Say this for Marco Rubio: He remembers his talking points. Unfortunately for him, he’s been running into trouble remembering when to lay off the talking points. Still in the headlines for the disastrous debate performance in which he kept repeating the same line even as Chris Christie gleefully pointed to the repetition as a sign that Rubio was unprepared for the presidency, and being mocked as a glitchy robot, Rubio did it again (video below). This time, he repeated lines in his own stump speech:
We are taking our message to families that are struggling to raise their children in the 21st century because, as you saw, Jeanette and I are raising our four children in the 21st century, and we know how hard it’s become to instill our values in our kids instead of the values they try to ram down our throats.
In the 21st century, it’s becoming harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church instead of the values that they try to ram down our throats in the movies, in music, in popular culture.
When Rubio gets to the second “throats,” he pauses—he knows something is wrong here—but he forges ahead. Did someone give him a rough draft of his speech where the first and second drafts of that thought had both been left in and he just memorized it and went ahead? Did he draw on two different versions of the same speech? After all, clearly both versions of the thought were carefully crafted. He just wasn’t supposed to string them together.
Has Rubio been like this all along and the media gave him a pass until it couldn’t be ignored, or is he just that rattled? His staff certainly seems to be rattled: American Bridge staffers who’ve been following Rubio around the state dressed as robots (“Marco Roboto” and “Rubio Talking Point 3000”) tweeted that they were shoved, knocked down, and had their costumes ripped off, with people they identified as Rubio staff participating in the whole thing. Guys, if your boss is going to behave like a joke, your opponents are going to make it into a joke. Far be it from me to give campaign tips to Republicans, but maybe, as a staffer, doing what you can to get your candidate to stop mechanically repeating talking points is a more productive use of your time than ensuring that the people mocking him will get extra attention because you shoved them around.