There were a lot of long faces at Fox News Tuesday night, but there's a silver lining for Marco Rubio. Now he can go be a bartender like his dad! (Have you heard him tell the story about his father being a bartender? Rubio was his pop's best customer after the debate.)
He can wear a flowered shirt, tell yarns about his father, and if he's asked to make any complicated concoctions: JEB CAN FIX IT!
Gov. Chris Christie will always be remembered for the noble service he performed for his country Saturday night. He must have known his campaign wasn't lighting the world on fire, but he was damned if he was going to stand by and let that pretty-boy mountebank win.
Christie smacked Rubio down at the GOP debate by dramatically exposing the fact that Rubio's only skill is a weird ability to regurgitate "the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him" -- as the governor memorably put it.
In a surprising move, Rubio responded by regurgitating the memorized 25-second speech that was exactly what his advisers gave him. And then he did it again three more times.
This is what Rubio said, all within about 3 minutes:
(1) "But I would add this. Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is trying to change this country."
(2) "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."
(3) "Here's the bottom line. This notion that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he's doing."
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(4) "I think this notion -- I think this is an important point. We have to understand what we're going through here. We are not facing a president that doesn't know what he's doing. He knows what he is doing. That's why he's done the things he's done."
Far from "an important point," it's an incredibly boring point: The president knows what he's doing! But Rubio kept pounding out the words as if he were announcing the theory of relativity.
Proving that he had memorized words written by someone else, he even made the exact same grammatical error twice. Either we need to "dispel the notion" or we need to "dispense with the notion." We don't "dispel with" notions.
Public speakers fumble over their words all the time. But if they're using their own words, they don't keep making the same unusual grammatical mistake. That's the smoking gun of Rubio's party trick of passionately delivering someone else's speech.
It was one of the most riveting moments in campaign history. Suddenly, everyone felt what the rest of us have been saying all along: I want my presidential candidate to have reached puberty.
Trump should make Christie his attorney general.
Three days later, Fox News tried valiantly to salvage the teenage robot's campaign: It was a hell of a night for Marco Rubio. Of all the people in the U.S., only FOUR people did better in New Hampshire tonight. That's out of 330 million people in the country! The No. 2 finisher is speaking now -- but let's get back to Rubio's remarkable and probably unprecedented fifth-place finish in New Hampshire …
Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was agog at the fact that IN THIS COUNTRY, 66 PERCENT OF GOP VOTERS ARE COMFORTABLE WITH BANNING MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS.
Her neurotic repetition of the popularity of Trump's Muslim ban should be considered an in-kind donation to his campaign. Most people heard it, and thought: "Is that true? Then I'm definitely switching to Trump."
Even Muslim immigrants were saying, "I probably won't commit jihad myself, but I know some of the Muslims coming definitely will."
It's like importing immigrants with Ebola. We feel bad for them, we know it's not their fault, but we just can't let them in. For every 100,000 Muslims we admit, we know that at least a few hundred either plan to engage in terrorism right away or can be persuaded to engage in terrorism later. Another 10,000 will send them money or help them hide.
Trump could probably help himself by saying: "Fine. You don't want a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants? How about we temporarily suspend all immigration?" Let's take a breather while we watch what happens to Europe.
Not only would a pause in immigration be wildly popular, but it also would give Trump a jump-start to his promise to be the "greatest jobs president God ever created."
There isn't a lot the entire country agrees on, anymore. A few generations ago, there was so much that brought Americans together. Everyone read LIFE magazine, listened to Jack Benny on the radio, and then later watched Ed Sullivan together, every single Sunday night. All Americans watched the moon landing, were traumatized when Kennedy was shot and supported the troops.
But today, with a billion cable channels, and specialty magazines on everything from bridal gowns to automatic rifles, and a wildly heterogeneous population, there's not a whole lot that brings us together.
It's pretty much down to the Super Bowl, the Muslim ban, and, as of Tuesday night, loathing Hillary Clinton.
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