Is Rubio turning NY Times hit pieces into an asset?

Has Marco Rubio turned the New York Times hit pieces on him into an asset? Eliana Johnson at National Review thinks so:

When the New York Times on Tuesday became the third major publication to run a report on Marco Rubio’s spending habits and financial struggles, the Rubio campaign didn’t quibble with any of the specifics.

Instead, his team did something unorthodox: They decided not to directly refute charges that the freshman senator is a reckless spender, has drowned in debt, and has engaged in questionable financial practices. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant suggested that they’re not even a liability but rather an asset, because the senator’s financial struggles, which he’s spoken about often on the campaign trail, make him a more relatable candidate. The attacks, they say, even make Rubio look like a victim of snot-nosed elites.

Rubio has already incorporated a line about it into his stump speech. “The latest one that I’m starting to hear rumblings about,” he told a crowd in Ames, Iowa, on Saturday, “is that Marco Rubio’s not rich enough to be president.” The senator used the unwanted attention to attack the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton: “Well, it’s true, I don’t make $11 million a year giving speeches to special-interest groups, and it’s true that my family’s foundation hasn’t raised $2 billion, a lot of it from foreign entities with business before the State Department.”

“My wife and I every month make sure that we can afford to send our four children, and I’m proud of this, to receive a private, Christian-based education,” Rubio said Saturday. “I, until recently, had student-loan debt that I paid off with my book, An American Son, which is now available in paperback.” The crowd laughed. All of this, Rubio communications director Conant says, is ultimately something that will “make him more appealing.”

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