When Chris Christie launched his presidential campaign this week, we couldn’t help fondly recalling when he vivisected Marco Rubio at the 2016 Republican primary debate in New Hampshire. It was a bright spot in an otherwise horrible election year.
Rubio had just repeated his rehearsed line about how President Barack Obama wasn’t simply incompetent but was deliberately ruining the nation. His people probably thought this was gold during the debate prep. But he kept repeating it — three times in less than five minutes.
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8:30 pm: “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.”
8:32 pm: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
8:34 pm: “This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
The third time was less charming, and Christie called out his “memorized 25-second speech.” Rubio went on to repeat the stupid line less than an hour later.
9:21 pm: “I think anyone who believes that Barack Obama isn’t doing what he’s doing on purpose doesn’t understand what we’re dealing with here. Okay?”
Rubio crashed and burned, finishing fifth in New Hampshire, just a couple points above Christie. The rest of the primary didn’t get better for him.
However, the senior senator from Florida decided Tuesday to remind us all of his past humiliation. He tweeted, “Any political reporter/commentator claiming Christie ‘ended’ my campaign in 2016 is lazy or dumb NH debate sucked because instead of hitting back when attacked like I wanted to, I listened to advice about ‘pivoting’ & not ‘punching down’ on a CC who was at 7% & about to drop out. But it didn’t end my campaign.”
Rubio’s just the fool who followed foolish advice. If he’d gone on the attack, like he wanted, maybe he would’ve nudged out Jeb Bush for fourth place. Hey, maybe debates don’t matter, and Rubio was already a falling star. Christie didn’t shoot him down. That was all gravity. Rubio did confess to CNN’s Jake Tapper that he’d walked into Christie’s “trap,” which apparently involved mindlessly repeating the same attack line. This was hardly some complex Batman gambit.
But here’s where it gets ridiculous. Rubio tries to convince us that the 2016 primary wasn’t an utter disaster for him. He actually boasted, “After NH I finished 2nd in SC & NV, almost won Virginia on Super Tuesday, finished with the 3rd most delegates behind Trumps historic campaign & was reelected twice by 8 & 17 points.”
OK, but Rubio’s actual plan at the time was to finish third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, and then first in South Carolina. That’s a much better plan than what Rubio actually executed, which was losing all the time. When you have the endorsement of both the governor and senator from South Carolina, finishing second to a racist real estate developer is not some Cinderella story.
Rubio highlights that he won three whole primaries — DC, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico, none of which is the state he represents so poorly in Congress. Trump pantsed him in Florida 45 percent to 27 percent.
How empty is Rubio’s life anyway that he’s still whining about how he almost won the Virginia primary? He lost by 30,000 votes but insisted during a post-Super Tuesday interview that he’d “almost fought Donald Trump to a draw.” (That’s not how elections work. It’s just win or lose. There is no draw. It’s not a 1980s game show.) He complained that he had to “share the ballot” with other candidates that “probably took votes away.” Look, dude, if six percent of voters picked Ben Carson over you, the problem isn’t that Ben Carson’s on the ballot.
Rubio rather specifically states that he “finished with the 3rd most delegates behind Trump’s historic campaign,” which is technically true: He won 173 measly delegates to John Kasich’s laughable 161. However, Kasich finished with a greater percentage of the popular vote (13.8 to 11.3).
Chris Christie was one of the first primary candidates to formally endorse Trump. He should never live that down, but he at least eventually took the January 6 exit ramp. Little Marco praises Trump’s supposed “historic campaign,” which promoted violence and made white supremacists feel welcome. (Rubio called this out at the time.) Christie might have ended his presidential campaign, but Rubio surrendered his dignity to Trump willingly.
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