The old political rule is to attack your enemy’s strengths. And that’s exactly what Rubio was doing. Trump has framed himself as a brilliant businessman animated by his concern for the common man, the little guy, the silent majority. He’s never marketed himself as an orthodox conservative, but that’s where his opponents have hit him again and again with no result.
But Rubio tried something different with his attacks Thursday night. He tried to prove Trump is a huckster, a charlatan who doesn’t know what he’s talking about when pressed for specifics, a trust-fund baby looking to rip off hard-working Americans in order to make a dishonest buck. It went to the heart of Trump’s appeal, and for that reason it just might stick.
Rubio looked and sounded different from how we’ve ever seen him. But so did Trump. For a man who makes so many facial expressions, he rarely displays any recognizable human emotion, preferring instead to stay aloof and dismissive. Thursday night was different. He was, at turns, deeply frustrated and consumed by abject terror. Things were going very wrong, very quickly—and right before his squinty eyes.
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