Once considered a favorite in New Hampshire, leading some of the earliest surveys taken in 2013 and 2014, Christie had been reduced to also-ran status by February 2016. He did not break single digits in any poll of the state in the final four weeks before primary day, and in part, he blamed Rubio, whose super PAC had dropped millions of dollars slamming his record.
Christie was not going to win New Hampshire—or the Republican nomination—but he could still take Rubio down with him.
Rubio’s greatest vulnerability was his protective casing. Despite the observable political gifts, his candidacy was carefully stage-managed. Not only did his campaign keep him under wraps, but everything he said and did seemed carefully rehearsed. His remarks about biography, policy matters, and political disputes were often streamlined down to the syllable. Being “on message” is vital to campaigns, but Rubio grew disciplined to the point of absurdity. His insularity and highly mechanical messaging had become a subject of fascination in the political world, not just for reporters but also for rival campaigns.
Christie telegraphed his coming attacks on Rubio in the February 6 debate, and when the lights went on he wasted no time prosecuting his case that the forty-four-year-old first-term senator was not prepared for the presidency. Responding to Christie’s charge that he shared Obama’s meager qualifications, Rubio offered a practiced rebuttal, arguing that Obama’s inexperience had not kept him from effecting a calculated makeover of American government. “Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Rubio warned. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.”
When Christie responded by pressing the Obama comparison, warning voters “not to make the same mistake we made eight years ago,” Rubio returned fire by highlighting New Jersey’s credit downgrades. Then, curiously, he repeated his earlier remark almost verbatim. “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Rubio said. “He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world.”
Christie turned to the audience. “That’s what Washington, DC, does,” he announced. “The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized twenty-five-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.”
The crowd, having noticed Rubio’s rhetorical repeat, laughed and cheered.
It could have ended there. Instead, Rubio continued to engage him. After criticizing Christie’s handling of a recent snowstorm, Rubio, sounding like a malfunctioning robot, repeated himself a third time. “Here’s the bottom line: This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true,” Rubio said. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“There it is!” Christie blurted out, to the delight of the crowd. “The memorized twenty-five-second speech!”
Standing two lecterns away from Rubio, with only Trump between them, Cruz thought to himself, Ho-lee crap.
It was a truly unforgettable exchange; pundits dubbed it a “murder-suicide” likely to bury both campaigns. Rubio acquitted himself well for the remainder of the event. Yet he knew, walking offstage, that nobody would remember anything but his verbal glitch.
He had arrived in New Hampshire with the wind at his back, a second-place finish looking certain. Instead, Rubio’s debate performance doomed him. Over the ensuing seventy-two hours, his standing in the state collapsed. He placed an embarrassing fifth in the primary, taking just 11 percent of the vote.
Trump was dominant, taking 35 percent and leaving just 16 percent for John Kasich, the why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along Ohio governor, who capitalized on Rubio’s implosion to finish as the runner-up. Cruz, who was not thought to be competitive in New Hampshire, had a surprisingly strong third-place showing. Even Bush, whose campaign was on life support, finished narrowly ahead of Rubio.
It was little consolation that Rubio bested Christie, who promptly exited the race following his sixth-place showing. By finishing behind Kasich and Bush, both of whom claimed justification to carry on with their campaigns, Rubio saw the three-way contest in South Carolina slip through his fingers.
“Those thirty seconds or sixty seconds in New Hampshire,” Rubio says, shaking his head. “That was a big moment, because of that tactical mistake. Had we performed better in New Hampshire, the race could have gone on a different trajectory.”
A WEEK LATER, AS THE CAMPAIGN CONTINUED ON IN SUNNY SOUTH Carolina, a GOP operative named Marc Short arrived in bitter-cold Kansas for a meeting he hoped would turn the tide of the race.
Trump’s demolition of the field in New Hampshire had set off alarms across the right. What began as a joke—the prospect of The Donald as The Nominee—was suddenly a very real possibility. Rubio was mortally wounded. Kasich had no money or organizational muscle. Bush looked like the biggest flop in recent presidential memory. Of the remaining candidates, only Cruz appeared capable of thwarting Trump’s advance. This was cold comfort to the graybeards of the GOP establishment.
But it wasn’t just the party’s elite who were panicking. Short, the longtime consigliere to Mike Pence and now the president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group in charge of political activities for the donor network led by Charles and David Koch, believed Trump embodied an existential threat to conservatism. Worried that he would soon be unstoppable, Short had led a small team to Koch Industries’ headquarters in Wichita to present a detailed plan for subduing the front-runner. What he needed was approval from Charles Koch to organize an eight-figure spending blitz against Trump on Super Tuesday, March 1, when eleven states would vote. Short hoped to hammer Trump in the states where he was most vulnerable, depriving him of delegates and undermining the narrative of his inevitability.
But there was an unwelcome surprise awaiting Short’s crew inside a conference room: A number of top executives and advisers from across the Koch enterprise had been invited to attend the meeting. They represented the so-called corporate side of Koch world, which had long warred with the “political side” of the empire, particularly over the consequences of the brothers’ campaign-related activities. One of America’s most valuable companies, Koch Industries, a producer of everything from toilet paper to jet fuel, was increasingly synonymous with the Koch brothers, a fact that worried their bean counters and stockholders. Facing protests, boycotts, and attacks on them by name from some of the country’s top Democratic officials, the brothers’ business associates grew antsier by the day.
There was another unexpected development in store: After Short presented his proposal, Charles, whose greenbacks and green light the political side was soliciting, asked his corporate lieutenants to cast an up-or-down vote. One by one, they voiced their opposition to going to war against Trump. Everyone figured that Charles would still have the last word, weighing the pros and cons of meddling in the race. Instead, he shrugged. The majority, he said, had spoken.
The verdict was indicative of what the Koch brothers’ allies described as a long-term “realignment” of resources, with their money and focus steered away from elections and toward a slew of the more intellectual, policy-oriented projects on which they had historically lavished their fortune. Charles, in particular, had grown exasperated with the lack of return on their mammoth investments in recent years, and was not keen to throw bad money after good.