Oh dear. Marco Rubio had a shocker in Saturday’s debate

Poor Marco Rubio. At the vital moment, he seems to fluff his lines. In the final months of 2015, America’s lumpencommentariat kept predicting ‘Marco’s moment’. For months, such talk sounded like nothing but hype. Then the Iowa caucuses happened, and Rubio finished a much-stronger-expected third. Finally, his time seemed to have come. Rubio  emerged as the pragmatic choice; the man to prick the Trump bubble; the man to knock out Ted Cruz. The Republican establishment had their man. Phew!

Then came last night’s big debate in New Hampshire — and Rubio was awful. As expected, Chris Christie — a failing candidate with nothing to lose — went after him in the early exchanges. Rubio seemed ill-prepared, even a bit scared. “You have never been involved in making a consequential decision where you had to be held accountable,” barked Christie, aiming his best Tony Soprano glare at the junior senator from Florida. “And the fact is that when you talk about your Hezbollah sanctions act, you weren’t even there to vote for it … That’s not leadership, that’s truancy.’

Christie, the two-term New Jersey governor, needled Rubio over his immaturity as a politician, not-so-subtly hinting at that ‘Republican Obama’ tag — a description that was once meant to flatter Rubio, but which now haunts him.