The Overreaction To Rubio's Debate Stumble

Jim Geraghty has a good assessment of Rubio's poor handling of an exchange with Christie in last night's debate. Rubio hurt himself, but not much. His critics are exaggerating the significance of it.

He's performed well in every debate, including the large majority of last night's debate. Trump and Carson frequently commit mistakes far worse than Rubio's. Trump loses every debate, in the sense of being the worst performer of all, and he repeats himself far more than Rubio does and with far less substance. But Trump is often judged by a different standard. He's expected to cross a low bar, while somebody like Rubio is expected to cross one that's much higher. If Trump's irrational supporters are thought to be likely to keep supporting him after his performance in a debate, then his performance is treated like a success. As if Trump's irrational supporters set the standard for him, while somebody like Rubio has to meet a standard far higher. What we ought to be doing is judging all of these candidates by the same standard. Trump has flunked out every time, whereas Rubio has had some occasional bad moments (with last night's being the worst) while usually performing at the level of something like a B or B+. There were multiple segments in last night's debate in which Trump performed worse than Rubio did in his exchange with Christie (e.g., the segment on eminent domain, Trump's comments on healthcare), but Rubio gets a more negative response from analysts and worse media coverage. Similarly, Rubio can have more good moments than other candidates (e.g., his comments on abortion) and a better debate overall, yet get less of a positive response.

I think Cruz had the best performance last night. He'd be a significantly better candidate if he would always conduct himself that way.