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What the Heck Happened to Marco?
“There is no way to sugarcoat Marco Rubio’s serious blunder at last night’s debate,” writes our own Mona Charen; the Boston Herald ran the headline, “Under fire, Marco Rubio crashes and burns”; and FiveThirtyEight begins its story on the debate with this:
We…endorse the conventional wisdom, for a change. Like most other people covering the event, we thought that Marco Rubio had a really bad night….
I had to miss the debate last night, unfortunately, but I’d assumed it could only help Marco, who seemed to be gathering strength for a strong second-place finish in New Hampshire. Jeepers. I turn my back for one little moment — and everything falls apart. (Yes, I know. It’s still early in the political year, but I’ve already reached the point at which I’ve begun feeling possessive about the whole campaign. It’s being run entirely for my own entertainment, right?)
Could somebody fill me in? What the heck happened to Marco? How bad was it? Can he recover in the next 48 hours?
Published in General
Obama had a Dem super majority in both houses, as I recall. What does having little experience in any way have to do with his success or lack thereof???
I think most of the people who think Rubio is finished don’t like him anyway. It only makes a difference if the people who like him start changing their mind in anything like significant numbers. Basically, what happened to Rick Perry in 2012, except that took 3 debates to become a problem. If he can fix his problem by the next debate, he can mount a comeback. If he can’t, he has problems.
Think how the podium feels.
Seriously :)
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/21/phyllis-schlafly-trump-is-last-hope-for-america/
Rubio’s performance in the rest of the debate was a thorough refutation of the charge Christie was trying to make with his interruptions.
Maybe no one cares about his very strong answers to the questions about ISIS and abortion, etc. but I have a feeling he’ll do well on Tuesday. He was by far the best debater for the other 99% of the night’s entertainment.
I didn’t watch the debate, but I listened to it. Marco had a poor first 40 minutes, and a rather good remainder of the debate. I actually thought Ted Cruz had the best night, especially with a really good answer on ethanol.. Kasich had a lot of good moments, but kept stepping on himself by sounding so condescending. Trump actually had the worst moment of the night in my opinion, when he tried to bully Jeb and then whined about the audience for about 30-40 seconds when they objected.
I don’t know what Phyllis Schlafly is thinking. When you have plenty of candidates with socially conservative views that have been developed over years, why she throws her lot in with a guy that drops F-bombs at rallies and whose modus operandi in dealing with critics is main & destroy is beyond me. Of course, I’m just a dumb Christian conservative who is led around easily.
He’s already recovered. His performance the rest of the debate was the more impressive coming as it did after Christie’s snideness. A less confident candidate might have been intimidated and kept a low profile the rest of the way. But Rubio dominated after that- so he’s already reacted and recovered. Good job.
I am old enough to remember when Phyllis Schlafly endorsed Pat Buchanan, so her endorsement of Trump does not really surprise me. Trump is running on many of the same immigration/trade issues that Buchanan ran on.
After the debate last night, I actually wrote an email on Trump’s website begging him to oppose the move to draft women. I haven’t received a response yet. Phyllis Schlafly built an entire movement on opposition to drafting women, so hopefully she has cleared Trump on that issue.
The fact that Mrs. Schlafly is supporting Trump is really not that weird; if he ends up supporting the move to draft women and she continues to support him, that would be weird :)
I re-listened to the part that was supposedly Marco’s bad moment with Christie. When I saw all the headlines stating that Marco had been ‘throw off balance’, and had a ‘rough night’ I assumed that I missed that portion of the debate. But when I went to youtube and listened to the portion of the debate in questions I realized that I had in fact heard that part live.
From my subjective stance when I heard that part of the debate it didn’t strike me as particularly relevant or important. There was no big gaffe regarding major policy. If it was a mistake, it was only a mistake in style, and, at least to me, a minor one at that. Rubio didn’t particularly look clever, but his comments on Obama were least reasonable. The copy and paste modular style of Rubio is not ideal in the way he will repeat certain shticks verbatim, but to some extent every politician does it. It would actually be ill advised to try to come up with novel response for every new or repeated question. Anyone who has every studied Reagan would certainly know he repeated himself often, because certain remain true and bear repeating.
Jonathan V. Last over at the Weekly Standard, making the “bearish” case against Rubio:
Rubio’s point about the Obama administration’s efforts to transform America was sound, but poorly made. But his own case for his own experience and leadership ability was much shakier.
This isn’t a campaign ending gaffe, but he’s got some work to do to ensure it isn’t a campaign-defining moment.
I can’t say I hate it but I really wanted him to stop doing it. I found it mildly irritating and knew it had to be getting deep under the skin of most folks watching the debate. I like his positions and his backbone but I still recognize that his optics are not good. And in the general, maybe in the primary, optics seem to matter more than positions, unless your initials are D.T.
Phyllis Schafly has indeed spoken very positively about Donald Trump. However, after the article you cite was published, she came out to say that it was not an endorsement of Donald Trump.
She has since repeated many of the things she said in the WND interview, and she makes a powerful case for the overwhelming sense of voter betrayal that has fueled the Trump support, and what Trump could, potentially, do to remedy it.
But, as of today, I can’t find a formal endorsement of Trump with Phyllis Schlafly’s name on it. (Breitbart’s more recent interview says only “Phyllis Schlafly makes the case for President Trump.”) I do find several reports claiming she endorsed him, all pointing back to this same article/interview, after which she actually refuted having done so.
The ‘endorsement’ word in a Presidential campaign has a specific meaning, and depending on where it comes from, can be quite weighty.
Is there a more recent, formal, endorsement of Donald Trump by Phyllis Schlafly somewhere?
Marco was stunned by Fred Flintstone — the trauma made Marco fall into his Groundhog Day mode. He’ll keep on repeating the same line about Obama until spring.
My critique 0f Rubio all along has been that he’s too green, and a bit naive. I think that was what was behind his Group of Eight immigration fiasco; which, to his credit, he seems to have learned from.
So I’m not particularly surprised by his reportedly (didn’t watch it) poor debate performance, as it sounds like it’s inline with that critique.
Tuck,
I suggest you watch it before you judge. I’ve never seen such a blatant lie perpetrated as this one by ABC and the lefty gang. The MSM is only too willing to repeat a lie that attacks a viable Republican frontrunner.
Remember the old saying “what goes round comes round”.
Regards,
Jim
LOL. Yes, good advice.
Rubio would have emerged in a much better light if , instead of doing the repeat verbiage of his view (which I think is a correct view) that Obama is competent in deconstructing America, he had taken that time to explain in more detail exactly what he was trying to get across, that what Obama is doing makes him appear incompetent but that he is doing those things with purpose because he hates America.
Not that I can find. Thank you for pointing this out; I wasn’t aware that there was a difference between a formal and informal endorsement, but now that I am aware, I am still not sure what the difference would be :) Mrs. Schlafly is so emphatic in how she praises Trump; describing him as “the last hope for America” that I think it’s reasonable to take that to mean that she will be voting for him, and she wants us to vote for him too. It’s very strange that Mrs Schlafly seems to be saying, “Donald Trump is the last hope for America, but I am not endorsing him” Not sure what to make of that :)
I agree as far as it goes, but he’ll have to sustain that in the coming days and weeks.
From the comfort of my 20-20 hindsight recliner, though, he might have done better sooner to point out Christie’s own one-trick talking point: he’s been a gee-whiz guv and, by the way, Rubio’s a rube. That’s all Christie’s got.
Eric Hines
And, oh, yeah–on yesterday’s interview with Chris Wallace, Christie came off as frustrated, if not angry, that no one before the Saturday debate had been listening to him as he railed that Rubio was a rube.
I don’t think that interview did Christie any good.
Eric Hines
That’s what I thought. Rubio took one position while Christie and later Trump took a different position. Rubio’s positon is much closer to the truth, but since he had a rehearsed answer that makes it bad? I’m glad I’m not a politician.
Cruz is my preferred nominee, and Rubio is my second choice, but this episode increases my favorability toward Rubio.
I think Rubio would have done better by answering the question directly. I prefer executives over legislators, but I do not deny the value of necessary work done in crafting laws. Rubio became speaker of the Florida house for doing something. He could have spoken about that. He’s apparently the one who got the insurance company bailouts torpedoed. He could have spoken about that. I’m sure there is more to the list, and he could have pointed out that big things don’t happen in state governments through the actions of governors alone.
Whether his argument on Obama was interpreted properly or not is besides the point. He didn’t answer the question about his experience and he left himself wide open for the hits he took.
It is also true that Rubio does not accept that a first-term Senator cannot be competent in the Presidency and thinks that Obama is demonstrating competence in deconstructing America. Of course, tearing a thing down requires less competence than building it up.
I don’t know what to make of it either; but apparently Phyllis Schlafly herself sees some distinction between what she is saying and an actual ‘endorsement.’ Maybe one of the interviewers will ask her what the difference is. Often, I think ‘endorsers’ appear on the platform with the candidate, participating more directly in the campaign, and speaking in promotions and ads, and occasionally appearing ‘for’ the candidate at events. It is possible that Phyllis Schlafly, who is a wonderful, very smart, and very articulate lady, but who is now 91 years old, simply doesn’t have the stamina to do more than she already has.
Yes. That is exactly what I’ve been saying–the person with the rehearsed, 25 second sound byte that is repeated ad nauseam, is Chris Christie, and it is something like:
That is all he’s brought to any debate, and all he’s brought to every debate.
In addition, his statement reflects a troubling contempt for the legislative branch, much of which is deserved, but which does not speak well to Christie’s interest in ‘bridge-building,’ to coin a phrase. Does the United States of America really want another imperial President?
I sort of like Chris Christie (he sometimes speaks with great sense and passion, although like the rest of them, he’s not perfect), but at the moment, he’s like a (rather desperate) broken record with a needle stuck in the groove.
_____________
*Wikipedia’s Christie entry states that several members of the NJ bar expressed disappointment when he was appointed US Attorney for the District of NJ, due to the fact that he “had never practiced in a federal courtroom and had little experience of criminal law.” Then follows a lengthy explication of political/donor/fundraising give-and-take in which the names “Karl Rove” and “Bob Torricelli” are prominently mentioned. I can’t be bothered to sort it all out, but when I see one, let alone both, of those names in close proximity to someone else’s, I smell something a bit off. Someone should look into that.
It is sometimes the little breadcrumbs that I pick up on and dwell on their meaning. I think back a couple of debates when Mr. Trump was flailing on the Nuclear Triad question by Hugh Hewitt. It was clear to all listening that Mr. Trump had no idea what the term meant. How much prep can a candidate have on the myriad mistakes your opponent may make in the course of a debate? I was sitting at home expecting for any of the hard-charging and enterprising would-be President debaters to jump on this. How irresistible it must have been to really rub Trump’s nose in it and humiliate him to the national audience. Sen. Rubio resisted. He took the opportunity to “educate” those viewers at home, who may not know what the Nuclear Triad meant. He realizes that the game is to win support and, by extension, voters. He wants to appear palatable to the Trump voter. He is aware there is no benefit in embarrassing your opponent because supporters tend to take criticism personally and don’t forget. It was a decision made in the moment and executed perfectly and almost unnoticed.
I look forward to the day when Chris Christie is on Morning Joe singing the praises of Candidate Rubio. Not because he means it, but because I know he doesn’t. That will be a humiliation that Christie could have avoided.
Paul,
Surely the OAC would like to have a word with Christie.
Regards,
Jim
Frankly, I resemble that remark!!
Paul,
I just had shawarma at the local Kosher Israeli place. A couple more lunches like that and I’ll resemble that remark.
Regards,
Jim
There is so much wrong with what Christie said.