Sen. Marco Rubio's biggest roadblock to the White House may not be his GOP or Democratic rivals – but an early-state campaign strategy that's been zapped for chucking a time-intensive on-the-ground presence for social media saturation and TV events.
In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, GOP activists are worried, and a recent
Salon headline bluntly tagged the tactic as "lazy."
"Rubio has not put in the face time that he really needs to have, I don't think," South Carolina pastor Al Phillips tells the
Washington Post.
"I think that's been somewhat to his detriment," adding: "I do think he needs to make a greater effort at outreach."
Not that Rubio is sinking; he's in third place behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and commanding leader Donald Trump in an average of national polls,
according to Real Clear Politics.
And
his speeches have been praised, as has his decisiveness against
Democratic presidential contenders.
But his on-the-road time in Iowa and New Hampshire has yet to impress.
At Muscatine town hall in Iowa, the Post reports, Rubio spoke for 28 minutes, and answered questions from four people, a session that lasted 17 minutes.
Yet he's prolific on
Twitter, with more than 1 million followers, and uses Snapchat "regularly," the Post reports.
The brief time spent pressing the flesh in Iowa may have cost him the endorsement of Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Cruz instead – and griped Rubio didn't spend much time at a forum sponsored by the Christian conservative organization.
"We heard about it — and heard about it frequently — from Rubio supporters, that they were disappointed" at his abrupt exit, Vander Plaats tells the Post.
Yet "more people in Iowa see Marco on 'Fox and Friends' than see Marco when he is in Iowa," Rubio's campaign manager explains to
The New York Times.
Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who also gave the nod to Cruz, argues, however, that wasn't quality time.
Rubio "did all the big cattle calls, but he didn't put in the work on the ground…" Deace tells the Post. "I think his team had a skewed view of Iowa based on their involvement with [now-senator] Joni Ernst last year, and how they helped her win her primary. But this is a caucus, not a primary, which requires months of relationship-building that he never did."
Things aren't much better in New Hampshire.
National Review took Rubio to task for not taking advantage of a "moderate electorate" that "could be more receptive to the establishment-friendly Rubio" in the Granite State.
And the
Boston Globe reported early this month that at one town hall meeting in New Hampshire in the Lakes Region, Rubio took the stage 65 minutes late, and then delivered a 22-minute stump speech, taking questions for 11 minutes, and shaking hands for 10 minutes – before doing a live TV interview.
"He is not helping himself with barely showing up and then being late when he does," one grumpy voter told the Globe. "In New Hampshire, we see this as a unique opportunity for us to see him, but also for him to see us, and introducing himself. He looks good on television, but if he keeps this up he is blowing it."
"The question that arises from all this is whether their candidate can win the nomination without actually winning the early contests that have historically determined the nominee," Salon writes in the column that raised the spectre of a "lazy" campaign.
"Rubio's team seems to think so, and they're basing it on a novel theory of politics that assumes a good debate performance is a lasting commodity, while an in-person voter interaction is an ephemeral waste of time."
The scrutiny comes as his voting record in the Senate has already taken a hit.
According to CNN, he's had the worst voting attendance record of any senator in 2015.
And the
Washington Post has reported he missed half of the committee hearings and meetings of the Senate Foreign Relations committee in 2014.
And,
according to the Post, Rubio even in his first political job, as a city commissioner in West Miami, mostly "looked bored."
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