Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie warned that rival's voting record could doom him in the general election as he questioned the wisdom of electing a senator to the White House.

"She will clean our clock. She will take every vote Rubio missed and she will feed it to him for lunch. ... What are we doing here? Let's be smart."

"We are going to nominate someone from the place with a 13 percent approval rate and then run against?" Christie asked the audience Wednesday at a New Hampshire town hall.

Rubio's critics have repeatedly piled on him for posting the worst voting record in the Senate, accusing him of skipping out on his responsibilities. But Rubio has fought back and argued that his presidential bid is for the greater good and that Senate votes will matter more when he becomes president.

Christie, the governor of New Jersey, has staked his bid on a strong performance in the New Hampshire primary, having made 179 campaign stops in the state, just one fewer than Ohio Gov. John Kasich had made, according to the New England Cable News candidate tracker

Both Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are ahead of Christie, and Rubio's strong third-place finish in Iowa has given him a jolt of momentum heading into New Hampshire.

Like Kasich and Bush, Christie has kept Rubio square in his sights as he looks to climb back up the ladder and emerge as the establishment favorite.

The New Jersey governor told the audience about a time his mother took him to the supermarket as a child. The young Christie, he said, kept asking his mother if he could buy things from the shelves, to which his mother told him he could only if he was able to harvest money from the family "money tree."