Marco Rubio Might Have Glitch His own Campaign by Debate Performance

                                                                     

N.H. — Marco Rubio’s robotic debate performance Saturday night sparked an all-out offensive on the campaign trail here Sunday over his authenticity and experience, momentarily halting the momentum of the senator from Florida and further muddling the presidential nomination battle.

Just two days before the New Hampshire primary, Rubio drew mockery for repeating a rehearsed line four times during the Republican candidates’ debate, even after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had ridiculed him for being a talking-point machine.

Rubio received scathing reviews on the Sunday talk shows and was needled by some of his opponents. On Twitter, he earned the moniker “Rubio bot.” Clips of the debate played repeatedly on cable news and were watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube.

The episode interrupted Rubio’s week-long effort to build on his impressive third-place showing in the Iowa caucuses and consolidate donors and party officials behind him. It also appeared to give new life to the struggling candidacies of Christie, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, while improving Donald Trump’s chances of winning the New Hampshire Republican primary.

The fallout for Rubio over the long term could be severe. His GOP rivals argued Sunday that the debate undercut the central case for Rubio’s candidacy — that his political agility and youthful, charismatic persona make him best positioned to challenge the Democratic nominee.

 New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks during a town hall meeting Sunday in Hampton, N.H. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)

[Here’s what Rubio’s ‘glitch’ of an answer was supposed to mean]

And they claimed a renewed — and seemingly justifiable — rationale to soldier on past New Hampshire, which would mean that the mainstream Republican vote would probably continue to splinter among several candidates.

“The whole race changed last night,” Christie said Sunday on CNN. “There was a march amongst some in the chattering class to anoint Senator Rubio. I think after last night, that’s over. I think there could be four or five tickets now out of New Hampshire because the race is so unsettled now.”

Bush also sounded reinvigorated by the difficulties of the otherwise polished Rubio, his onetime Florida protege who has overshadowed him all year. “I envy the people that have, you know, message discipline, to say the same thing over and over again,” Bush told a standing-room-only crowd in Salem. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out.”

Kasich, buoyed by a solid debate performance, refused opportunities Sunday to go after others and instead asked New Hampshire voters to affirm on Tuesday his “unifying positive message.”

Rubio, for his part, came out swinging in a series of events. He was defiant as he defended his debate-night talking point that portrayed President Obama as a wily operator who has succeeded in enacting a liberal agenda.

“I’m going to say it again,” Rubio told a gathering in Londonderry. “The reason why these things are in trouble is because Barack Obama is the first president, at least in my lifetime, that wants to change the country.”

 Supporters reach out for photos and autographs from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after a campaign rally Sunday in Holderness, N.H. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

[Marco Rubio doubles down on repetition in post-debate rally]

Nonetheless, the debate haunted Rubio on Sunday. In the parking lot at his campaign stop in Hudson, someone placed photocopies of the Boston Herald’s front page — which showed a picture of Rubio with the headline “Choke!” — under the windshield wipers of cars.

[Washington Post]