MANCHESTER, N.H. — Chris Christie did not disappoint.
The New Jersey governor had made it quite clear that
when he stepped on the debate stage Saturday night here, three days
before the New Hampshire primary, he would be looking to draw a very
sharp contrast between himself and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
From the jump, Christie went after Rubio like an
attack dog, tearing into the 44-year-old first-term senator and mocking
his youth and inexperience. And Rubio, who increasingly has gathered
momentum after a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses last week, was put
on the defensive in a way that he has not been so far in this campaign.
Christie, who is in his second term as governor,
needs very badly to do well in the voting on Tuesday, but is struggling
to gain traction in the polls. He is bunched together with former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas,
and Rubio behind businessman Donald Trump, and Rubio has been rising in
the polls.
Christie began his critique of Rubio by saying that
senators wake up thinking about what speech they will give that day or
what kind of legislation they will sponsor. A governor, Christie said,
wakes up thinking about “What kind of problem do I need to solve?”
Turning to Rubio, Christie addressed him directly.
“You have not been involved in a consequential decision where you have
had to be held accountable. You just simply haven’t,” Christie said.
Christie then aggressively made the argument that a
vote for Rubio is an unwise gamble on an untested, inexperienced
politician, and compared him to President Obama, who was also a
first-term senator in 2008 when he was elected president.
“What we need to do is not to have the same mistake
we made eight years ago,” Christie said. “I like Marco Rubio, and he’s
smart person and a good guy. But he simply does not have the experience
to be president of the United States.”
Rubio tried to counter by going after Christie’s fiscal record in New Jersey.
“I think the experience is not just what you
did, but how it worked out. Under Chris Christie’s governorship of New
Jersey, they have been downgraded nine times in their credit rating,”
Rubio said.
Then Rubio tried to turn his attention and
his argument away from his confrontation with Christie, and criticized
Obama, talking in generalizations about how Obama is trying to change
the country to make it more “like the rest of the world.”
It was an awkward transition, and one that Christie swiftly pointed out.
“You see, everybody, I want the people at
home to think about this. That is what Washington, D.C., does: the
drive-by shot at the beginning, with incorrect and incomplete
information, and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly
what his advisers gave him,” Christie said, as the debate audience began
to roar.
“See, Marco, the thing is this: When you’re
president of the United States, when you are a governor of a state, the
memorized 30-second speech, where you talk about how great America is at
the end of it, doesn’t solve one problem, for one person,” Christie
said.
Rubio was on his heels, and scrambled to
respond, saying that Christie had not wanted to return to New Jersey to
deal with a blizzard earlier this month. “They had to shame you into
going back,” Rubio said. It came off as a weak retort that indicated he
was not prepared for the degree to which Christie was in his face.
But the clearest indication that Rubio was
rattled was that he once again repeated his canned line about Obama.
“This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he is doing is just not
true,” Rubio said. It was now a non sequitur, and Christie interjected.
“There it is, there it is,” Christie said.
Rubio and Christie went back and forth for a few more moments, with Christie getting in one more shot.
“You’ve never been responsible for anything
in your entire life,” he said to Rubio. And as Rubio continued to say
that Christie had not wanted to return to New Jersey at the time of the
storm, Christie stopped him.
“Wait a second, is that one of the skills you get as a United States senator: ESP, also?”
Christie continued throughout the debate to
use any opportunity to go after Rubio. Later, he brought up a comment
Rubio had made about the 2013 immigration reform bill more than 10
minutes earlier.
“He acted as if he was somehow disembodied
from the bill,” Christie said of Rubio. “It was his idea. … When you’re
governor, you have to take responsibility for these things.”
Rubio, who more than any other presidential
candidate this cycle has jumped in and inserted himself to gain time in
debates any time his name has been mentioned, stayed silent as Christie
launched this critique. He clearly did not want any part of Christie.
end quote from:
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/chris-christies-attacks-rattle-marco-rubio-023817040.html
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