GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, whose numbers took a drastic hit in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, vowed on Wednesday that a repeat of his debate performance won't happen again, and he's fired up about winning in South Carolina.
"The debate went the way it went, and then the media coverage over the last 72 hours was very negative about it and the last thing that voters heard before going into the booth or yesterday was, you know, something bad happened on Saturday night," the Florida senator told
Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program. "It made it very difficult for us to get any other message across."
Rubio, who was predicted to come in among the top finishers in New Hampshire after his third place win in Iowa, stumbled and fell after a week of attacks from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie about his job experience.
The week was capped off in Saturday night's debate, when he bolstered Christie's' complaints about his "scripted" performances by repeating a talking point about President Barack Obama several times.
"If you look at the margins between third place and fifth place, I mean, you're talking about a couple thousand votes out of 300,000," said Rubio. "I felt bad, and our support worked really hard. They did a great job. To the extent that we finished shorter than we wanted to I think it had to do with the fact that Saturday night and the last three days and the coverage. So that's on me. That ain't ever going to happen again."
Rubio on Wednesday struck back on Christie's complaints, saying that it's "silly."
"All the guys repeat over and over again," he said. "I can give you five lines they say every single day. But beyond that, let me say that the difference is this. I went into the debate in the hopes that the Republicans didn't have to attack one another. I didn't want to spend 60 seconds beating up on another Republican because I think it helps the Democrats. Hillary Clinton would pay for us to do that all night long."
Further, he said, the idea that he has no experience is "absurd."
"It's true I haven't lived as long as some of the others running for president, but I have more foreign policy than some of them," said Rubio.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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