Rubio was in repeat mode again last night, when he surely understood that it was important not to mindlessly spew preprogrammed talking points in front of opponents who are waiting to pounce and a media scrum with a shiny new narrative to pursue:
He’s been doing it all along. He can’t help it.
21st century. Kids. Values. Ram it down our throats. 21st century. Kids. Values. Ram it down our throats. 21st century. Kids. Values. Ram it down our throats.
Can’t he just use his, you know, brain — that thing under the Official Young Republicans haircut — to say something new or the same thing in a different way? Alas, no: 404 Error — Brain Not Found.
Let’s dispel with the fiction that Rubio ever had a brain.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
He’s like the “bedeleedeleep” robot in the “Buck Rogers” TV series.
Rick Taylor
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”
–Lewis Caroll
Splitting Image
It isn’t so much the meltdown in the debate that will kill Rubio. It’s that every other candidate is going to pounce on him from now on whenever he does this, and if he tries to speak off the cuff he’s going to shoot himself in the foot badly.
All of the others repeat their talking points too, but they vary them enough that they can get away with it. Rubio is screwed.
Jerzy Russian
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Thanks to you, I went to look up that robot’s name (I am really bad at remembering names and getting worse) and wasted my valuable time. I had no idea that Twiki’s voice was Mel Blanc (or more likely I knew that at one point and forgot it later). It was a shame that series lasted only two seasons.
beltane
As that last debate was getting underway, I could not help but notice that Rubio was chugging a lot of water again. Does he suffer from some kind of metabolic issue that’s being hidden from us?
OzarkHillbilly
@efgoldman: So if he wants to live in marital bliss, Marco’s OK with that?
BGinCHI
When in doubt, consult the classics:
–The Original Scarecrow
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: No, because marriage is between a man and a woman.
beltane
@OzarkHillbilly: Is Marco OK with that? Lets see. Obama knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s making the United States like the rest of the world. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Rubio is like a Magic 8 ball where the answer to every question is the same.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: As long as he’s not ramming things down other people’s throats. That, Rubio cannot stand.
Germy
Money seems to be the one motivating force in Rubio’s life. He admits he got into politics for money, and yesterday when I saw him criticized for his robotic behavior, his retort was “Well, I raised a ton of money!”
In other threads I linked to a newyawker article about him. When asked during a town hall meeting why he entered politics, instead of spouting platitudes about doing good for his country (something most politicians, D or R would say) he told an anecdote about his father driving him around the wealthy part of their town, showing him the big houses (“one of them belonged to Liberace!”) and it was at that point young Rubio decided to enter politics.
It wasn’t after witnessing injustice, or seeing poverty, or destructive laws. It was because he wanted a nice house. And he was stupid enough to admit it to a puzzled audience that expected nice-sounding platitudes.
Sherparick
@Rick Taylor: Perfect:-)
Germy
Does anyone remember Hymie the Robot from Get Smart?
Germy
@efgoldman:
Even Bugs Bunny would have done it.
OzarkHillbilly
Hey YEEHAWDIS… This is what Civil Disobedience looks like:
Reverend who protested in Ferguson goes on trial for refusal to disperse
….
Sherparick
Also, regarding Obama “ruining” the economy, and knowing exactly what he is doing, I offer the following chart to all the Republican Trolls on this web site.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UNRATE?catbc=1&utm_expid=19978471-2.Y0NpAPxIQfK_8K7-O4DTQg.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fr.search.yahoo.com%2F_ylt%3DA0LEVjmn3rlWZKYAdOsnnIlQ%3B_ylu%3DX3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg–%2FRV%3D2%2FRE%3D1455050536%2FRO%3D10%2FRU%3Dhttps%253a%252f%252fresearch.stlouisfed.org%252ffred2%252fseries%252fUNRATE%2FRK%3D0%2FRS%3DyDYCvGJkbpOF_hX7axPisTOF51Y-
beltane
@Germy: Politics is a good way to make money for not-too-bright wingnuts. These people are, in a sense, well-paid servants of the upper class. If Rubio were smarter, he could have gone the Wall Street route and become a bona fide plutocrat himself, but he’ll take what he can get hustling on the grifter scene.
Germy
Marco as the Chatty Cathy candidate. Pull his string and here the same remarks.
Or Elmer Fudd:
“I am Elmer J. Fudd. Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.”
gene108
@Germy:
Yes.
Great show.
One of my all time favorites.
Zinsky
For fucks sake, the man has never done anything!! Look at his bio – he gets out of University of Miami law school (not exactly a citadel of learning) and goes right to work for Bob Dole’s political campaign. Then, it’s one political job after another. Not a smidgen of experience in the private sector! Any Republican who criticized Obama’s lack of experience should be ashamed to support this worthless turd burglar.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
big ol hound
We all like the term “EMPTY SUIT”. well now they have a perfect example, thanks to Rubio.
beltane
@Zinsky:Paul Ryan is the same, his only non-political experience being a stint on a weiner-mobile. The Big Money crowd likes their puppets to young, docile, and incapable of independent thought.
rikyrah
I just read about this over at Benen’s blog…
BWA HA HA HA HA H AH HA HA HA HA
you can’t make this stuff up.
Germy
@Zinsky: Well, isn’t he the same as Paul Ryan? Gets out of college, works for one summer in his uncle’s law firm, and then straight into politics?
Why do I see again and again so many champions of FREEENTERPRISE™ who’ve spent their lives having nothing to do with it?
Reminds me of idiots I’ve known who got all sorts of union benefits or collected social security, and then spouted every fucking RW talking point ever invented.
About seven years ago I had a member of the tea party tell me he was looking forward to collecting social security… He said he was only a few months away, and couldn’t wait to start collecting.
EDIT: I see Beltane beat me to it. I forgot about the hot dog truck. Taste that freeMarket freedom!
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky: IOKIYAR
Roger Moore
@Splitting Image:
No. The real danger is that the media is now allowed to notice that he’s mindlessly repetitive. They apparently aren’t allowed to bring it up themselves, but now that they’ve been officially put on notice by another candidate, they can bring it up.
BGinCHI
Is it the Emperor’s fault for having no clothes or the people who refuse to tell the truth about him?
An example like Rubio tells us all we need to know about the current media culture.
Paul in KY
@Germy: Man, I bet his consultants were face-palming on that one!
Betty Cracker
@Germy: And we can count on him to repeat that story for dissection later. The great thing about being Rubio’s opponent is that you’ll never be left thinking, “Damn, I wish I’d have come back with THIS when he said THAT.” Just wait a while, and he’ll give you another shot.
Rubio clearly thinks his rags to riches story is incredibly inspiring; he constantly harps on how his father was a bartender and his mother was a maid, and they worked their asses off so he could be…a political grifter. God bless America?
Bartenders and maids are far more valuable, IMO. Every time I hear that story, it makes me sad that they didn’t spend Lil’ Marco’s college fund on a Del Boca Vista condo and live out their twilight years playing shuffleboard and drinking mai-tais while Lil’ Marco rose to become assistant manager of printer cords at Best Buy.
Paul in KY
@Germy: No. Used to watch show when I was a kid. Really liked it, but would you believe I missed that episode ;-)
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Jerzy Russian
It was pure late 70s schlock, but there was a set of episodes that had some promise. In the short canon of the series, Mt Rushmore still stands as an ancient monument. It is discovered that there was a last ditch presidential hideaway tucked in it , and that video evidence exists that Buck was part of a cabal that brought about the nuclear war. As the set of episodes develops, it turns out that Buck was actually sent by the President to infiltrate and break up the cabal of fascists, but that it had gone too far even before he got in.
It was good stuff – but then we got Reagan, and that premise totally turned to shit.
Germy
@Paul in KY: “Did anyone actually see the candidate eat the rat?”
http://blaineo.blogspot.com/2012/05/did-anyone-actually-see-candidate-eat.html
GOP candidates are like wild animals. They have handlers, are brought out into the public in highly-controlled events, and any false move can be fatal to the whole operation.
benw
It’s too bad that when his handlers bought their Rubiotronix they cheaped out and only got the 64K off the shelf model. Now he’s using all his RAM on a water-drinking subroutine and they don’t have space to add any more variations to his talking-points subroutine.
scav
@Zinsky: I’m rather assuming that the pure, blatent selfish greed is in fact a meritorious point in the eyes of many — it’s what made and makes America Great! — nor is inexperience the real problem. It’s the time spent helping a “community” that’s untrustworthy, like the rest of the world, socialism! and evil evil evil.
Germy
@Paul in KY: I give you…. Hymie The Robot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJiV1XWtCyk
waspuppet
According to the clip, Rubio and his wife seem to think raising their children in the 21st century is a conscious choice.
Hoodie
@Germy: There are a few guys who are in minors just long enough to take a bathroom break before they get to The Show, but those tend to have six sigma talent. These guys couldn’t make it in AA ball, they have no business in the bigs. It’s one thing if someone is light on a resume and they’re a real five tool player (e.g., Obama), but the problem with guys like Ryan and Rubio is not their lack of experience per se but rather that their thin talents are not bolstered by experience. Rubio is limited to regurgitating talking points because the guy just cannot move the ball on his own. Christie picked up on that and handed him his ass. Can you see Rubio doing something like Obama’s Philadelphia speech, especially under the circumstances of that speech? That’s why it’s laughable when they try to draw parallels between Obama and Rubio. Ryan hasn’t progressed beyond high school libertarianism and is still experimenting with facial hair.
raven
@beltane: 8 ball? Maybe a 1/4.
japa21
Whenever Rubio brings up the line about Obama knowing exactly what he is doing, the Dem candidate should state:
Of course he does, that’s what we want a President to do.
And, the real question is does Rubio know what he is doing or is he just on a non-thinking loop?
Sherparick
Chauncy DeVega states the following truths: “The contemporary Republican Party is a radical political organization that has betrayed the core tenet of “conservatism,” what is a belief in stability in the face of radical change. To that end, movement conservatism seeks to undo the consensus politics of the World War II and post-World War II era because it views the great successes of the New Deal, the Great Society and the civil rights movement(s) as a threat to the excesses of unrestrained capitalism and white male power” and then asks why they are not punished for it? My answer, derived from Driftglass and Charles Pierce is that it because America’s business and financial eilte, although not sharing the reactionary social and religious goals of the Conservative Movement, does share a common goal in abolishing the social programs of the New Deal and Great Society and a desire to be free of taxes on their wealth and incomes. Hence why Bloomberg is seeking to enter the race; to make sure a Democrat cannot win no matter who the Republicans nominate.
debit
It seems clear: Rubio has suffered a fatal Out of Cheese Error.
Paul in KY
@benw: I think you are on to something. Wonder what they do if he gets The Blue Screen of Death?
Hope to find out…
Joel
Rubio is the third member of Milli Vanilli.
Paul in KY
@Germy: Thank you!
Sondra
His wee tiny head sticking out from his too large shirt makes him appear even smaller than usual in this photo of him, But he looks the same on the debate stage with all the other candidates being so big and looming over him the way they do. It’s hard to look big when even Jeb! can just tower over him and make him look small.
Obdurodon
The fact that he’s dumber than a manatee makes Rubio the least of my worries. Contrast e.g. with Cruz, who does have a capable brain but has to all appearances placed it in Nyarlathotep’s service. That’s much scarier.
SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel
@Germy:
Even for Rubio, this doesn’t make sense. Did he think Liberace was a politician, FFS?
Ruckus
@Sondra:
The rest of the repub candidates are running for president of a country. Doing it rather badly but still. Rubio is running for Jr high class president and doesn’t understand the difference. He looks small because he is small.
rikyrah
Clinton weighs staff shake-up after New Hampshire
‘The Clintons are not happy, and have been letting all of us know that,’ one Democrat says.
By Glenn Thrush and Annie Karni
02/08/16 02:04 PM EST
Updated 02/08/16 11:54 PM EST
Hillary and Bill Clinton are so dissatisfied with their campaign’s messaging and digital operations they are considering staffing and strategy changes after what’s expected to be a loss in Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire, according to a half-dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Clintons — stung by her narrow victory in Iowa and shocked by polls showing her losing by as much as 20 percent here — had been planning to reassess staffing at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters after the first four primaries, but the Clintons have become increasingly caustic in their criticism of aides and demanded the reassessment sooner, a source told POLITICO.
catclub
@Splitting Image:
This is what happens when you ‘confirm the (lazy) narrative’ Nothing else in what you do gets noticed anymore.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel:
I think I see your mistake. You are trying to apply logic here. Adult logic. You have to think younger to see the line of thought. Much younger. No, much younger than that.
catclub
@Germy:
Another thing either pioneered or vastly expanded by Ronald Reagan.
MomSense
I could while away the hours
Conferrin with the powers
Funding my campaign
Repeating my best sound bytes
Repeating my best sound bytes [oops]
If I only had a brain
NotMax
Over to you, New Yorker.
Paul in KY
@SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: Maybe he is bringing up a cultural icon that the old fogeys that are listening to his speech can remember?
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Sounds a bit like panicking, to me. Surely she didn’t think she would take NH?! Winning Iowa by such a slight margin was a bit of a downer, but I have heard that Iowa Democrats are very liberal. so that plays to Sen. Sander’s strength.
I would want to see how I did in a more ‘normal’ state.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Splitting Image:
Maybe, his opponents have little intrest in calling attention to it since they play the same game. It was Christe who has nothing to lose who called Rubio out, after all.
Patricia Kayden
It appears that the Republican field will soon whittle down to Cruz and Trump. Rubio is dumb, Christie is a bully, Jeb! is weak, Fiorina is a non-factor and Kasich is too moderate. Thankfully, I cannot see either beating Secretary Clinton unless Democratic voters implode.
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
Consider that this incredibly empty suit has a not-insignificant chance to be the next President of These United States. I wouldn’t bet on that right now, actually, but if he gets the fascist nom (that currently looks to me like a toss-up between this dipshit, Cruz, and Trump) he will get no less than 47% of the vote in the general. Some terrorist attack within our borders, or a drop back into recession, late in the campaign season could move that north of 50%.
That’s the world we’re living in. I wake up every day amazed that it is so, though I’m older than dirt and should probably know better than to be astonished by half my fellow citizens, whose worldview I simply can’t grasp.
Sondra
I love Charles Pierce
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41913/marco-rubio-debate-new-hampshire/
and he does again what he does better than almost anybody else out there.
He boils it all down to a few paragraphs that perfectly explain what the Republicans are spouting off about and calling it a debate. No one was debating anything. They were just paraphrasing each other and whoever delivers the best of the previously written script they have all incorporated into their stump speeches wins…but “we the people” out here will all lose badly if any of them get near the White House as anything other than as the butt of jokes at the next “White House Correspondents Dinner”.
Barbara
This is what you get when your main goal is not to commit an affirmative mistake by saying something that might be viewed as a concession or weakness or whatever. I have sat through numerous oral arguments where judges try to pin down lawyers making arguments only to have the lawyer retreat to the same phrases — like, “but if that happened, the jury would just be speculating.” I saw someone say that maybe 15 times in 15 minutes. She wasn’t stupid but she would not allow them to put her in a corner where she seemed to be conceding a weakness in her argument. That’s fine for lawyers trying to protect their client’s interests. It’s not fine for politicians because they are too scared or stupid to know whether what they think or say is “correct” according to some measure stick of donor or voter approval.
Betty Cracker
@Paul in KY: Consider the source: It’s a Politico article that quotes “anonymous sources” and “insiders” and “people who’ve recently spoken to the Clintons.” Maddow asked Clinton about it last night during an interview, and Clinton flatly denied it.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Good point, Betty!
sparrow
@beltane: Don’t some people get dry mouth when they are nervous?
geg6
@Paul in KY:
All anonymous sourcing, typical Politico bullshit. Hillary denied anything other than minor tweaks. The idea of a shakeup of the proportions Team Win The Morning is implying is unlikely.
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
I think GOP donors and their political establishment confuse hiring someone with electing someone.
Rubio is who they would hire. He’s aspirational- where they want the Party base to go rather than where the Party base is. Young, not white, hopeful, endlessly malleable on “beliefs” so probably easy to push. You can do that when you hire someone. You can hire where you want to go instead of where you are. I’m not sure you can do that in elections.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Nice!
Paul in KY
@geg6: Should have realized…fucking Politico.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Plus whenever there’s a story like this I assume the reporter says “If she loses, do you think they’d make some changes?” and the person they’re talking to says, “Probably” and the reporter says “Like what?” and the person says, “Um, hire someone different to do something, or maybe give some people new roles?” and it’s off to the races.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I didn’t hear flat out denial in the quote I read from Hillary yesterday. It was more along the lines “of course we are going to tweak what we’re doing, what kind of person doesn’t look at what you’ve done and where you’re going and ask what did we do well, what could we do better?”
Shell
=He thinks it makes him look resolute, instead of like a wind-up doll. And of course, he’s not gonna let that mean old liberal media change his message!
And please! Could some not-quite-brain-dead reporter ask Rubio for an actual example of HOW Obama is undermining the constitution, weakening us in the world, ramming values down our children’s throats. Oh, ha, silly me.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Otherwise known as people trying to do what they can to keep their jobs or see others lose theirs.
Barbara
@Kay: Rubio is probably exactly what a donor 20 or 25 years older than Rubio thinks of as the perfect conservative standard bearer of the future. He spits out the same ideas that they believe in, all the way down to the Cuban Embargo, but he is young and not white and not from a wealthy background. Someone to fool the masses that he is young and fresh when his ideas are just as old and decrepit as theirs. Rubio’s weakness, in my view, is that he is all about ambition and not much else. Even for a politician — both he and Cruz — don’t really care that they have not accomplished anything. It’s all about getting to the next rung.
Paul in KY
@Barbara: He has no gravitas. Can you imagine him in charge of the nuclear codes, etc?
Sherparick
The Marcobot’s bad week continues. http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/08/gay-voter-to-marco-rubio-why-do-you-want-to-put-me-back-in-the-closet/
Fox News, the Movement Conservative shakers and makers like Limbaugh, Hewitt, Erickson, Norquist, etc. and the MSM (I refuse to call them liberal) media all believe Rubio would be the perfect Republican general election candidate, as Steve M. documents at No More Mister Nice Blog for their different reasons. The MSM simply wants a fresh face and new story and they hate Hilary. Enough reason to help Marcobot to become the next President of the United States, with power to launch invasions and wars all over the world, from their point of view. After all, they and their kith and kin won’t be dying in those wars and it will make good TV for a while till people are ready for the next shiny thing. The Conservatives, as Grover Norquist said about Mitt Romney 4 years ago, simply want an amiable fool who will sign all the noxious legislation regarding tax cuts and repealing 140 years of progressive and liberal legislation and returning the country to the Gilded Age glories of the 1880s. So there will definitely be an attempt at a reboot. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us/politics/marco-rubio-comes-back-swinging-after-difficult-debate.html
Kay
@Barbara:
It’s just funny because you can tick off those attributes in someone you hire but there’s a complicating factor here- their voters. The comparisons with Obama are so surface, resume markers – he was a state legislator! he’s not white! he’s young! he’s a senator! There’s just no recognition that the Dem base is wildly different than the GOP base. They’ve stopped even attempting to persuade voters to switch sides. Now they’re just going to create a different voter pool by force of will – call one into being.
Sherparick
@Barbara: Yep.
Mike in NC
Empty suit Marco Rubio is 100% a creation of the media. This year’s Sarah Palin for the right. All of the usual suspects — Kathleen Parker, Cal Thomas, Bill Kristol, etc. have been fawning over their shiny new object for months. As others noted, he’s young and Hispanic and WOW isn’t that amazing! It remains to be seen if they can sell this fraud to the electorate.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Why is Rubio not white? He looks plenty white to me, is it because his parents spoke Spanish?
ETA: I also doubt whether most Latino immigrants feel any affinity towards him, since its common knowledge that Cubans are more equal where immigration laws are concerned.
WereBear
I am having a very good laugh at Rubio’s expense. I knew this “hero” with feet of papermache would screw up big time, I just hoped it would be later rather than sooner.
AMinNC
My mom was the Human Resources Director for a city in Florida, and she worked with A LOT of Republicans, including her boss. The boss occasionally worked with Rubio on an issue, and his take at the time, as reported to my mom, was that Rubio was dumb as a bag of hair.
The Republican field is a nightmare wherever you look.
Stillwater
Up next, Rubio repeats some of W’s lines with his own twist:
“I’m the Reciter. I recite what’s best.”
“I’m the Reciter in Chief.” Etc and so on.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
That Rubio has a stump speech is not news. I agree with the other commenter that what makes this interesting is that Rubio apparently cannot adjust when challenged by the other presidential candidates, cannot adjust his message, cannot make his point without mindlessly repeating the same stump speech segment.
randy khan
There’s a fine LGM thread on this. The comments are by far the best part.
He’s a poet, that’s what he is!