On the Water

It always amazes me what goes viral. Sen. Marco Rubio gave a fairly flat response to the State of the Union on Tuesdays, packed with standard conservative bromides and stale ideas, but a GIF of his lunge for his water bottle has won him more Internet attention than anything he said about the dangers of big government.

Rubio is trying to take advantage of it, however, and the Post reports that he “swiftly moved to turn an unexpected glitch to his advantage.” Probably no one will remember this in the long run, just as the GOP consultants who talked to Politico suggest. “I thought it made him human,” said one. “Washington types will snort and buzz about it but it probably made the average voter smile.” That’s true. It will be amusing fodder for Gawker and Facebook for a few days, until it inevitably upstaged by the next dancing dog or foul-mouthed toddler. But in terms of building a brand and capitalizing on a gaffe, this is the best idea since Republicans started selling “We Built That!” t-shirts during the election.

It’s yours with a mere $25 donation to Rubio’s Reclaim America PAC! Republicans are often accused of lagging behind Obama and the Democrats in online outreach; indeed, technology goof-ups were blamed for many of Romney’s election-day turnout problems. But perhaps Rubio is young enough that he knows how to “work the Twitter,” as one might say. (It’s a much smarter, as well more pro-active and humble, reaction than the silence Bobby Jindal maintained after his own widely-panned SOTU response.) He immediately tweeted the GIF of his awkward maneuver after the speech, and joked about it yesterday, writing: “Picked up over 13,000 new followers on #twitter since last night! Im going to start drinking #water in the middle of all of my speeches!” As much as the dull speech itself, this should raise Rubio’s profile.

I’m sure Jon Stewart has already mined the rich vein of comedy provided by Rubio’s gaffe, and Politco has already dismissed the incident as “Water Under the Bridge.” But the best so-bad-it’s-good play on words came via the National Review. The title of a blog post on Rubio’s newfound Reddit/YouTube fame? Water-Gate.