Rubio, however, is the original tea party candidate. His candidacy united the grassroots against the leadership and he won. The Washington crowd convinced themselves he could not win, but the grassroots proved they could pick a winner. Rubio was the first.
While Cruz and Paul began forging coalitions, Rubio worked to not undermine his relations with the grassroots while not antagonizing the establishment. His immigration compromise hurt him, but he seeks the nomination in an party that nominated both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney, two men to the left of Rubio on immigration.
Today in Miami, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will declare his candidacy for the Presidency and of the three conservative Senators to run, he is most likely the Goldilocks of the bunch. He is not too tied to the grassroots to antagonize the establishment. He is not too tied to the civil libertarians to antagonize the conservatives. And he has not gone out of his way to reject the base of grassroots supporters who got him elected in order to curry favor with the leadership. He strikes the right balance. He has also been so sufficiently off the radar, by design, for so long that many donors and primary voters will want to listen again to the man who united the right to beat Charlie Crist and the establishment in 2010.
They may like what they hear.
“Our biggest challenge is there is only one of him,” Rubio spokesman Conant says. “As people get to know him, they embrace him.”
Some of those people may have to forgive him, first, but Rubio’s team sees a silver lining even in the immigration debacle. “He is appealing to every sort of voter we’ve got — economic conservatives, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, foreign-policy conservatives — and he has an appeal to the middle as well,” says Jim Merrill, Rubio’s senior adviser for New Hampshire, in a conversation following the speech.
Rubio hopes to mitigate the damage done by the Gang of Eight fight by assuring conservatives that he’s learned from the mistake. “What I’ve learned is you can’t even have a conversation about [illegal immigrants already in the country] until people believe and know, not just believe, but it’s proven to them, that future illegal immigration is brought under control,” he said in February at CPAC, after calling Obama’s executive orders on immigration “the strongest argument” against the Gang of Eight bill, because it proved that Obama can’t be trusted.
FOURNIER: The Clinton campaign is really worried about him. They really are. Hillary gave him an advantage, but so did Obama by these relations with Cuba. So every time he said yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, past, past, past, he may as well have said ‘Clinton, Clinton Clinton, Bush, Bush, Bush.’ This was a not too subtle hit at Jeb Bush as well. I do agree it was very Clintonesque. I think he’s trying to talk about building the bridge to the 21st century that Clinton promised to do in ’96 and never quite got done. Very aspirational, very forward thinking. Very new generation. Good speech.
Rubio’s main advantage when it comes to winning over Latino voters is not that he is a second-generation Cuban American. For one thing, less than 4 percent of Latinos are of Cuban origin while almost two-thirds (64.6 percent) are of Mexican origin, and the ethnic politics of southern Florida are profoundly different from those of southern Texas or Southern California. Rather, Rubio’s advantage is that more than almost any other leading Republican, he’s dedicated himself to thinking about and talking about how conservatives can advance middle-class economic interests. Not all of Rubio’s proposals are fully baked. His signature tax reform proposal has been criticized (justifiably) on the grounds that it’s a huge revenue-loser that promises all things to all people. Yet Rubio has pushed a number of promising ideas, like higher wage subsidies for low-income workers, a new child credit to make it easier for middle-income parents to make ends meet, and modest higher education reforms designed to steer students toward high-quality, cost-effective colleges and away from diploma mills that produce more dropouts than graduates.
Even if you believe that winning Latino voters per se is not the key to winning the presidency in 2016, as Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has convincingly argued, it will be all but impossible for Republicans to win without attracting more working- and lower-middle-class voters. Whether or not Rubio’s emerging domestic policy agenda is compelling enough to win these voters—I happen to think he has more work to do—he recognizes the nature of the challenge that’s ahead of him. That puts him miles ahead of Bush and every other Republican in the field.
There’s a big question here, also, because the Republican party, as many people have noted, faces a demographic challenge that gets a little worse with every election cycle. Growing groups in society, such as Latinos and others, are voting increasingly Democratic, and Republican voter groups, particularly older white voters, are getting smaller. What’s the Republican Party need to do about that?
Well, at the end, I don’t think people go to the ballot box and say, I’m a Latino, therefore I’m voting Democrat. I think they bring with them their hopes and fears about the future, and they vote for whoever they think best understands them. And the challenge the Republican Party has had is unfairly, but it’s the reality, they’ve been portrayed as a party that doesn’t care about people who are trying to make it. A disproportionate number of people who are trying to make it, who are working class, who are out there working for a living at $18 an hour, $15 an hour, happen to also be people from minority communities. And if you think someone doesn’t care or understand people like you, no matter what your policies are, it’s going to be difficult to get them to listen to you, much less vote for you. And so I hope the Republican Party can become the champion of the working class because I think our policy proposals of limited government and free enterprise are better for the people who are trying to make it than big government is. The fact is that big government helps the people who have made it. If you can afford to hire an army of lawyers, lobbyists and others to help you navigate and sometimes influence the law, you’ll benefit. And so that’s why you see big banks, big companies, keep winning. And everybody else is stuck and being left behind.
It took me awhile to figure out why Rubio’s speech and general approach don’t resonate with me in a way I would expect them to but it finally came to me. It’s not the immigration lies or even the disagreement about policy (especially when it comes to foreign interventions). It’s that I don’t see cause for optimism that Rubio is selling…
[W]hat Rubio is selling is great politics and he is a great salesman for it. People like optimism and they like being told it’s easy to fix what’s wrong…give away more stuff but just have the right people doing the giving away and happy days are here again! If that’s your thing, if just having someone with an “R” after their name directing the beast is good enough, then Rubio should be your man. The GOP hasn’t had someone who can connect with people this way since Reagan…
To me Rubio is a guy who won in 2010 because he ran against a hack in a year when outsiders were prized. His rhetoric and style matched perfectly with the moment but the reality is, aside from the unconventional style, he’s a pretty conventional Republican on policy. Why Republicans would want Jeb Bush selling essentially the same stuff when they could have Rubio fronting it is beyond me. GOP gonna GOP I guess.
Rubio is running on the idea of managing the behemoth better. He’ll throw in a few conservative-ish sounding ideas on how it should be done here and there but in general he’s given me every reason to believe he’s comfortable with the overall trajectory of modern government.
“Everybody likes Marco Rubio,” said Iowa conservative radio host Steve Deace, a nationally syndicated commentator. But “I still don’t hear his name from conservatives at all, and I think the Gang of Eight” — the bipartisan group of senators that pushed the most sweeping immigration overhaul in a generation — “has a lot to do with that.”
Even so, the political damage to Rubio has clearly subsided over time, in no small part due to Rubio’s repeated disavowal of the entire reform exercise. In the days ahead of his presidential campaign launch in Miami Monday evening, some critics on the tea party right concede he has resuscitated himself politically, though the true effect may not be apparent until much deeper into the 2016 primary season…
Said Jenny Beth Martin, the president and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots: “I think that Sen. Rubio has done something that most politicians don’t do: He evaluated what went wrong … [and] is working to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes again. I think that neutralizes his mistakes.”…
“It’s hard to put your finger on it, but there do seem to be some politicians whom lots of voters want to like and are eager to forgive for their mistakes,” Kristol said, citing Ronald Reagan as an example. “Others who are less likable get held to a stricter standard. So Rubio’s apparent comeback over the last couple of years may indicate a kind of underlying strength there that one might not have expected.”
As a matter of political pragmatism, is there any convincing reason Rubio shouldn’t be the Republican to take on Hillary Clinton in 2016? Because when it comes to natural political talent, it unlikely the GOP can do better…
Other than his futile shot at immigration reform, Rubio has been reliably conservative. The Jeb Bush candidacy, driven by oodles of cash but little popular support, makes Rubio seem more palatable, while the Cruz candidacy, almost exclusively propelled by the grassroots, makes him seem less severe. The money and votes will gravitate to whoever can win – if, that is, the person is somewhat ideologically acceptable to the rank and file…
The Left’s reaction to Rubio’s announcement also tells us that the Florida senator is a formidable pick. There were far fewer histrionic hit pieces about a GOP candidate’s extremism than usual. If the most potent attack mocking a candidate is a single awkward water-bottle incident, then demonizing him won’t be easy. Whereas liberals quickly found distractions for nearly all other presidential announcements – Rand Paul is a misogynistic hothead with crazy ideas; Ted Cruz is nutty theocrat with crazy ideas – the Left was grasping for an effective line of attack.
Don’t get me wrong. In the end, no matter what Republican candidate offers, he will be cast as a thug looking to steal bread and condoms from the poorest single working moms in the country. So the most vital skill any candidate can have is the ability transcend coverage and make his or her case to voters. Setting aside reservations about policy, is there any other Republican who can do that more effectively than Rubio?
Now, I know Rubio has lost a lot of luster with some people on the Tea Party side because of his flirtation with the Chuck-U Schumer gang on amnesty and immigration. You can maybe chalk it up to two things. Chalk it up to novice naivete, trying to get his feet wet and establish himself within the power circles of the Senate. Or another explanation for it could have been that, given his Hispanic heritage, he almost had to, in the sense of identity politics, if he had any chance at all of securing any votes from that sector, he had to come out in favor of it. But whatever, he’s walked it back now, and we’ll just see how this is all gonna play out with Tea Party people…
The one thing about Rubio, whether you disagree with him on what he did with amnesty and then walked it back or not, he does not have a likability problem. He is instantly likable. He’s motivational. He’s inspirational in a Reaganesque way because he has that family story, and he relishes telling that story. He thinks it’s inspirational. It was to him, and he wants it to be for everybody.
He is a great communicator, significant communicator, has a conservative message. Just over here he has that misstep on immigration with the Tea Party. Time will tell if that can be overcome. Now, we will see also if his policies match his rhetoric. His rhetoric is great, his persona is great, his energy is great. He’s a natural leader, it appears, and there will be a certain number of people who will relish and enjoy making Rubio their champion. He’s not gonna have to ask them, in other words. He’s not gonna have to do what Hillary is doing (imitating Hillary), “I want to go out, I want to be your champion. I want to be your champion, everyday people.”
He’s not gonna walk into Chipotle.
Via RCP.
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