to go after him. he swung, he missed and rubio fired back hard. look, if marco rubio end up the republican nominee, we ll say it began with this debate. it started because of rubio s great absencee rate as united states senator. he was asked about a newspaper editorial that came out today that challenged his voting record in the senate. jeb bush jumped in on the criticism. let s watch. barack obama missed 60% or 70% of his votes and the same newspaper endorsed him again. so this is another example of the double standard that exists in this country between the mainstream media and the conservatives. i m a constituent of the senator and i helped him and i expected that he would do constituent service, which means that he shows up to work. he got endorsed by the sun sentinel because he was the most talented guy in the field. he s a gifted politician.
the counterpunch, the successful executi execution, the timing, and the audience approval. and i thought that rubio s people were ready to jump and they jumped. well, you know, i m not so sure it s rubio s people. it s an audience that, as you say, wants to see they were cheering for chris christie. i m not sure there s a lot of chris christie people in that audience. they wanted to see a certain kind of energy. they wanted to see an attack on the media. they loved that. but what was also fast nating ultimately, i can t wait to see the minutes of this, but the disappearance of the front-runner, donald trump and ben carson. it s amazing that somebody like christie, ted cruz, could play significant roles in this debate, have very significant moments in this debate while their front-runners were standing idly by. trump looked like a mannequin up there. senator cruz got some of the biggest cheers of the night, as you say, lawrence, take on the
it s a classic. let the other guys jump you and look like it s a gang attack and then come back. lawrence o donnell, a classic maneuver by mr. rubio. yeah. and i agree with chuck, that was a moment where we had the first look at what is turning out to be the winner of this debate. that is a winning moment. i think we have a second and third place so far, too, for ted cruz and chris christie. for chris christie, though, it s academ academic. but cruz lit up that stage with the first really powerful attack on the moderators, which has been the most successful debate tactic used by anybody up there on the stage. and based on expectation, based on what everyone said he needed to do, it seems we do have a loser tonight. it seems jeb bush is losing this debate based on what everyone was saying he needed to do to impress his campaign investors and to push up his poll numbers. you know, michael, i don t
post story was marco rubio saying he s so frustrated with being a senator that he can t wait to get out, can t wait to leave. the question to marco rubio should be okay, being president, you re going to have some frustration. you re just getting up and walking away. how come you re not staying to reform the place? what are you doing to fix it? what are you doing to get it done? that s the way it would have been an iskt ef way. what he did was he fell into the rabbit hole of missed votes and that frankly works in house and senate races. he didn t seem to show political sophistication. the newspaper did the hard work for him. he thought he could just me-to it. and rubio was totally you know that todd harris media guy has worked on this with his candidate. you know rubio was totally ready and attacked from the defense i position, is there you go again. it always seems to work. in presidential debates, knockouts come on the counterpunch. marco rubio knocked jeb bush out tonight.
of the republican national committee. let me go to chuck on this. i don t know. you tell me, who won? this is marco rubio s debate. pure and simple. he s got the viral moment that i want to have. he was put in the spotlight early. he was going to be on the defensive early. his main rival jeb bush decided to go after him. he swung, he missed and rubio fired back hard. look, if marco rubio end up the republican nominee, we ll say it began with this debate. it started because of rubio s great absencee rate as united states senator. he was asked about a newspaper editorial that came out today that challenged his voting record in the senate. jeb bush jumped in on the criticism. let s watch. barack obama missed 60% or 70% of his votes and the same newspaper endorsed him again. so this is another example of the double standard that exists in this country between the