Sen. Marco Rubio defended his “Marcobot” moment during the GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire as what he “passionately believes.” He repeatedly attacked President Obama with the same phrase during a testy exchange with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
During an appearance on ABC News’ This Week, Rubio told host George Stephanopoulos, “It’s what I believe and it’s what I’m going to continue to say, because it happens to be one of the main reasons why I am running.”
During Saturday night’s debate, Rubio said, “And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” He said a second time, “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” When he repeated it a third time, Chris Christie ripped into him, calling it the “memorized 25-second speech.” Rubio made a similar remark bashing Obama a fourth time, later in the debate.
It will be interesting to see if this malfunction will affect Rubio going forward. It seems that his surge in the polls have stalled.
In case you missed Marco Rubio’s implosion, watch the video:
More from the New Hampshire debate:
Debate coach Todd Graham gives Ohio Gov. John Kasich an ‘A’ for his performance at the GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire Saturday night, while giving Sen. Marco Rubio a big fat ‘F.’
Todd Graham: “Kasich’s delivery matched his content this time. His focus was on bringing everyone together. On immigration he reminded the audience that we need both to “lock the doors” by securing the border and to keep families of law abiding immigrants together. On leadership he reminded us that we are Americans first, political party loyalists second. On getting things done in Washington, he told of how he succeeded both as governor and as a congressman and argued that he’d be ready for the first hundred days. And he was the only one to successfully answer the question about bridging the divide between police and the community when he called his ideas a win-win solution. More importantly, Kasich’s attitude and nonverbal communication was so much better this debate. Instead of incensed and interrupting, as he was in previous debates, he was happy, easy going, and likeable.”
Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum critiqued Marco Rubio’s ‘Marcobot’ performance: “Will this hurt Rubio? If he’s smart, he’ll own it. He’ll make it the centerpiece of his campaign going forward, sort of like “Make America great again.” Unfortunately, now that Christie has pointed out Rubio’s index-card habit, everyone is going to be looking for it on every other subject too. Reporters will be combing through his debates and stump speeches looking for canned talking points, and then doing side-by-side comparisons as if he’s an author being accused of plagiarism.”
Flashback from Jonathan Chait in March 2011: “Do you get the feeling that ‘Marco Rubio’ is not an actual human being at all but some kind of computer program designed by the Republican Party? Imagine they had the technical know-how to create a candidate like this. What would they come up with? They’d come up with Marco Rubio, a cinematically handsome Latino from Florida who hews to the Tea Party line while spitting out patriotic cliches that sound as if they were programmed like a computer.” “I’m not saying I’m sure Rubio is a robot. I’m just saying that I want to watch him walk through a metal detector.”
Election news cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.