In the course of reading through this morning’s post-debate analysis, I’ve seen a number of journalists complaining that the candidates at times sounded “canned.” Variously, this accusation has been leveled at Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie. Most of all, though, it has been aimed at Marco Rubio, who, polls notwithstanding, now seems to be considered the most likely eventual nominee.

As it happens, I think there is something to this critique. Time and again last night, it seemed as if Rubio was drawing from a limited bank of messages, statistics, stories, and examples, and perhaps even repeating chunks of his stump speech verbatim. In this endeavor, he was frequently helped by a moderating team that seemed almost comically determined to tee him up for a series of home runs. By far the worst moment in the debate came when Maria Bartiromo elected to shut down a conversation on immigration to which Rubio had yet to contribute, and to ask, in effect, whether Rubio would like to talk about how much younger he is than Hillary Clinton. Thrilled, Rubio obliged by launching into his usual pitch, albeit not quite as eloquently as usual. (For my money, this was his worst debate thus far.) Thus was a point of real contention swept away in favor of platitude.