If Marco Rubio launches his presidential campaign as expected Monday, the first-term Republican senator from Florida may have to answer this simple question. Why now?…

“There’s no telling that (Rubio’s) opportunity will be better four or eight years from now,” said Fergus Cullen, the former New Hampshire Republican chairman who is yet to throw his support behind a candidate.

Rubio’s advisers know all about the fickle preferences of the electorate. Rubio was a beneficiary of the 2010 tea party wave that swept dozens of conservative lawmakers into Congress just two years after Obama and Democrats won big.

Rubio was expected to announce his candidacy Monday in his hometown of Miami, which would put him in the shadow of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s highly anticipated announcement Sunday of a second White House run.

If he runs for president as expected, Sen. Marco Rubio will have a political committee ready to raise and spend unlimited cash on his behalf…

Conservative Solutions is set to collect checks from deep-pocketed donors to pay for as many television, digital and radio ads as it can afford to boost Rubio’s chances.

“This race will be won by the candidate with the best vision for where to take this nation and the resources to ensure that message is heard,” veteran strategist Warren Tompkins said in a statement released to The Associated Press early Thursday morning. “Marco has the vision – few have laid out in as much detail where they’d like to lead this country – and we’re going to spend the next two years ensuring that the resources are there and used to effectively share that vision with voters.”

Some on the far right might never forgive Rubio for his “amnesty” heresy, despite a retooled approach that calls for implementing verified border security measures before relief for 11-12 million illegal immigrants is examined. But now, on the eve of his presumed White House launch, Rubio, 43, finds himself among the hottest tickets in a gradually expanding GOP field…

The voters’ intense focus on overseas affairs and desire for U.S. re-engagement following the war-weary post-Iraq war years is a boon for Rubio. He’s a natural Republican hawk in the tradition established by President Ronald Reagan, and his background as the child of Cuban immigrants who disdained the Castro dictatorship of their native island nation informed his view from the earliest age that America is and should be an aggressive force for good in the world.

This image and background could uniquely position Rubio to offer the change of course Republican voters want — and to prosecute a case against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama’s chief foreign policy lieutenant during his first term. Rubio’s foreign affairs aptitude could pay additional dividends, enabling him to overcome charges of inexperience stemming from the fact that, like Obama in 2008, he’s a first-term senator in his mid-forties with no executive experience…

“The world is literally falling apart, and it’s not getting better,” said Los Angeles attorney Robert C. O’Brien, a sought-after GOP donor who has yet to endorse a candidate. “This is what makes Rubio a very serious candidate.”

Marco Rubio is about to shake up the Republican presidential primary by running on a tax plan that tosses out decades of GOP allegiance to the idea of simply slashing rates across the board and expecting faster economic growth to follow.

Instead, Rubio plans to campaign hard on the complex plan he introduced this year with Utah Sen. Mike Lee that would use the tax code to reward families with children while slashing levies on business and investment income but keeping a top rate personal income rate of 35 percent, far higher than many Republicans would like.

Rubio appears to be hoping his plan will appeal to Republican voters concerned about rising economic inequality and tired of getting beaten up in the general election over plans that Democrats say would hand massive tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the middle class…

“If you are a GOP primary voter and not a policy wonk who follows this stuff closely, you might not really understand what Rubio is trying to do here,” said Daniel J. Mitchell of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “There is a risk that with Cruz and Paul both talking about a flat tax that Rubio, even though he does some big and important things, might get lost in the clutter.”

When Marco Rubio launches his bid for the presidency on Monday evening, Cuba figures to loom large.

The Florida senator and son of Cuban parents will announce his campaign at Miami’s historic Freedom Tower, considered the “Ellis Island” of the South because it was the first stop in America for scores of Cubans seeking political asylum after fleeing the Castro regime…

With the rise of ISIS and terrorism abroad, along with other national security issues, Cuba policy doesn’t exactly rank high on voters’ minds. Indeed, 59 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Latinos, approve of the recent U.S. decision for diplomatic recognition of Cuba, according to an MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll this week. A Univision Noticias/Fusion poll published by the Washington Post found 97 percent of Cubans favored normalizing relations.

“He’s not going to stop the train to normalizing relations with Cuba,” says Guillermo Grenier, a professor at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University who has been polling on Cuba relations for two decades. “And Cuba is just not an important enough issue nationally to warrant him to change his position. … But he’s got a chance to focus the Republican base on the possibilities of what changing policies might open up economically.”

Mr. Rubio’s plan to enter the presidential campaign here on Monday, upstaging Mr. Bush in his own backyard, signals a decisive, Shakespearean turn in a 15-year relationship so close, personal and enduring that friends describe the two men as almost family.

It is a bond that has stretched from Miami to Washington, punctuated by late-night telephone consultations, fueled by mutual enemies and fixated on reinvigorating conservatism with big ideas, according to dozens of interviews…

“It’s hard for us to emotionally accept,” said Al Cardenas, a longtime Republican Party leader…

Allies of Mr. Rubio, 43, and Mr. Bush, 62, have rendered an unmistakable verdict: It is an awful idea, upending loyalties and destroying relationships. Many of them, dispensing with the diplomacy that has long surrounded the Bush-Rubio alliance, are starting to lash out.

“We’re in a presidential love triangle,” said Jessica Fernandez, president of the Miami Young Republicans. “Who doesn’t want to be in a presidential love triangle?”…

The coming decision “marks a coming of age for South Florida — not only the politics, but the culture, the Pan-Americanism, the melting pot of sorts,” said Armando Ibarra, another member of the Miami Young Republicans. “I like both of the candidates; Jeb was a great governor, Marco Rubio was a great senator. Personally, I just really believe in the transformational qualities of a Marco Rubio candidacy.”…

There is the possibility of a real Bush-vs.-Rubio battle in Florida next year. If both men run for president and perform well in early primary states, they would face off in Florida’s winner-take-all primary in mid-March. They might be joined by other potential candidates who also live in the state. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has a home near Destin in the state’s Panhandle, and Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and conservative activist, lives in West Palm Beach. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) might also enjoy support here because of his Cuban American heritage.

Much of the money and establishment support has gravitated toward Bush. Some fans of both have said Rubio should run for re-election to the Senate next year and leave the White House campaign to Bush.

“I think Marco is a truly outstanding person. I love him. A fine man. (But) I love Jeb Bush more,” said Al Hoffman Jr., a Florida real estate developer and former Republican National Committee finance chairman who co-chaired George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns.

Hoffman embodies the priorities of Florida’s Old Guard, whose members believe Bush is more seasoned than Rubio and better qualified to win the presidency.

“Jeb comes across as the more accomplished person, more experienced … smarter,” said Hoffman, who chaired Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign committee and tried to talk him out of running for president. “When I think of Jeb Bush, I think of accomplishments. When I think about Marco Rubio, I see (him) working hard to learn the job. I see great potential.”

“It’s very clear for him that the moment is right,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Steve Bovo, a close friend. “He has built enough clout and trust and enthusiasm amongst a broad section of the Republican base. In politics, the longer you’re in, the harder it is to sustain that. He understands that. There are very rare occasions where windows of opportunity are ever recaptured.”…

“He’s a great quarterback except he’s never won a game,” said former state Sen. Alex Villalobos, a moderate Republican from Miami. “There’s been a lot of promotion of Marco Rubio, but you can’t put your finger on one thing he’s passed. It’s not anything I dislike about him, but being president of the United States is being leader of the free world.”…

“I always knew, despite my hopes to the contrary, that he would do real well in this business,” said Gelber, the Democratic former lawmaker. “Marco has a televangelical ability to communicate, and he is extremely disciplined. He could catch fire and he’s shown he’s able to do that.

“At first I thought he was getting in the presidential race just to show up. Now I’m beginning to think he’s in it to win. I think he likes talking to a crowd of people that aren’t his people necessarily, that don’t buy into him. He likes that challenge.”

If either one fails to catch fire with voters, “it’s not a bad thing to be in second tier,” Whalen says, adding a 44-year-old senator facing the 69-year-old Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton might look very much like McCain vs. Obama in 2008.

And if it’s not 2016, there’s always 2024, when he won’t be junior any more, experts say.

“Rubio won’t be that formidable in 2016, but in 2024 I bet he is,” says Hudak. “And he is going to learn a lot from this run.”

The people who grew up with Rubio in South Florida’s bare-knuckled politics, who believed in his ambitious rise, who helped shield him from ever getting so bruised that a national candidacy would be impossible, say it was only a question of when the Republican son of Cuban immigrants would aim for the White House.

“The first day I met him, I knew big things were waiting for him,” said Rebeca Sosa, the Miami-Dade County commissioner and former West Miami mayor who took Rubio under her wing in his first race, for city commission in 1998. “Not president, right then, but big things.”…

“All my life I’ve been in a hurry to get my future,” Rubio wrote in his memoir, An American Son.

Anybody who thinks a Hillary video on Sun will overshadow a Marco speech on Mon, has either never seen a Hillary video or a Marco speech…

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) April 10, 2015

Via Breitbart.