Only during an election cycle in which a billionaire who lives in a gold-plated Fifth Avenue apartment serves as the blue-collar candidate could it make any sense that a first-generation American who’s been in debt much of his adult life can be so easily depicted as an effete elitist for wearing a pair of $130 boots — shiny and fashion-forward as those boots may be.

Yet here we are. Roughly 48 hours after a photo of the high-heeled boots Marco Rubio wore in New Hampshire went viral, several Republican competitors are exploiting the opportunity to tease the young senator.


And with a barrage of subtle ripostes, Donald Trump and Chris Christie among others are doing something potentially more damaging: They’re questioning Marco’s Man Card.

“They’re clearly trying to effeminize Marco Rubio,” said Steve Schmidt, a GOP strategist who guided John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “Wearing black, high-heeled booties is not exactly a statement of masculinity. And this is not groundbreaking. The sartorial choices of candidates have long been used by their opponents to say something negative about a larger personality trait, sometimes to devastating effect.”

You don’t have to go back too far to find examples of politicians whose opponents successfully seized on their unfortunate grooming habits, fashion choices and personal pastimes to define them in a negative and lasting way. Style, in politics, sometimes can become something akin to substance.

John Edwards, dismissed once as a “Breck girl” because of his shiny pelt of perfectly wavy brown hair, was later videotaped checking his appearance in a small compact and combing his hair before an interview (it ended up on YouTube to the tune of “I Feel Pretty”). The over-the-top primping, to say nothing of news about his $400 haircuts, exposed the vanity of a candidate selling himself a blue-collar champion in a way that stuck.

And there was Al Gore’s brown suit phase during the 2000 election, a sad effort to break free of the “boring” caricature that only hardened perceptions of him as a wooden politician who was trying far too hard (also see: John Kerry windsurfing, Michael Dukakis in the tank).

That pretext — and Rubio’s enviable positioning in the top tier of the GOP field — helps explain the responses this week from his rivals, who couldn’t resist reacting to Bootgate.

Almost as soon as New York magazine posted a short item online about Rubio’s “high-heeled booties,” there was Ted Cruz’s communications director, Rick Tyler, tweeting a link to it: “A vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Men’s High-Heeled Booties,” he wrote.

Before an appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday, Rand Paul, with a bit of a lilt in his voice, filmed a video of himself picking out a pair, saying he’d seen “that Marco Rubio has these cute new boots and I don’t want to be outdone.”

Before long, the boots were fodder for conversation on cable news, with MSNBC folding the buzzy story into other, slightly newsier items: “RUBIO ADDS CAMPAIGN STAFF, AND NEW BOOTS,” one MSNBC chyron read on Wednesday.

“It was probably a poor choice for campaigning in New Hampshire, and Marco’s paying a little bit of a price for it,” said Katie Packer, a GOP consultant who is backing Rubio. “But his wife is a very fashionable, attractive woman and she probably saw those and said ‘those look sort of hot.’ It wouldn’t be the first time a man may have worn something his wife said looked good. I certainly don’t think he wore them to achieve any sort of political benefit.”

“You won’t see me wearing them,” Trump said on the radio Thursday. “I don’t know what to think of those boots.”

Ever the savvy provocateur, Trump suggested with uncharacteristic subtlety that the 5-foot 10-inch Rubio — or is he actually 5-foot 8? — might have a bit of a short man’s complex.

“It helps to be tall,” Trump added. “I don’t know, they’re big heels. They’re big heels. I mean, those were really up there. But you know, it’s almost like, it doesn’t matter too much.”

Rubio attempted Thursday to quash the story by guilt tripping the media for its focus on something so trivial. “Let me get this right: ISIS is cutting people’s heads off, setting people on fire in cages, Saudi Arabia and Iran are on the verge of a war, the Chinese are landing airplanes on islands that they built and say belong to them and what are international waters and in some ways territorial waters, our economy is flat-lined, the stock market is falling apart, but boy are we getting a lot of coverage about a pair of boots,” he said with a smile. “This is craziness. Have people lost their minds?”

But when a member of his town hall audience in New Hampshire noted that he “made a better shoe choice today” because he was not wearing his Cuban-heeled pair, Rubio warned, “they may make a comeback here soon.”

On Friday, asked again about the boots during an appearance on Fox News, Rubio showed similar aplomb, noting that he isn’t shying away from wearing them again but that they happen to be mostly “for special occasions.”

“I think Rubio’s pretty good at getting the best of these things because he has a good sense of who he is,” said Stuart Stevens, the GOP strategist who guided Romney’s 2012 campaign. “He’s not an insecure guy.”

Kevin Madden, a Republican communications guru who has advised several presidential campaigns, shares Rubio’s view that the focus on footwear is absurd; and he believes the potential damage to the candidate is limited.

“It certainly is a message distraction for Rubio in a critical window of time just before the first contests, but it's not as big a threat since it doesn’t fit a pre-existing, negative narrative of being out of touch or having a problem relating to voters,” Madden said. “Here’s a guy who is the epitome of the pursuit of the American Dream, with an ability to articulate the aspirations of middle-class voters as well as anyone in the party.”

But Christie, who is right behind Rubio in must-win New Hampshire and thus the most focused on attacking him, isn’t pursuing a line of argument that the Florida senator isn’t relatable. Instead, he's spent this week questioning Rubio’s toughness.

During a radio interview, Christie belittled Rubio, telling Laura Ingraham that Hillary Clinton would pat the young senator “on the head and then cut his heart out” if they were matched up in the general election.

Christie, increasingly a target of Rubio’s attacks as well, has also suggested that his rival “would turn tail” and run in a fight — and even that he’d never actually been in one. “This guy’s been spoon-fed every victory he’s ever had in his life,” Christie said.

But Christie is unique among his rivals for not having commented specifically on the boots themselves. He has, in fact, been talking about what everyone else is talking about when they talk about Rubio’s boots all along.

“Christie, at least, is offering a substantive critique about experience,” Stevens said. “What Trump is talking about is juvenile. Ironically, he’s a guy who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his appearance, altering it in different ways — he’s clearly the most pro-plastic surgery candidate we’ve ever had.”