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Marco Rubio's WaterbottleGate Is All Over the Internet

'Awkward' or 'natural'? ask pundits

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by Mary Noble

Senior Editor t +

Image: screenshot

The moment when Rubio drank from a waterbottle during his State of the Union rebuttal came to dominate conversation among pundits – especially on Twitter.

Democratic partisans mocked Rubio's alleged awkwardness. "All right, credit to Boehner. I've never seen him lunge for a drink *during* a speech," tweeted the Daily Kos.

But Republicans thought the water-grab showcased Rubio's relatable style: "As I said, Rubio is a uniquely natural politician. Would Jindal have reached for that water?" tweeted the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein.

Within minutes Waterbottlegate had launched a slew of gifs and a thousand Twitter accounts in the name of "Marco Rubio's Water Bottle." Rubio himself showed his good-sportsmanship by tweeting a picture of the offending bottle, which has now been retweeted over 4,000 times.

Mocking the pundit class's obsession with trivia, Slate's Dave Weigel tweeted, "'What will voters think of the Rubio water moment?' [ask] reporters who have not talked to voters since the Iowa caucuses."

In case you missed it the first time around, watch Rubio drink from his water bottle and decide for yourself - will it affect his chances in 2016?

Posted 11pm PST, Feb 12, 2013.
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With the rise of Twitter, is the decline of political discourse complete?

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86 Comments (view in Forum)

  • lawnmowrman
    !
    Giving speeches is just about as hard as one that's never done might think it would be. Did you hear the quiver in his voice? It's better to look like a fool drinking water on camera than to do a little dance in front of the crowd. My first speech might as well have been a dance recital with monologue words.
  • PNWest
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    @lawnmowrman Giving a rebuttal to the State of the Union address is probably the toughest speech you can give. Trying to rebut a speech that has had weeks of preparation and was delivered in front of a joint chamber of congress is intimidating enough but to do so five minutes after the speech when you haven't had a chance to even digest what was said and are relying almost exclusively on what you thought would be said ups the ante even more. Rubio did better than that dolt Bobby Jindal or Sarah Palin. But then again those were pretty bad. Unfortunately for Rubio what will be remembered about his speech is his "drinking problem".
  • SorryNoSale
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    @PNWest
    You are correct! The media have decided to analyze that moment, rather than the substance of his remarks. Also, the version that we watched was the second time he gave it.. he had just finished the same response in Spanish beforehand. It's safe to say that most folks would have needed a sip.
  • hertz_doughnut
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    He would never get away with the bold face lying of Obama or the stammering and stuttering of Obama without a teleprompter ( http://www.youtube.com/watch... ). As he is not the second coming as Time portrayed Obamacon. Demonkrauts can insert cigars into their interns and it is not sexual relations and no one gets in trouble for workplace sexual harassment, but, if a Conservative takes a drink of water it is down right evil.
  • RealityOne
    !
    We are a nation of infants.$16 trillion in nation debt.$86 trillion if you count all liabilities. No support of US manufacturing. Unemployment runs rampant. Economic collapse imminent.

    Ooooh! A shiny water bottle!! A chance to completely forget that fact that we have work to do! A flaw to be exploited and milked for everything it is worth!

    Let's focus on the fact that the human being who was speaking to us about these issues got thirsty and instead of letting his voice go hoarse,(for which we would also attack him) he took a drink of water of all things, from a bottle of all things! This will ensure that those people don't get in power!

    We don't want human beings leading us. Politicians are not supposed to eat or drink. They do not burp, fart, or defecate. Therefore they must lie or they will rupture.
  • drpeeper
    !
    1000% Correct. I imagine if his wife would have popped up and he gave her a fist bump, well maybe that would be fine?

    If Obama had a drink on air, they would be announcing "COOL PRESIDENT DRINKS X BRAND WATER, ITS COOL NOW !!!!!!"

    Is it any question now how dumbed down this country is.
  • Tralee
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    @fridayjones LOL no actually that is so funny and so typical of the left. Really, have you nothing more worthwhile to contribute? Jeeze, now we have drinking water as a talking point from the left. Childish is just not even close to their reaction. The signal for deception or dishonest is if Obama is speaking, period.
  • Denizen_Kate
    !
    It was amateurish, but so what? He's young. I do like the fact that he joined in the twitter fun, that shows good character.(See? I can say something nice even about a Tea Partier. That should make Neo happy, so happy.:)
  • frigginhell
    !
    Apparently so. Rubio didn't interest me enough to bother watching him anyway. He's the transparent attempt by the gop to reach out to hispanic voters. It's pretty lame and anyone dumb enough to fall for it deserve the consequences. Marco Rubio does not whitewash decades of institutional racism and pandering to xenophobes.
  • drpeeper
    !
    If it were Obama, It would be on TMZ- MSNBC-NBC-CBS-NPR-PBS-CNN-ABC Saying "President is COOL!! He drinks AquaFina on air!!" We all know that. Like people going googoo over his blackberry, his fist bump , the crease in his pants and his skin color. Rather than Character.
  • TDriver04
    !
    This just shows how childish the left is. They've never grown up and their mentality proves it. They act like children and then want the rest of us to follow their lead. Isn't this the party that tells everyone how insensitive the RIGHT is. What a joke. Ever heard of dry mouth. Maybe he has a condition but instead if taking a reasonable approach to it you just make fun of and pick on someone who's different. Can you say BULLYING.
  • PoliticalSpice
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    Dry mouth? People get that from smoking weed. Are you saying Ribio was smoking pot? That would explain some of the delusional positions taken by republicans...
  • Dan_Tien
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    So drinking from a water bottle on camera is equated with Nixon's Watergate scandal. I would like to say things can't get much more overblown than that, but I'm sure I would be proven wrong soon enough.
  • BelinKS
    !
    You never know. He may have had a sore or dry throat. Without a drink of water it could have affected his ability to speak. Watergate? Give me a break. That's just stupid! At least he was a good sport about it! I think that shows class.
  • TripleNegative
    !
    That's it? Is that all that's required to get people's attention? His need for a drink of water?

    This Republic is dying, and somehow this does not equate to 'news'. It's hyperbolic nonsense.
  • Brychan
    !
    Wow, someone taking a drink of water. Slow news day in America?*yawn* Wake me up when/if they discover it was liquid codeine or something. Honest to God, for all the information available on it, the internet sure has made people stupid, and Twitter is just speeding up the process.
  • S-N-A-F-U
    !
    This is laughable - as usual, the 'peoples media' is playing with it's self. Did you yahoo's ever think that it is customary to take a drink of water after being force-fed a bunch of horse manure, hmmm?
  • bsking
    !
    Too funny. Saul Alinsky said the best attack is ridicule.
    So now we're going to watch the idiot left take issue with the fact that a senator from Florida drinks water, while they foolishly try to convince us that a poser in the White House can walk on it

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  • ctc
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    Marco Rubio was tasked by the Republican Party to 'carry their water'......and obviously there's very little left.
  • Brownie
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    I don't think people know what a real depression is. Long lines of mass amount of people needing help across the country. More homeless people than we have, today. People dying of starvation on the streets. A real depression is extreme. Everyone needing a pieces of bread and cheese. Maybe that's exactly what we need to happen. So, both the left and the right, oh and all of us in the middle, will see the necessity of working together and get our economy worked.
  • mohawkmaid1
    !
    Perhaps he was feeling a cough coming and was trying to suppress it. Nothing unusual about taking a sip of water. He is a live human, not a puppett on a string.
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