Rubio Gets Angry Makeover as Path to Victory Narrows
Who Won the GOP Debate?
The reinvention of Marco Rubio as a grittier and more ominous figure at Thursday night's debate was the product of an unsettling reality for the candidate. The "establishment" or "moderate" lane of the Republican Party is crowded with candidates but shrinking in numbers of voters. A realistic path to the nomination requires courting the ascendant angry voters who have been flocking to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
The sunny optimist of prior debates was nowhere to be found, recast as a mad-as-hell insurgent. He used his opening line to torch Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton as a "liar" who's "disqualified" from being commander in chief. He claimed President Barack Obama wants to confiscate every gun in America. He painted Chris Christie, a rival for the moderate Republican vote, as a closet liberal who has previously supported Obama's education program and gun control, suggesting that the New Jersey governor would continue Obama's agenda. When challenged by Cruz on the "Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill," a reference to an immigration bill that he co-authored in 2013, Rubio unleashed a torrent of attacks on his Senate colleague for changing positions on issues like legal immigration and ethanol.