The entire rubio candidacy was an exercise based on message discipline and carefully rehearsed scripted narratives. From day 1 of the race, this was the plan. Since Rubio's campaign lacked the financial resources to both invest in a ground game and do a media strategy, they chose the latter (while Walker chose the former) and stuck to a highly fine-tuned candidacy. You need a strong ground game if you want to win Iowa, for instance. Every action made by the campaign was reactive to field testing and push polls. See how quickly Rubio flipped on drafting Women after poll testing came in suggesting it was unpopular with the GOP. So, you see, that Christie moment was not the only 'mistake' Rubio made, the draft question was also a 'mistake'. Something needs to be understood though, 'mistakes' were made as far as Rubio's campaign wasn't able to field-test a Q & A session for a particular issue. In other words, moderators asked rubio after drafting women out of the blue, likewise, Christie's attack was totally out of the blue. It's not technically possible to pre-plan memorized rhetoric and carefully crafted messages as responses to previously unasked innovative lines of inquiry delivered directly on the spot. Rubio's campaign was reactive, not proactive, rubio didn't take bold positions, he took field tested positions and delivered them, but what happens when you're put on the spot and forced to answer a question that was not possible to prepare for?
Even if you look at the specific attack Rubio made against Christie in NH, it was in the same pattern of attack Rubio made against Christie in the Jan debate, and the same pattern of attack Rubio made against Jeb in the Oct debate. You had a 'drive-by shot' at the beginning followed by a 25 second memorized speech bashing Obama. That was the exact template Rubio followed. All Christie did was call out the technique rubio was using.
Rubio was not supposed to run, Jeb had plans to run in 2016 since 2009, the only reason why rubio was able to get as far as he did career-wise was due to Jeb's support.
Rubio's campaign was cash-strapped and scripted with a core design of message discipline:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-rubio-moves-up-fundraising-and-organization-remain-big-challenges/2015/10/21/5db726fe-7780-11e5-bc80-9091021aeb69_story.htmlhttp://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/marco-rubio-2016-new-hampshire-primary/If you look at the interview following the primary, rubio admitted that he had intended to use that preplanned attack against Christie, so rubio actually did attack Christie the exact way he had planned for:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rubio-i-walked-into-christies-trap/article/2592550Not only that, but rubio also repeated himself, again the next day during the campaign trail:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/08/marco-rubio-has-another-repeat-glitch-in-new-hampshire/In other words to assume that rubio would've acted different is to assume that he would've run an entirely different style of campaign. Let's say Rubio's campaign team had chosen the Walker model, they would've faced other difficulties, i.e. rubio might've found that his rhetoric was too hostile to consolidate moderate and establishment support a la Cruz. Instead, they used carefully field tested and approved messages. Cruz was able to build up a ground game using the religious circuit that Santorum/Huckabee used which comes with its own challenges. It's cheaper, but it requires taking bold positions in order to win over Church support. Besides Cruz, Jeb was the only other candidate with a comprehensive campaign organization, he had the infrastructure and conventional funding for it.
Of course, there's the question of whether Rubio would even be able to effectively mount another style of campaign, since he's never tried it before. Rubio was always known to have run a soundbite media strategy operation, even going back to his FL local politics career:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/rise-and-stall-the-political-trajectory-of-marco-rubio/2268968https://twitter.com/svdate/status/696694584051691524Rubio's campaign turned to the insult strategy after desperation when their original plan didn't pan out, even the insult strategy was scripted:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bad-strategy-poorly-run-campaign-are-killing-marco-rubios-chances/2016/03/06/d9a77e54-e246-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-rubios-collapse-a-fateful-decision-that-helped-unravel-his-campaign/2016/03/09/2581e17e-e617-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.htmlThe point of this thread is to demonstrate that out of all the candidates who ran, trying to run hypothetical scenarios of rubio doing something differently in a another TL is ridiculous, when nearly everything rubio did was pre-planned.
Rubio's campaign didn't make 'mistakes', they ran a calculated and disciplined campaign as much as technically possible. The vulnerabilities such a of campaign are part and parcel of the campaign style they utilized.
