Iowa gets a pretty bad rap. That said, it is somewhat deserved.
“Iowa picks corn; New Hampshire picks presidents,” the old Granite State taunt goes. That’s generally unfair. In contested Democratic primaries, Iowa has voted for the eventual nominee on all but three occasions since the primary process was reformed ahead of the 1972 election cycle. New Hampshire’s record on the Democratic side is a bit spottier. When it comes to the Republican primary, Iowa’s choice has been a poor indicator of a candidate’s future performance, but that has only been true for most of this young century. Iowa voted for the party’s nominee in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000. The Granite State famously bucked the party’s choice in both 2000 (when Senator John McCain won the state) and 1996 (when New Hampshire voters delivered a victory to Pat Buchanan).
Unless the polls are spectacularly wrong, Donald Trump’s ground game implodes even more violently than it did in Iowa, or there is an impossible to measure break toward another candidate or candidates at the last minute, the reality television star at the top of the polls is going to emerge victorious in New Hampshire tonight. In that event, steel yourself for a deluge of conventional wisdom and like-thinking from the political press corps. Its members will posit in unison that the GOP is falling into Trump’s hands, that his campaign is the one to beat, and that no one in the GOP field seems particularly interested in earnestly waging that campaign. The panic among anti-Trump Republicans that briefly abated after the Iowa caucuses voted will return in force. Media-driven narratives about the devolution of the party that would elevate a candidate who mocks the disabled and who calls reporters and his GOP opponents names that will not be reproduced here will dominate the media and opinion landscape. Why? Because there is no force more powerful in political commentary than that which imposes conformity on its members.
You can see the effect that social desirability bias has had in the appetite reporters and columnists now have for a repeat performance from Marco Rubio that reinforces the budding storyline that he is a “robotic” candidate. The Florida senator’s fans might chafe at this notion, but it is true that he wounded himself in a debate over the weekend when he sought to refute the charge that he was overly rehearsed by appearing overly rehearsed. There is more than anecdotal evidence that Rubio’s post-Iowa momentum has stalled as a result. The moment was a bad one for Rubio, and political observers voraciously consumed the news of it and its aftershocks, in part, because the candidate has seemed so polished and capable in past debates. But the modern media environment demands a constant stream of hits, and the effort to reinforce the “robotic” narrative has started to feel forced.
To ensure that Rubio’s “robot” moment isn’t remembered as a one-off, the nation’s commentary class has seized on a 30-second clip of Rubio on the stump appearing to lose his train of thought and repeat himself. “Jeanette and I are raising our four children in the 21st century, and we know how hard it’s become to instill our values in our kids instead of the values they try to ram down our throats,” Rubio said. “In the 21st century, it’s becoming harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church instead of the values that they try to ram down our throats in the movies, in music, in popular culture.”
It was repetitive, and Rubio appeared to expose a “tell” that he had slipped up when he briefly paused amid the repetition. “And this is why Rubio visibly hesitates when he is about to say ‘throats’ for the second time,” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait asserted. “It is the horrified panic of a candidate who realizes he has just done the one thing he desperately needs at this moment not to do.”
The nation’s political blogs pounced on the moment. “The candidate program known as Rubio could not make in through 30 seconds of his stump speech subroutine before going on the fritz again,” Mediaite’s Sam Reisman averred. “Marco Rubio seems to repeat line — again — after getting lampooned for being too scripted,” Business Insider’s Allan Smith asserted. The Washington Post observed that the fact that “every major TV comedian riffed” on Rubio’s suboptimal debate moment renders comparisons between the Florida senator and Barack Obama imprecise, and not in a way that favors Rubio. “ If anything, the last few days have shown that – while immensely talented – Rubio doesn’t have quite as much raw political skill as the president did at this point in 2008,” James Hohmann wrote. The confirmation bias is so thick, you can practically taste it.
Chait contends that the context of the whole 15-minute stump speech is by no means exculpatory and it’s clear that Rubio, who was until last weekend extolled as one of the best and most capable communicators in the modern GOP, is really just a great memorizer. Nonsense. Rubio was reciting a litany of offenses the Obama administration has committed against conservative sensibilities. Even within that speech, the candidate engaged in extemporaneous moments and interacted with rally attendees. Rally-goers barely seemed to notice the repetition and, were it not for Democratic trackers and opposition GOP campaigns, they’d have missed this, too. But most importantly, that misleading 30 second clip is being advanced by Rubio’s opponents on the right and the left for one key reason: it is far more easily digested than the nearly four-minute long exchange with Chris Christie on the debate stage.
The “Rubio-as-robot” theme is being hammered relentlessly by a center-left journalistic class for two reasons. First, it attacks the candidate’s core strength. It is Rubio’s polish that appeals so to the donor class and, in particular, lawmakers who have to run for reelection this year with a presidential candidate at the top of the ticket. Rubio has been touted as a peerless communicator and an evangelist for conservatism who might be able not only to assuage critics but also win converts. That was the conclusion reached by Vox.com’s Andrew Prokop, who was impressed with Rubio’s versatility on the stump and his ability to appeal to two very different audiences with compelling, targeted messaging. That strategic consideration is, however, far less moving than the notion that the nation’s pundits and bloggers are reinforcing their colleagues’ preconceptions. If the spontaneous effort to push forward the Rubio-bot meme based on a hiccup on the stump last night didn’t do the trick, there will be other unconvincing attempts. Case in point: “Seeing Rubio speak to camera in the same ad again and again on WMUR reinforces the notion that he has a limited script as a robo-candidate,” asserted longtime political analyst and Roll Call columnist Walter Shapiro. If Rubio’s direct into camera delivery in ads that appear multiple times in target markets is somehow revealing of his rehearsed nature, we’re stretching this alleged liability to absurd proportions.
So what does the tortured attempt to stigmatize Rubio for being a polished and effective candidate on the stump tell us about the state of the race after New Hampshire? Well, presuming the polls are even remotely accurate and Trump emerges victorious with all his moderate competitors (Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie) roughly splitting the plurality of centrist New Hampshire Republican primary voters, it would mean a return to the status quo ante Iowa. The commentary class would converge on the notion that Trump is again the prohibitive favorite, despite his relatively low ceiling of support among Republicans and his prohibitive lead among GOP voters who are asked what candidate they could never support. It would give campaigns like Bush’s and Kasich’s a new lease on life, even though both are viewed unfavorably by the voters to whom they must appeal. The press would indulge in a bias that favors “game-changing” events, when the fundamental dynamics of the race haven’t changed much at all.
What Rubio’s Republican rivals and a like-thinking press corps have already accomplished, however, is the diminution of the Florida senator’s stature in the race. They have likely led uncommitted voters to think twice about Rubio’s overall electability, when there is little data that justifies that kind of reevaluation. New Hampshire’s moderate voters were never a good fit for the conservative Rubio. More conservative states with closed primaries were always more fertile ground for the junior senator. If, however, the outsize coverage of this newly discovered Rubio foible renders him just another candidate in the race and convinces the bloated field of GOP candidates to fight on, the only beneficiary would be Trump. And what more could the political press ask for than that?
