In Retrospect, How Bad Was Rubio's Repetition?

Sometimes it takes a Sunday morning to see how much damage was done Saturday night.

So it was this weekend, in New Hampshire and in the broader national conversation about the 2016 presidential race.

On Saturday night, many observers seized on the meatiest moment from the GOP debate staged here — perhaps the most salient moment of all the debates so far. It was the clash between Chris Christie and Marco Rubio that turned into a stunning exposé of Rubio's technique.

Still fixed on the mind's eye was the image of the young Florida senator repeating a single sentence almost verbatim, not once but several times — each time as if it had just popped into his head.

Christie, the New Jersey governor, who needs a breakthrough in New Hampshire to keep his flagging hopes alive, seemed to have drawn blood in a big way.

But in the new dawn, given the reality of the debates' limited audience and the general competition for voters' attention, the exact extent of the damage was less clear. Rubio's first event of the day drew overflow crowds showing both interest and enthusiasm. And he himself told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week that he would pay the networks to show his repetitious sound bites again and again.

"I would pay for them to keep running that clip, because that's what I believe passionately," Rubio said. "It's one of the reasons why I'm not running for re-election to the Senate, and I'm running for president."

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