MANCHESTER, NH — After coming out of the Iowa caucus like a rocket, Marco Rubio came back down to earth in the final Republican presidential debate before the New Hampshire primary.
The exchange between Christie and Rubio was part of a broader argument between all seven Republican candidates over whether competence or sound ideology are better guarantors of presidential success.
Pressed by Chris Christie and other governors on the stage to defend how his experience as a Florida senator prepared him for the presidency, Rubio appeared rattled and repeated the same attack line against President Barack Obama three times. Christie blasted Rubio as a scripted Washington candidate.
Christie began by comparing Rubio to Obama. “I like Marco Rubio, and he’s a smart person and a good guy, but he simply does not have the experience to be president of the United States and make these decisions,” the second-term New Jersey governor said. “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 replied with a quick hit on Christie’s New Jersey record before pivoting back to his own attacks on Obama. “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing,” the freshman senator said. “He wants America to become more like the rest of the world. We don’t want to be like the rest of the world, we want to be the United States of America.”
Christie pounced, accusing Rubio of behaving like a Washington politician with a “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.”
Rubio challenged Christie’s response to a recent snowstorm, suggesting he didn’t want to go back to New Jersey to deal with it, but repeated his line about Obama knowing what he’s doing. Christie interjected, “There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is everybody.”
“The shame is that you would actually criticize somebody for showing up to work, plowing the streets, getting the trains running back on time when you’ve never been responsible for that in your entire life,” Christie said, criticizing Rubio’s lack of executive experience and possibly taking a veiled dig at the senator’s missed votes.
When Rubio again said Christie didn’t want to go back to New Jersey to deal with a local weather issue, the governor said, “Oh, so — wait a second. Is that one of the skills you get as a United States senator ESP also?”
Rubio has a lot of momentum after Iowa, where he finished an unexpectedly strong third. He is currently running second in most recent New Hampshire polls, but where he mainly faced competition from conservative Ted Cruz in the Hawkeye State in Tuesday’s primary he must fend off Christie, John Kasich and Jeb Bush.
Those three current and former governors had strong debates Saturday night while Rubio stumbled under pressure in comparison.
Rubio supporters pushed back by noting their candidate performed well in internet searches during the debate, arguing that this data has proved more predictive than pundit analysis in past debates.
The Rubio campaign quickly came out with a new fundraising email. “Did you watch the debate tonight?” it read. “Every candidate came armed with attacks against Rubio.”
But Rubio was also the subject of harshly critical viral videos and media headlines like “Marcobot malfunctions.” Detractors labeled Rubio robotic and contended his performance reinforced concerns about his relative youth and lack of managerial experience.
When the Democrats have conducted presidential primary debates on Saturdays, they haven’t reached large audiences or had much impact. None of those events occurred the night before the Super Bowl. At the same time, that could also accentuate the importance of subsequent media coverage suggesting Rubio had a bad debate, since those stories and videos may reach more people than the debate itself.
Rubio recovered as the debate wore on, but still looked sweaty and nervous. He has to hope that his exchange with Christie on abortion, where Rubio forcefully defended his pro-life views while said some things that may alienate abortion opponents, is the one Republicans remember.
Rubio’s seeming failure to capitalize on his momentum coming out of Iowa in Saturday night’s debate creates a muddled picture for the Republican presidential race. Trump continues to lead in the polls and while he had his stumbles too — it remains to be seen how scolding the audience for being special-interest donors will play with Republicans throughout the Granite State — appeared confident and was rarely criticized by his opponents.
In fact, when Cruz was invited by the moderator to take on Trump, he declined to do so. The billionaire called attention to Cruz’s demurral. “First of all, I respect what Ted just said, but if you noticed, he didn’t answer your question,” Trump said, implying this shows how poorly Cruz would handle negotiating on behalf of American interests and how intimidating the businessman is himself.
“We’re going to win with Trump,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. “And people back down with Trump.”
While Trump has been consistently in first place in New Hampshire, often by a wide margin, second through fifth places have shifted frequently. Rubio seemed to own second place after Iowa, but Kasich is making a strong play for it and Bush’s debate performance was his latest sign of life as the primary looms.
Kasich targeted also targeted conservatives who are looking for governing experience, as well as independents who can vote in New Hampshire’s semi-open primary and might want someone more moderate. As governor of Ohio, a state Republicans need to carry in November, he also has an electability argument he can make, something that has typically been Rubio’s strong suit.
Bush has been campaigning with his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush. He may have landed one of the sharpest blows on Trump by accusing him of eminent domain abuse as the billionaire launched into an extended defense of compensated property takings.
Ben Carson resumed his feud with Cruz over the latter’s campaign telling Iowa caucus-goers the retired neurosurgeon had suspended his presidential bid in an apparent effort to corral more evangelical votes for the Texas senator. Cruz apologized, but Carson didn’t seem mollified.
“Well, let me just — you know, he wants to be a tough guy,” Trump said of Bush. Bush returned fire: “How tough it is to take away property from an elderly woman?” Trump countered that Bush was hypocritical in his support of the Keystone XL pipeline if he is against the use of eminent domain that might benefit private companies.
Democrats were likely pleased that the Republicans tried so many lines of attack against each other that can be re-purposed in the general election against the eventual nominee.
But the GOP candidates frequently turned to the basic theme of competence versus ideology. Rubio argued the reason Obama has failed as president was that his policy ideas were bad and his governing philosophy was wrong, not because he didn’t know what he was doing. Christie argued that it was a competence problem based on his inexperience as an executive, which is why we shouldn’t elect another freshman senator president.
Cruz and Carson, like Rubio, are making ideology and political philosophy are big part of their pitch for why they should be elected president. Bush, Kasich, Christie and Trump are in their different ways running on competence, the three governors arguing their experience is more applicable to the presidency while the notoriously ideologically flexible Trump has said the management ability that helped him amass a fortune could benefit the country as a whole.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis tried to rebut criticisms of his liberalism by saying the election should be about competence, not ideology. Dukakis lost, but 2016 could turn out much differently.
