The damage is done. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Senator Marco Rubio’s attempt to claim the GOP establishment mantle and surge past Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to the Republican presidential nomination encountered a massive glitch in the early part of Saturday night’s debate. At first, Rubio’s strategy appeared to be to rehash his stump speech insinuating that President Obama is deliberately damaging America. Chris Christie, whose strategy for the debate was clearly to take out Rubio, repeatedly called attention to the senator’s canned speech and accused him of using memorized sound bits to cover up for his complete lack of executive experience. That strategy worked. The exchange became an instant classic in the history of political smackdowns, especially because, incredibly, a clearly rattled Rubio continued to use his canned speech, repeating his attack on Obama a total of four times over the first half of the debate:

And here’s the extended exchange with Christie:

The early reaction is not good:

Most self-destructive debate performance since Quayle ’88 and J.B. Stockdale ’92: Rubio. — James Fallows (@JamesFallows) February 7, 2016

I've watched Rubio for a long time, always thought that critique of him as a talking-points robot was way overblown. But oh dear. — Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) February 7, 2016

I'm hearing that Rubio's CD-ROM drive was jammed; kept opening and closing repeatedly when they tried to change disks — Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) February 7, 2016

Finally watched the Rubio-Christie clip. (Was at school event.) Holy cow. Much worse than "oops." Will GOP establishment stick with him? — Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) February 7, 2016

Getting dizzy watching GOP elites try to spin that Rubio was good other than that one stumble, was good other than that one stumble, was goo — Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) February 7, 2016