Florida Sen. Marco Rubio defended his performance in Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, saying he has raised a lot of money from it and would use the same tactics again.
“Look, we raised more money last night in the first hour of that debate than any other debate,” Mr. Rubio said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Mr. Rubio was on the hot seat to prove that despite his short political career and lack of major accomplishments in the Senate, he has what it takes to be president. He said multiple times that President Obama had the same amount of experience when he took office and has proven to be effective in pushing a liberal agenda. He reasoned that it is ideology, not experience, that makes an effective commander in chief.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called out Mr. Rubio many times, asking the audience to watch for a “memorized 25-second speech.” Mr. Rubio delivered, repeating the same speech about Mr. Obama almost word for word — a chance Mr. Christie jumped at to point out to the audience: “There it is. There is is, everybody.”
But Mr. Rubio stood by his performance on Sunday.
“It’s what I believe,” he said, despite Mr. Christie’s criticism that he repeats his canned speeches again and again.
“It’s what I’m going to continue to say because it happens to be one of the main reasons why I am running,” the freshman senator said. “This is the greatest country in the history of mankind because of a certain set of principles. Barack Obama wants us to abandon those principles that he has spend seven years putting in place policies that rip them from us: undermining the Constitution, undermining free enterprise, undermining our standing in the world, weakening America, apologizing for us on the global stage.”
“The reason why I’m running is if we elect someone like that for the next four years, I think it may be too late for America to turn around.”
• Anjali Shastry can be reached at ashastry@washingtontimes.com.
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