Will last night ABC’s Republican Presidential debate prove to be Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s downfall? Rubio came out of the Iowa caucuses in a strong third place, with analysts proclaming him as the likely candidate around which “the establishment” and anti-Trump GOPers would coalesce. But at the debate he had a target on his back — and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in his sharpest debate performance yet, attacked Rubio for relying on a stump speech. And Rubio wound up repeating virtually the same words several more times.

When Christie went after the senator for a lack of accomplishments, Rubio criticized Christie’s record as governor and then, as he often does, moved to a broader argument against President Barack Obama.

The moderators were ready to move on, but Christie wasn’t having it.

“You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That’s what Washington, D.C., does,” Christie said. “The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information, and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.”

The crowd went nuts.

Rubio responded with a shot at Christie for his reluctance to return to New Jersey for a snowstorm that then turned into a criticism of Obama, and Christie pointed out that, once again, Rubio had proved his point.

“There it is,” Christie said. “There it is. The memorized 25-second speech.”

Incredibly, Rubio fell into Christie’s trap for a third time and, after some spirited crosstalk, Christie concluded that Rubio “gets very unruly when he gets off his talking points.”

It was undoubtedly Christie’s strongest moment in any debate — and Rubio’s weakest.

Prediction: this will be almost akin to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “Oops” moment. He will likely never recover from it. (Look for a SNL skit on that VERY soon).

On Twitter and on cable news networks, this was the major news to come out of the debate. But on CNN, from the aptly named “spin room,” Rubio’s spokesman insisted that the base liked to see him go after Barack Obama and Christie had given Rubio three chances that he took. (Oh. So he used the same exact words — like he was reciting the same speech)? Will it fly? Most analyst seem to feel the field has now been opened up to the others to if not shine on Tuesday in New Hampshire make stronger showing and keep a candidacy or two alive as the anti-Trump.

Here’s a video of the exchange:

Was it a good night for Trump? Some analysts suggest Christie won this debate, but others insist it was Trump. Even so, Trump did a have a moment when he was booed, during a heated exchange with former Gov. Jeb Bush over eminent domain:

It was then Bush’s turn to interrupt. Bush asked how “tough” it was to try and take property from an elderly woman. Trump then shushed him.

“Let me talk. Let me talk. Quiet,” he said.

The audience loudly booed Trump, driving the back-and-forth off the rails. Trump said audience members were all members of the Republican establishment.

“That’s all of his donors and special interests out there,” Trump said of the people booing him. “That’s what it is. And by the way, let me just tell you: We needed tickets. You can’t get them. You know who has the tickets? … Donors, special interests, the people that are putting up the money. That’s who it is.”

The booing continued. Trump said he was self-funding his campaign, so Republican donors weren’t a fan of his candidacy.

“The reason they’re not loving me is I don’t want their money. I’m going to do the right thing for the American public,” Trump said.

He was booed again shortly after.

But on Twitter, some argue that Trump being booed by Republican donor fatcats could help him. The answer will come Tuesday.

The debate began with one of the most poorly and screamingly awkward entrance of candidates in television or debate history. To wit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR1kV2hBaGY

Here’s a roundup of news, blog and Twitter reaction to the ABC News debate.
The Washington Post:

Marco Rubio came under withering assault in a debate here Saturday night as opponents for the Republican presidential nomination sought to cut down the senator from Florida over his relative inexperience and for abandoning his push for comprehensive immigration reform.

Donald Trump, the race’s national front-runner, also was put on the defensive by a newly invigorated Jeb Bush, who accused Trump of taking advantage of an elderly woman by using eminent-domain laws to take her Atlantic City, N.J., property as part of a casino development.

But it was Rubio, riding momentum after a surprisingly strong third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, who became the top target in a rollicking ABC News debate that veered — sometimes chaotically — from Islamic State terrorists and North Korea to health care and immigration.

In an urgent bid to slow Rubio down ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie savaged the 44-year-old senator for never having made a “consequential decision,” lacking principled leadership on immigration and being unprepared for the presidency.

….Likening Rubio to President Obama, Christie added: “We’ve watched it happen, everybody. For the last seven years. The people of New Hampshire are smart. Do not make the same mistake again.”

Rubio appeared rattled by the assault, which came chiefly from Christie but was echoed by former Florida governor Bush. Rubio defended his Senate experience and suggested that Christie and other critics were discounting Obama’s skill in navigating Washington.

In one damaging exchange, Christie pounced on Rubio for repeating talking points within minutes — seeming to support Christie’s characterizations of Rubio as an overly scripted “boy in the bubble.”

“Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Rubio said early in the debate. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country.”

Rubio repeated the same answer moments later — nearly verbatim, down to its cadence — leading Christie to mock him.

“There it is,” the governor said. “The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”

Rubio repeated similar phrasing two more times more during the night.

The New York Times:

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was hammered as callow, ambitious and lacking in accomplishment during the Republican presidential debate here on Saturday night, as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey led an all-out assault to try to halt Mr. Rubio’s growing momentum ahead of the critical New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Mr. Rubio, facing the fiercest attacks yet of the Republican race after his strong third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, looked rattled at times and faltered as he pushed back with scripted lines about President Obama that Mr. Christie mocked mercilessly.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Donald J. Trump also pounced on Mr. Rubio, whose rising popularity in New Hampshire poses a grave threat to their candidacies. But it was Mr. Christie who was the most pointed and personal in his derision of Mr. Rubio — a strategy that may not ultimately bring him votes, but could wound Mr. Rubio just as he has been ascending.

…The alliance among the three governors, who have become frustrated as Mr. Rubio has captured the imagination of donors, voters and the media, was striking during the lengthy debate, which was sponsored by ABC News and Independent Journal Review. Not only did they team up on Mr. Rubio, they avoided harsh attacks on one another.

Mr. Christie praised Mr. Kasich’s governorship, and Mr. Bush held both of them up in praising the principles of federalism.

The Los Angeles Times:

The target on Marco Rubio’s back grew larger Saturday, as rivals candidates, starting with Chris Christie, sought to turn the Florida senator’s polish into a liability in a critical debate on the eve of New Hampshire’s leadoff presidential primary.

Meanwhile, Jeb Bush sought anew to take on Donald Trump with a rebuke of his conservative credentials, questioning Trump’s enthusiastic support for eminent domain.

The two main clashes in the debate revealed divergent strategies followed by trailing candidates in need of a breakout moment in the crowded field: Attack the front-runner or try to blunt the momentum of a fast-rising rival.

Saturday’s nationally televised prime-time debate in Manchester offered what was probably the last best chance for candidates to shake up the field before voters here go to the polls Tuesday.

Trump is trying to sustain his celebrity-driven candidacy after finishing second in the Iowa caucuses, a blow to the New York businessman who has consistently touted his first-place ranking in polls

The two main clashes in the debate revealed divergent strategies followed by trailing candidates in need of a breakout moment in the crowded field: Attack the front-runner or try to blunt the momentum of a fast-rising rival.

Saturday’s nationally televised prime-time debate in Manchester offered what was probably the last best chance for candidates to shake up the field before voters here go to the polls Tuesday.

Trump is trying to sustain his celebrity-driven candidacy after finishing second in the Iowa caucuses, a blow to the New York businessman who has consistently touted his first-place ranking in polls

The Daily Beast:

If Marco Rubio suddenly hits a wall at next week’s New Hampshire primary, his performance at Saturday’s Republican debate will be the reason why.
Fresh off his strong showing at the Iowa Caucus, Rubio has been positioning himself as the establishment alternative to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. He’s been rising in the polls and has secured the endorsement of big-name Republicans like Rick Santorum, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey. But on Saturday he didn’t look like the frontrunner-to-be. He was stilted and continually retreated to well-worn talking points. He looked nervous, off his game.
And it all started with a grilling from Chris Christie, a candidate who’s been lagging in New Hampshire polls even though he’s practically set up residency in the state.
The article notes the exchanges cited above and adds:
It was more than an ill-timed stumble for Rubio—a candidate who has been behaving like the frontrunner even though he came in third in Iowa. The exchange wasn’t just a bad debate moment—it magnified a vulnerability that his campaign has worked hard to dispelled: that he’s just not ready to be president.
And Christie wasn’t done…
…It was more than an ill-timed stumble for Rubio—a candidate who has been behaving like the frontrunner even though he came in third in Iowa. The exchange wasn’t just a bad debate moment—it magnified a vulnerability that his campaign has worked hard to dispelled: that he’s just not ready to be president.
And Christie wasn’t done.

The conservative website Redstate:

The story of tonight’s New Hampshire debate will probably be about Marco Rubio – but we don’t know yet what that story will be, because the post-debate spin may be more important than what actually happened.
Rubio had some very good and bad moments tonight. Unfortunately for him, the bad ones were early, they were ugly and they were preventable. Chris Christie attacked him with a line Christie has been repeating all week, accusing Rubio of using too many canned answers, and Rubio responded by repeating himself, and for good measure let Christie get away with denying the undeniably true fact that New Jersey’s credit rating has been downgraded nine times on his watch. Liberals on Twitter were swarming immediately to try to make this a “this is the end of Rubio” moment. James Fallows alone Tweeted three different variations on this…
Rubio had two separate exchanges with Christie, who is very good at this, and was never able to figure him out. And yet the rest of the night included some really outstanding moments from Rubio. He hit a home run with an impassioned late answer on abortion that served the double purpose of making Jeb Bush look unprincipled (for describing his own abortion position as a “political sweet spot”) and Christie sound like a pro-choicer when he slipped into pro-abortion terminology about “when to terminate a pregnancy”. He had some very strong exchanges on foreign policy issues, with the exception of a cringe-inducing question about exposing women to the military draft, which Rubio, Jeb and Christie all inexplicably agreed to and Ben Carson dodged. And Rubio snuck in a response to earlier questions about his accomplishments in an answer about the VA that discussed his work on a VA accountability bill.
Which will be more important? Pundit spin is focusing heavily on the former, as just about every other camp plus the Democrats has a strong interest in taking Rubio down. Google search trends during the debate seem to show a lot more interest in Rubio’s later, stronger moments.

ABC News gave 9 moments that matter in the debate. Go to the original because this is only the list, not the analysis under each one on the list:

1. Christie Riles Up Rubio
2. Trump Says He’ll Save People “Dying On The Street”
3. Carson and Cruz Re-Litigate Iowa Caucuses Controversy
4. Rubio on Repeat

5. Jeb’s Millionaire Moment
6. Candidates Discuss Torture

7. Cruz Gets Personal
8. Bush Confronts His Old Friend8. Bush Confronts His Old Friend

Slate:

Chris Christie stepped onto the ABC News stage in New Hampshire with only one goal: Hit Sen. Marco Rubio early and often. The New Jersey governor did just that on Saturday, remaining on message from beginning to end. His performance is unlikely to be enough to change his fate when Granite State Republicans head to the polls on Tuesday, but on this night at least he did the most to help himself of anyone on the national stage.

Christie set the tone early during his first clash with Rubio, who appeared uncharacteristically flustered during what was his weakest debate performance at a time when he needed his strongest. Asked to defend himself from criticism that he doesn’t have the experience needed to be president—a question that Rubio should have known was coming—the Florida senator instead trained his fire on President Obama. “Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Rubio said after making passing reference to his own time in the Senate and the Florida House. Christie seized on the non sequitur.
….Time and time again, Christie was able to tout his biggest strengths while pointing out Rubio’s biggest weaknesses. Yes, this is Christie’s debate shtick, but on Saturday it worked better than it has all year. All the more so because Rubio was stuck on repeat throughout the night. “Obamacare was not an accident,” the Florida Republican said later. “The undermining of the Second Amendment is not an accident. The gutting of our military is not an accident.” It was a talking point that would have been more likely to draw applause from a crowd that hadn’t heard it three times that night.

Christie was at his strongest when clashing with Rubio, but he also hit his marks when he wasn’t on the offensive. He handled a question about the nation’s heroin epidemic well—a problem particularly important in New Hampshire—and played relatively nice with Govs. Jeb Bush and John Kasich, a posture that only underscored his argument that governors are better prepared to be president than one-term senators such as Rubio or Sen. Ted Cruz.

The conservative website Townhall:

In desperate need of a strong showing in New Hampshire, three Republican governors stepped up and won tonight’s debate. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich all turned in outstanding performances, which may disrupt the state of play ahead of Tuesday’s votes. In a cycle that has been notably unkind to governors, these chief executives finally broke through. Marco Rubio, surging out of Iowa, endured a brutal opening segment, getting sliced and diced by Christie. The New Jerseyan attacked Rubio as scripted and untested, which Rubio parried well at first, but then proceeded to repeat almost the same verbatim defense of himself as Christie poked and prodded. With each similar Rubio response, Christie urged the audience to take note of how the Floridian was confirming the knock the governor was advancing. This was Christie the prosecutor, puncturing a reluctant witness on the stand…

A cringeworthy stretch for Rubio. Let’s see if he suffers because of it. I should add that Rubio rebounded quite well later in the program, offering excellent and detailed answers on a host of questions — particularly in exchanges on ISIS and abortion. But the fact that Rubio wasn’t prepared to go several rounds with Christie, after a week of Christie telegraphing those very attacks, is mystifying. It was as if Rubio was ready to go toe-to-toe with Bush (over attacks that never came), and hadn’t anticipated Christie’s intense barrage. A big miscalculation. The Florida Senator can be very agile on his feet as a politician; in those opening minutes, he was not. Ted Cruz also started off a bit shaky, but recovered with a string of characteristically detailed answers across a spectrum of issues. Overall, he felt like less of a factor in this debate than he did in recent forums. His victory dance on beating the ethanol lobby in Iowa was a sweet moment for fans of the free market. Donald Trump, leading in the polls, had a decent night. He offered several good answers (negotiating with terrorists comes to mind), and a few bad ones (he lost the eminent domain battle to Jeb, and was incoherent on foreign policy). If the polls are accurate, Trump remains the odds-on frontrunner heading into Tuesday; a good night for him.

AND:

ABC News reported after the debate that Democrats who were worried about Rubio’s post-Iowa ascension were “relieved” by his early struggles. Instead of solidifying his standing with a sharp, poised performance, Rubio stumbled in the opening minutes of the debate. That may be a “teachable moment,” but how much will it cost him? And how much did his recovery negate his ugly start? Bottom line: After tonight, Trump’s position as the leader in the clubhouse is unchanged — and the fight over finishing in New Hampshire’s top tier may have gotten a lot more interesting

New York Magazine:

Chris Christie, whose strategy for the debate was clearly to take out Rubio, repeatedly called attention to the senator’s canned speech and accused him of using memorized sound bits to cover up for his complete lack of executive experience. That strategy worked. The exchange became an instant classic in the history of political smackdowns, especially because, incredibly, a clearly rattled Rubio continued to use his canned speech, repeating his attack on Obama a total of five times over the first half of the debate.

Vox:

Marco Rubio had a very bad night at the Republican debate on Saturday. And no video makes it clearer than the one above, showing Rubio repeating the exact same line over and over again — even after he was criticized for it by Chris Christie…
…This is a particularly bad time for Rubio to stumble in a debate. The New Hampshire primary election on Tuesday is supposed to be the moment he contrasts himself as the establishment candidate. But his repetition of this same line over and over has given other potential establishment candidates, particularly Christie, a chance to attack him.

But are most pundits getting too caught up in the drama of one incident — a real pitfall of how the new and old media now cover events. Is there a broader political tapistry that they’re missing?

Nate Silver adds this note of caution:

But a lot of caution is also in order. Pundits haven’t misgauged the impact of a debate since … well, since only about a week ago, when the “smart take” was that Trump had won the final Iowa debate by not having shown up for it, and that Ted Cruz had a poor evening. Instead, Cruz won the Iowa caucuses a few days later, with Trump in second with a vote share well below where polls had projected him.

As I wrote after the previous debate, political reporters are in the “fog of war” phase of the campaign where our reactions aren’t necessarily good matches for those of voters at home. Some of the reason we reporters thought Rubio’s answer was so awful is because it confirmed some of our gossip about Rubio, namely that he tends to give pat, repetitive answers. But we tend to be more sensitive about that stuff, because we watch every debate from start to finish, and then we see lots of the candidates’ stump speeches and town halls on top of it. There’s a fine line between a candidate who seems stilted and repetitive and one who seems “on message” instead.

Is there any evidence that home viewers saw Rubio’s performance differently? Well, maybe. On Google Trends, there was a huge spike in searches for Rubio during the debate — but it came not during his glitchy moments but instead after an effective answer he delivered on abortion about two hours into the debate. Meanwhile, a Google Consumer Surveys poll conducted midway through the debate found respondents thought that Trump, Rubio and Cruz (in that order) were winning the debate. Undoubtedly, this mostly just reflects the fact that Trump, Rubio and Cruz are the most popular Republican candidates to begin with, but it’s also a reminder that one bad answer, or one bad evening, may not weigh all that much on voters’ minds.

The other good news for Rubio is that most all of this will be forgotten about if he performs well in Tuesday’s primary. Nonetheless, even a little bit of slippage for Rubio could produce a big difference in the result. Not only Christie but also Bush and Kasich had strong evenings, in our view, and those are the very candidates Rubio would like to have out of the Republican race.

Salon:

The moment when Saturday night’s Republican presidential primary debate was effectively over came long before the seven candidates left the stage at the St. Anselm’s College Institute of Politics in Manchester.

About 30-odd minutes in, ABC’s moderators, the frankly abysmal Martha Radditz and David Muir, turned the klieg lights onto Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio. What transpired next was one of the best pieces of debate-stage political theater in recent memory (which isn’t saying much; although I’d bet guys like Carl Diggler had fun).

And if it’s possible for a moment from a debate to have a lasting impact on a presidential campaign — which recent history suggests is no small question — I’m guessing that the gleeful whooping Christie proceeded to administer to Rubio will be remembered as one such moment…
…What Rubio’s next five or so minutes such a disaster wasn’t really what he said — but the fact that he had already just said it. Looking mighty flummoxed, Rubio tried to parry Christie’s second attack by pivoting once again to Obama, hoping to bring the crowd around to his side by using generous helpings of ideological red meat to help their tribal identification overwhelm their intellect. It had already failed, but he was doing it again. Worse still, his second answer was almost a verbatim repeat of his first.

Remember: The knock on Rubio has always been, essentially, that he’s a lightweight. He’s young, pretty good-looking, and he exudes the kind of Kennedy-esque earnest, “idealistic” machismo that seems to send a thrill up the legs of the Republican Party’s aged voter base (as well the aging ranks of the elite political press). As they once said of that cherubic whippersnapper Al Gore, Rubio is an older person’s idea of a young person. There may not be much there there, in short.

Well, it’s hard to imagine anything Rubio could have possibly done that would more immediately, and humorously, affirm the caricature. Here he was, really being challenged for the first time — and by Christie, a world-class bully, no less — and he was wilting. He was like an artificially intelligent robot confronted with a logical question his programming couldn’t handle. I worried for a moment that my stream of the debate had begun to skip.

AND:

And the media, I promise you, is going to be obsessed with this first, most dramatic Christie-Rubio confrontation. Because not only does it make for good television and good copy (here I am, 1100 words in, and you’re still reading), but it’ll make for great late night jokes and “Saturday Night Live” skits, too. That’s thanks, in part, to its already fitting a pre-established narrative. Christie, the bully you like despite yourself; Rubio, the young, handsome and über-ambitious empty suit.

So expect Christie’s dismantling of Rubio to be the part of Saturday night’s debate that people remember — if anyone remembers any of it at all. It does not rank among the United States’ most inspirational moments of civic engagement, admittedly. But if nothing else, it showed that professional bullies like Chris Christie can provide a valuable public service every now and then.

A CROSS SECTION OF TWEETS:
James Fallows had a series of Tweets that reflect how devastating Rubio’s fail was:

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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