Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said Sunday that the New Hampshire primary – and perhaps the whole election season – changed after Saturday night’s GOP debate because of what has been widely viewed as a weak performance from Marco Rubio.
Advertisement
In the space of 15 minutes, Rubio repeated a talking point on President Obama on four occasions, prompting Christie to interject excitedly, “There it is”.
“Rubio is a gifted politician but we did that with President Obama, who has divided the country”, said Gov. Jeb Bush, comparing Rubio to the president – both first-term senators when they launched their presidential bids. “People said, ‘Oh, you said the same thing three or four times.’ I’m going to say it again”, Rubio said in Londonderry, New Hampshire.
Obama was changing the country, he said, “in a way that is robbing us of everything that makes us special”.
“There it is. The memorized 25-second speech”, Christie said, interrupting Rubio mid-sentence. Clips of the debate played repeatedly on cable news and were watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube.
Texas Senator Cruz, who won the Iowa caucus but is expected to do less well in New Hampshire, has 13%.
“You were on fire last night!” one woman yelled at the New Jersey Governor during a morning town hall meeting, which was bursting at the seams in a school cafeteria.
But the senator defended himself after the debate, saying that his campaign fundraised more money in the first hour of Saturday’s debate than in any other debate. “I’m going to say it again”.
The candidate energetically sought to get the conversation back on his own terms, appealing to his supporters without the risk of being called out by rivals, and working to regain the momentum some fear he lost in last night’s debate. No doubt Cruz and of course Trump would continue.
The fallout carried into Sunday morning as newspapers blared headlines that Rubio, who recent polls show surging into second place behind billionaire Donald Trump, choked. As of right now, Bush is closest in New Hampshire polling and the one with the resources to move on if he finishes ahead of Rubio.
He says debate viewers will see a clear difference between those who are prepared to lead and those who are just continuing to talk. He’ll never admit it, but that’s how you get a president that when he was running for president, talked about people clinging to their guns and to their religion. “There it is, everybody”, Christie said. Or Trump repeating ad nauseum how much we’re “going to win”, if he’s elected. The performance of Rubio in Iowa, however, was one of the biggest stories to come out of that night. “I think the experience is not just what you did but how it worked out”.
In an attempt to prove Obama’s failure as president is not because of a lack of experience, but because of a difference in ideology, Rubio created a rift in the typical Obama-is-an-idiot GOP rhetoric. I do want to ask governor Christie.
“That’s the reason why this campaign is so important”. In the end, governor Chris Christie offered to introduce governor kasich.
“I thought he got killed”, Dancause said, but “he bounced back”.
Advertisement
Apart from affirming our hunch that Rubio is a campaigning robot programmed by his handlers to repeat the same point, the Republican debate also helped us rate how sadistic each Republican candidate was.
