Needless to say, it's been a rough few days for U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, one of the Florida Men who is trying to convince us to let him be the next leader of the Free World.
His snaredrum-esque messaging, which we've been observing since his 2010 Senate race, was a source of ridicule at Saturday night's Republican debate. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took dead aim, calling Rubio out for his repetition. Rubio continued to recite the same phrase, more or less, a move political observers said could cost him a crucial spot at the front of the GOP pack in the wake of the N.H. primary.
Pundits are one thing, but then the robots descended.
Within a day, he was being trailed by people in makeshift robot costumes (i.e. cardboard boxes).
On Monday night, he did it again.
Tuesday morning, as he campaigned in New Hampshire in the final hours leading up to that state's primary, one of said robots was nearly taken down by someone in the Rubio camp who's now been identified as Cliff Hurst, Rubio's New Hampshire chair.
Later in the day, Rubio got chased by a group of robots (see that hilarious gif here).
The moral in all this?
Well, maybe, don't rely on advisers who think your audience is stupid and won't notice that you've been uttering the same phrases, using the same cadence, often to the same people, repeatedly, since at least 2010.
Although Tuesday's results are going to be unpredictable, it's unclear whether the events of the past 72 hours will have much impact on how New Hampshire's (famously fickle) voters view the GOP frontrunner.
If he wins, perhaps a year from now we will all be doing the robo-boogie.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2016.