. When this guy walked into my shop i knew he was the real deal. In a radio interview cruz compared trumps behavior to schoolyard children throwing taunts at each other vowing ton take part. But hes been rolling out a new line avenue tack on trump tying him to what the base sees as a tainted republican establishment. Were seeing something fairly remarkable happen on the political train. Were seeing the washington establishment abandoning marco rubio. I think theyve made the determination that marco cant win. And theyre rushing to support donald trump. If as a voter you think what we need is more republicans in washington to cut a deal with harry reid and nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer, then i guess Donald Trumps your guy. On the campaign trail today trump dismissed cruzs new assault. You know, his new line of attack is that ive become establishment. Oh, give me a break. No, hes having a hard time. He looks like a nervous wreck. Hes going down. He had his moment. He had his moment. He had his moment, and he blew it. But hes you know. Meanwhile, marco rubio told reporters theres no way he represents the establishment either. Because he says the establishment is spending too much money against him. Ive had over 20 million spent attacking me. Thats not grassroots money. Thats money from the establishment. We have always had to take on the establishment. Well do it again. Because the Republican Party needs to turn the page and move forward. And we will. According to the rubio campaign, 22. 5 million has gone into ads attacking their candidate. The vast majority, 20 million of that, from the projeb bush super pac right to rise. With iowa and New Hampshire both looming the ad wars are shifting into overdrive. And while team bush has gone hard at rubio, team rubios been attacking just about everyone. Everyone except donald trump. A prorubio super pac taunted bush over his train wreck campaign. Hit Chris Christie for supposedly being president obamas favorite republican governor. And attacked cruzs valueadded tax. Thats a maple leaf. Canadian. Not just for being too european but too canadian. Not so subtly putting cruzs face inside that maple leaf there. At this point only one group has spent a single cent attack the frontrunner, donald trump. All right. With almost all of the vote now actually in, we can project that Hillary Clinton will win. Im watching Hillary Clinton receive the victory tonight. They look at donald trump as the greatest gift from heaven. An easy person to beat in the general election. And then shell become the next president of the united states. Thank you all. God bless you and may God Bless America this is our rough rendering of whos attacking who in the ad wars right now. Its all over the place. And that might help explain why something ted cruz suggested a month ago has turned out to be just the opposite. As the upshots nate cohn notes, cruz tweeted the establishments only hope, trump and me in a cage match. But now that he and trump really are in a cage match, with the other candidates going after each other instead of the frontrunners and failing to make gains, the establishment isnt exactly hopeful. Its starting to freak out. Heres senator lindsey graham, who recently endorsed jeb bush. Whether its death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter . Heres my take. Dishonest, which is Hillary Clinton in the eyes of the american people, beats crazy. Dishonest loses to normal. So lets just pick somebody out of the phone book if we have to. Im joined now by rick tyler, Communications Director for ted cruzs president ial campaign. And rick, you guys have been talking about the sort of establishment embrace of donald trump. Youve been attacking him on his sort of conservative bona fides and immigration. But you literally spent you, your campaign, have spent six months praising the guy, bold and brash, willing to speak the truth, taking on the washington cartel. Hes drawing significant crowds, significant passion, people who are pissed off, ticked off with washington. I salute him for his immigration stance, im a big fan of Donald Trumps. Were you being disingenuous then or are you being disingenuous now . Come on, chris. Good evening to you. And thank you for having me on. Listen, no ones being disingenuous. Weve gotten to the point of the campaign where people want to note difference between ted cruz and donald trump and now we are in a twoperson race. I think thats where weve arrived at. Ted cruz and donald trump. Let people make the choice and well give them the differences. The differences are rather stark actually. The donald trump has been for a Single Payer Health care system. Ted cruz opposed obamacare. And donald trump has been for t. A. R. P. Hes been for stimulus. Hes been for partial birth abortion. Hes been for gay marriage. Hes been for a lot of things that he said suddenly now that hes against. So one is a consistent conservative. And the other is im not sure, a celebrity, a reality star. But mostly it looks like a progressive liberal to me. But rick, if hes a progressive liberal, your candidate said im a big fan of Donald Trumps. Your candidate said hes taking on the washington cartel. That doesnt mean if he is a wolf in sheeps clothing as youre now saying, why did you guys spend six months praising him . Im a big fan of yours, chris, but i dont always agree with everything you say. Thats well parried. And i respect their point of view. And you can like them. It doesnt mean you have to agree with them. Were picking the president of the united states, the commander in chief, someone whos got to be a steady hand, someone who has good judgment, someone who is predictable. Ted cruz is prepared for that. Donald trump, i dont know what his Guiding Principles are. For an unforeseen event i dont know that i would trust Donald Trumps decisionmaking. Okay. Lets talk conspiracy theories here. All of a sudden today first of all, its the hunger games at this point. Everyone everything that happens has about nine different ramifications. All of a sudden youve got everyone out today. In the last few days. All these people, establishment people, whether its bob dole or others saying yeah orrin hatch saying actually, id take trump over cruz. Now so happy for it. Of course. You guys love it. Its absolute manna from heaven for you guys. That i get. But ive heard this theory that this is basically jebs people trying to get their supporters to basically put the stake in marco rubio because if people are talking about accepting trump over cruz what theyre really saying is marco rubios no longer viable. Well, i think thats right. Cruz asserted that today. I agree with that. That the establishment candidate marco rubio, hes an establishment candidate. He got in by the tea party but they abandoned him. He was taken to the dance by the tea party but got another ride home. So hes an establishment candidate. By that ride home you mean Chuck Schumer . People want to knock him off. Whats that . Im sorry . I said the ride home that he got, you mean Chuck Schumer and the gang of eight bill . Yeah. Thank you. I hadnt thought of that. Thats pretty good. No, hes just he is an establishment candidate. But he has another establishment candidate, jeb bush, who has spent a lot of money against him. And hes really sort of stalled out. It doesnt look like hes going to go anywhere. It looks like its a twoway race now. But things can change. But look, weve been working really hard in iowa and weve got a great ground game there and a get out the vote effort. And people are very enthusiastic about ted cruz. Our crowds are raucous. Were interpret excited that well do well. Weve been the underdog candidate all along, were still the underdog candidate and were going to fight this out till february 1st. And from there on. Theres a line of thinking about ted cruz. And i know if you say, well, all these people that work with him in the senate dont like him. Youre going to say, well, hes shaking things up, hes made their life miserable because he wont go along to get along. And i get that. Thats right. Yep. But more broadly there just seems to be a tremendous amount of people willing to come out of the woodwork to basically be like i dislike the guy intensely and personally, hes unbearable to be around and work with. Do you think like fundamentally thats going to hurt your candidate . No. Because the people that say that have a stake in the washington status quo staying the same. In fact, the gallup poll says exactly the opposite. Ted cruz is the most likeable candidate in the gop field bar none, including the democrats. He is the most popular, the most wellliked candidate. And by the way, on your own Network Today we saw all the negatives upside down. Donald trump is. If hes going to go to the general election, he would just get hammered. Hes upside down with africanamericans, with women, with latinos, with virtually every group hes in a very serious negative deficit. Those things are hard to overcome in a general election. That is a true thing you just said, rick tyler. Thank you very much for coming on. I enjoyed that. Come back. Appreciate it, chris. Joining me now, betsy woodruff, political reporter for the daily beast, josh barro, correspondent for the upshot at the New York Times and an msnbc contributor. So josh, you and i were going back and forth all day on twitter about this sort of how people are operating through this chess board, correct . Yes. So this idea basically one of the things what has happened to marco rubio . When you stop and think, what have these news cycles been about . Theyve been about trumpcruz, some about jeb bush and the super pac. But youve got to look around and say where is marco rubio, where is the marco rubio bump everyone was promised . And it doesnt look very good. I think its two things. The immigration thing has really stuck to him. He was on the wrong side of whats emerged as probably the most important issue for the conservative base. Its made it difficult for him to establish what were considered very strong conservative bona fides for him. He is really to the right of Chris Christie. When jeb bush and john kasich and he hasnt been able to pull away from them. And in New Hampshire where he was supposed to consolidate moderates he has that problem of jeb bush and Chris Christie and john kasich who are all persistently staying alive. Its not that theyre catching fire in New Hampshire but if each of them is getting 8 or 9 of the vote thats an enormous share of the electorate that marco rubio needed. So i think was basically no path for him. And then as you mentioned about the stuff where you have all these people who are really jeb surrogates. How exactly did trent lott and bob dole come out of the woodwork this week to talk to reporters about, you know, how gee if it came down to trump and cruz id probably go for trump when people floated this idea that this was a conspiracy by the Bush Campaign to undermine rubio at first it was like its too complicated, wheels within wheels but as i thought about it more i did buy that, that this is part of a campaign by jeb to make it look like theres no backup plan to donald trump, try to blow everything up and then all that will be left is donald trump and jeb who nobody really likes but who has a ton of money and then hes the only option left. Betsy, what do you think . The Bush Campaign and the bush super pac, theyre on a kind of Kamikaze Mission and theyre just theyre trying to take out everyone. Marcos doing the same. Marco rubio. And theyre all destroying each other in this kind of 9 , 10 New Hampshire level that theyre at. Without a doubt. And it makes this a wonderful week and month to be a tea Party Conservative or a donald trump fan. I dont think theres a sector of the American Population having more fun than donald trump voters. It seems delightful. Interesting thing about the rubio slide is that his struggles to really get traction with some of these voters typify a theme weve seen over the past years of american politics and that is leaders in the conservative movement and the Republican Party totally losing control and logs clout over the voters they influenced. In the same way the Republican Party leadership has lost base voters, the evangelical christian leadership has also lost a lot of influence over conservative evangelical christian voters. World magazine, a small magazine thats very influential among these voters, every month surveys about 100 evangelical leaders. For the last seven months rubio has won that survey. For the last seven months. Fascinating. Hasnt materialized at all in the vote. These people dont have the clout they used to have and thats why trumps doing so well and why rubios barely treading water. When you look at this from the macro level and you say no ones aside from that jeb bush ad that Shows Hillary winning, right . No ones dropped a cent theres no negative ads up against donald trump in iowa which is crazy to think about. But when you think of the incentives the problem for every individual campaign possibly other than ted cruz, taking on trump only helps ted cruz. So theyre not going to do cruzs dirty work for him. I think thats even arguably true for the cruz campaign. People in the media often tend to assume its trump and cruz fighting over the same voters but when you look at the people who say theyre voting for donald trump he does as well with voters who describe themselves as moderate or liberal as he does with voters who themselves as very conservative. Not all the trump base would go to cruz as a second choice. But yeah, theres that issue of if you attack someone you dont know where the votes are going to go. Theres also this additional issue that all the attacks on trump so far dont seem to have worked very well. There is, as rick tyler was going through, this litany of issues on when i donald trump got himself very far to the left. When he was considering running for president in 2000, he was for a 13 wealth tax on wealthy people to retire the national debt. But none of this seems to matter. You tell trump voters all this stuff, and they dont care. And i think its because david frum has been saying, this trump is all about conservatism as identity, not conservatism as ideology. So it doesnt really matter what policy is for, so long ease gets your gutlevel anger about whatever. Sow cant attack him on policy. And betsy, thats what the palin endorsement as sort of vouching for him is all about. She is the sort of tribune of that kind of conservatism. And remember, sarah palin historically has been one of the most hardcore purists when it actually comes to policy issues. Pushing conspiracy theories about the minutia of the Affordable Care act, arguing that quotes are going to be dredged up from years before someone entered politics have a direct influence on how they would govern if they ran. But now all of a sudden its like the same standards she used when she made every single other endorsement since 2008, all those standards are out the window. Right . This idea that history might perhaps presage what happens in the future. She no longer seems to think thats a valid way of figuring out whats going to happen. Thats what we see. Its more about personality than actual policy decisions which is why hes killing it. Its amazing to watch all this unfold in real time. Betsy woodruff, josh barro, thank you very much. Thank you. Still ahead no, one wants to be branded the establishment candidate, but what exactly is the establishment . Plus how the latest ads for bernie and hillary prove to be perfect snapshots of their respective campaigns. But first, as the east coast braces for what could be a massive winter storm, where is new jersey governor Chris Christie . Those stories and more, ahead. Youve upgraded all your old technology. So what about this . Its time to get into the new with ford come and get it if you really want it. New is ecoboost technology. New is a footactivated liftgate. New is tougher, stronger and lighter. New is ford. Americas bestselling brand. Now get into a new focus, fusion, or escape with 0 financing for 60 months plus 2,000 dollars tradeassist cash. Only at your local ford dealer. Meteorologists are running out of words to describe the blizzard bearing down on the east coast. The worst of it may hit washington, d. C. , but the storm and potentially severe coastal surges will include the new jersey shore. The jersey shore really feeling high impacts from this, not only heavy snow but also gusts as high as 55 miles per hour. Offshore, 15 to 20foot waves, moderate coastal flooding is going to be a concern. Although storm surge predictions for the new jersey coast have lessened somewhat over the past f