WASHINGTON â€" Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican of Cuban heritage, may be the “savior†of the Republican Party, as Time Magazine recently declared.
But his big nationally televised moment â€" delivering the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night â€" has been eclipsed by his simple decision to take a sip of water during his speech, an act that either made him look human or not ready for prime time, depending on one’s point of view.
Mr. Rubio was clipping along in his remarks, making the conservative case for smaller government and denouncing the “false choices†Mr. Obama has laid out, when, about 11 minutes into his address, he glanced away and reached to is left, crouching down slightly to pick up a small bottle of Poland Spring water and take a swig â€" all the while trying to keep his gaze trained on the camera.
The sip seen round the nation â€" or “slurp heard round the world,’’ as Talking Points Memo, the liberal blog, later called it â€" quickly went viral on Twitter. Mr. Rubio himself later made light of it, posting a picture on Twitter of the offending water bottle. Wednesday morning, he was asked about it on ABC’s Good Morning America.
“I needed water. What am I going to do’’ Mr. Rubio said. “God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human.’’
Perhaps, but the talk after Mr. Rubio’s speech was not about its content â€" an aggressive attack on Mr. Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, but on the water incident, and also how Mr. Rubio had touched his brow, apparently to wipe sweat away, earlier in th! e speech.. Commentators quickly poked fun at Mr. Rubio, a man many Republicans believe can help bring Hispanics into the party fold, and who could be a 2016 presidential contender.
“Marco Rubio, the man you want to have a desperate gulp of water with,’’ wrote Paul Begala, the Democratic strategist on Twitter.
As Mr. Rubio made the rounds of the Wednesday morning talk shows, he faced the inevitable questions about the water, but also about some of Mr. Obama’s proposals.
He told CBS News that while he would like to see people earn more than $9 an hour, he did not think that the president’s plan to raise the minimum wage was the way to achieve that. And while his Tuesday night remarks did not address the question of how to provide the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, Mr. Rubio told ABC that he remained committed to the “bipartisan principles for citizenship’’ laid out by a working group of lawmakers.
For the record, Mr. Rubio delivered a address that was at once personal and substantive, talking about how his parents had emigrated from Cuba to give their children a better life, and ultimately “made it into the middle class,’’ with his father working as a bartender and his mother as a cashier and a maid.
He spoke of how his mother relies on Medicare, and how he owed more than $100,000 in student loans when he graduated college â€" loans, he said, that he has just recently repaid. And he made the case that limited government, free enterprise and reining in the deficit are the path to success for the American middle class.
“I would never support any changes to Medicare that would hurt seniors like my mother,’’ Mr. Rubio said. “But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now, is in favor of bankrupting it.’’
Mr. Rubio did allow that government “plays a crucial part in keeping us safe, enforcing rules and providing some security against the risks of modern life.’’ B! ut he said! , “Government’s role is wisely limited by the Constitution. And it can’t play its essential role when it ignores those limits.’’
