Another guest post by our very own David Garber. Was Marco Rubio’s water ‘buttal lunge– dun-dun- dun-n!– calculated?

Innocent Mistake or Accidentally on Purpose?

 Was it a gaffe? Was it a mistake? Or was it intentionally both?

Marco Rubio and his parched mouth, water-escape routine. Move over, Harry Houdini. Another illusionist has joined the fray.

Face it, the Florida senator’s response to the SOTU speech was destined to be forgotten. And Rubio, forgotten with it. Last year it was Bobby Jindal. What’s he doing these days aside from calling his party stupid? And next year, who’s the unlucky loser they’re going to hoist on his own petard? I say “his,” because the Republicans don’t trust women with their bodies, so how would they ever trust them with a reply to the State of the Union?

It seems that the GOP are looking for a candidate to face (most likely Hillary Clinton) in 2016. The jostling for position has already begun — and Christie will have eaten himself to death by then. Jeb Bush won’t run because of his family’s past history with the Presidency, and the tea partiers won’t be able to mount a general election-proof candidate. So it looks like Marco is their man, if they can make him famous.

Two ways to do that. He does something like heroic — he saves a family from a burning house or he rescues a schoolroom of kids from a deranged, armed psycho. Or actually there are three ways. The third way is water. Poland water.

You give your perspective candidate a pulpit like the Republican clowns did this week and you turn him into a punchline. There isn’t one show on TV that wasn’t doing Rubio water bottle jokes within hours. There wasn’t a blog that didn’t carry a comment about him. Whammo. He went from nobody to… (please hold while I take a sip of water) …to lovable goofball. (A younger John McCain with a little Rick Santorum tossed in). From a stereotypical looking Republican male to HiJinx the Clown. And who doesn’t like clowns unless you have coulrophobia? And there’s less of them than there are tea party Muslims.

So then I got to thinking, is Marco really that unpolished of a rube or is this a shameless way to make him a household name. Bingo! That was it! Ingratiate him by making him the victim of a gaffe, let him laugh publicly at it and now you have yourself a candidate. This wasn’t the crazy “Ooops” moment like Governor Rick Perry’s. This was intentional. This was something the Republicans did on purpose. Pretty sneaky, you guys. This is how to make an overnight sensation out of an everyday dufus. Everyone loves a winner — and almost everyone is compassionate about a victim. So how far a jump is it from victim to winner?

We’re about to see. Hillary, better get the bees out of your bonnet. The vacay is about over. It’s just about time for you to make some public appearances and then announce you’re running. At that point Marco the Rube will be forced to play his hand — the man who voted against women’s protection and equal pay for the female gender of the species. Let’s see him laugh himself out of that one. Can you hear the Kaleidoscope yet?

When are the Repubs going to learn, “Silly Wabbit, Trix are for kids.”

For the past 25 years, David Garber has been serving as the show runner and or writer on some of television’s biggest hits… Saved By The Bell, Power Rangers, 227, Bill Cosby Show and many other network series. His writing and producing have also netted David two very prestigious awards:the PRISM AWARD and the TV CRITICS AWARD – TV SPECIAL OF THE YEAR. Currently he’s authoring a short story series called “A Few Minutes With…”