Rubio Suicide

Yesterday I posted up a quick impression of the debate while it was in progress.   I wrote Rubio damaged himself yesterday by revealing clearly and openly a problem with his campaign:  he recites canned rhetorical gems, by rote.  He was, as I had suggested earlier, a little like a hot new musician with a debut album and a few good songs, but nothing else.   Nothing in the song pipeline.   No ability to ad lib.  Just some memorized material.

Yesterday, watching the debacle--I mean debate--I thought my TV recorder device was broken and showing me the same thing twice, then three times, then later in the show a fourth time.   But it was live TV.  Rubio was stuck, repeating not just the same idea but the same words doing it right when Christie was accusing him of doing that very thing.  Readers my age will remember that scene in every Perry Mason show, when the guilty party was trapped and tricked by Perry Mason into doing a full, complete public confession.
If you missed it last night click on this link and you will see some of it. 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/06/christie_vs_rubio_the_memorized_30-second_speech_where_you_talk_about_how_great_america_is_doesnt_solve_anything.html

This is trademark Rubio poetry:  beautiful, eloquent, rapid-fire, idealistic.  The soaring words accuse Obama of intentionally wanting to destroy America militarily and culturally while he would be a fighter to retain traditional values, religion, freedom, and the American way of life.    Here's what it looks like in print:

 "Let's dispel once and for all the fiction that President Obama doesn't know exactly what he's doing.  Barrack Obama is undertaking a systematigtic effort to change the country. . . .    systematic effort to change America. . . .  this notion that Barrack Obama doesn't know what he's doing.  He knows exactly what he's doing."

So today lets review the aftermath, the rubble.   The internet is full of metaphors: 

Repeats Himself

Of course the liberal media jumped all over this, delighted:
***Rubio is a broken robot, in Huffington Post:   "Marcobot Malfunctions"
***Rubio is a broken record, on MSNBC:  "caught on repeat"

***Chris Matthews wonders if it is a mental health problem, strange in one so young:

"I mean short-term memory's one reason why people repeat themselves." 

It is everywhere on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdY-t4MRqxw

More important for Rubio is the disaster in the conservative press.  This debate was the breakout opportunity for Rubio, the candidate supposedly easier to elect than Christie (the NJ bully, weak Bush, bland Kasich).  Rubio was new, nice looking, and has such a brief record there was nothing to need to explain away.

My local Republican friends were telling me that Rubio is the one, the person they sort of liked, the person who spoke generally enough and in a likable enough manner that they could get comfortable once again with being a Main Street, Rotarian, Chamber of Commerce non-crazy Republican.   Everyone could assume Rubio was "pretty OK".

Rubio could paper over the difference between the donor/K Street establishment pro immigration pro Wall Street part of the GOP and the Tea Party populists who consider those establishment people to be Republicans in Name Only, RINOs.   Rubio just needed to stick to the script and the one common denominator among Republicans who vote in primary elections: Obama is a traitor and probably a Kenyan Muslim at heart, if maybe not in fact, that he hates America and traditional American values.

But that was the suicide pill: Rubio had nothing but that script.  Christie called him on it, and it was revealed.  His friends noticed.

***Rubio stuck in National Review:   "Rubio Momentum Stalls"

***Rubio repeats script in the Weekly Standard, "a bit canned" and "The idea that Rubio is unable to go off script had taken hold in recent days among campaign reporters, but now the candidate was proving it true on national television."

***Rubio sinkng in Fox News, where Rubio "took on water"

Fox's Brit Hume's tweet:   Holy Cow.

The disaster couldn't be minimized or spun.  It had to be acknowledged.   Fox's Debate Panel, normally the most reliable place to protect the viability of a Republican candidate, a panel including Brit Hume and Brett Baier, had no choice but to admit what took place before their eyes.   

http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/02/06/watch-fox-news-panel-savage-rubios-robotic-deba/208419

Grim news

Fox's John Fund put it: "He took on real water when Chris Christie effectively characterized him as an Obama-like orator who rarely strayed from a script, and Rubio fed that impression by repeating his talking points four times in response."

Fox's Charles Krauthammer:  "I think this is likely to put something of a brake on his momentum."

Republican election strategists can already picture the ads that will go up if Rubio is the nominee.   They may not have to wait.  Christie and Bush and Cruz and Trump will put them up themselves if Rubio doesn't fade quickly.  The ads will emphasize the point that Christie made, that Rubio is an empty shell with canned talking points.   The ads will emphasize Rubio's youth and good looks, and make those a negative not a positive:

Rubio as a talking Ken doll, repeating himself mindlessly.

Rubio as i-phone Sari's voice, responding the same off-topic way at a time of crisis

Rubio as a broken record, stuck

Rubio as a puppet reading the script of powerful people behind the scenes

The biggest problem for Rubio is that the error confirmed his greatest vulnerability.  And the ideal tool to get him out of the jam, an eloquent well scripted response, is exactly the tool that has been taken away from him.