White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

PAC Away Your Marco Rubio Water Bottle

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The speed at which Internet memes evolve works laterally to how D.C. can interpret them.

Marco Rubio’s meme has officially been bottled. The senator’s dry mouth took over the media after the State of the Union on Tuesday, now it’s coming for you. Since then it’s turned into a reflection of the media’s repetition of a drinking problem and has caused The Daily Caller to become arithmomanic. The Reclaim America PAC has gone one step farther:

The official Marco Rubio water bottle: for a $25 contribution you can “(s)end the liberal detractors a message that not only does Marco Rubio inspire you…he hydrates you too.” The product became available on Wednesday afternoon from Reclaim America, a PAC which Rubio started in 2009 while entertaining a potential 2012 run for office. No telling whether they’ll come out with other swag related to the senator’s recent decisions, such as his opposition to the Violence Against Women Act or the end of minimum wage laws.

Which is unfortunate since you can only get the Rubio water bottle by spending the minimum donation–technically not a wage, but who keeps tracks when it comes to PACs?

The Slurp Heard Around the SOTU

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Marco Rubio stole the entire show after President Obama gave an unanimously praised speech at the State of the Union. For the fifth time, the president remained on record but with a far sterner message to congress during and after his speech.

But before we go back to Obama, let’s focus on Senator Rubio. His “Watergate” broke out over Twitter:

On YouTube:

and the same joke repeated ad naseum. Despite President Obama’s repeated plea for a vote for victims of gun violence, for Sandy Hook and for those that struggle to vote–like 102-year old Desiline Victor–it would be Rubio who would capture the Internet’s attention. But that comes after a groundbreaking number of Tweets Per Minute (TPM) according to the official Twitter Blog.

They even provided a timeline in handy graph form:

But don’t think Obama got away without a fist-bump of his own. Over the closing minutes, as Obama went through the Capitol,he could be heard encouraging Representatives and Senators that everything “deserves a vote,” in calling back to his address.

The Running Of The Who's Who for 2013

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The end of the year is for making lists and conjecture about who’ll be in charge come next term. Politico’s already started their weekly half-video/half column Behind the Curtain featuring Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei as they tackle the weeks that were–so far that means immigration and the rebranding of Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan.

Buzzfeed, however, seems to be focused entirely on 2013 with today’s list of the 23 People Who Will Be Running Washington Next Year. This service comes complete with headshots that tell us whether we’re looking at a daytime regular on MSNBC, Fox or CNN–or to provide photographic evidence of Paul Ryan’s Michael Steel, pictured above.
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