It will be a difficult courtship for both candidates. Rubio finished well in Rasmussen’s latest poll. It positioned him ahead by 5 points. Still, Rubio only won about two thirds of Republican likely voters in the poll. Meanwhile, independents split between Rubio and Crist. Neither candidate is where they need to be…
Rubio certainly needs the center most. He must prove he can win the mainstream in order to undercut Democrats effort to paint him as extreme. But Rubio also hopes to win a measure of Latinos from Democrats. And that’s no sure thing. Republican Mel Martinez won his Florida Senate seat in 2004 with about six in 10 Hispanics, only a slightly larger share than George W. Bush earned statewide that year.
What this means, in the end, is that the potential superstar could easily see it all slip away. Rubio is one of the strongest GOP candidates in the country. Yet he faces one of the most difficult races in the coming months. Crist’s abandonment of the GOP assured that. Now Democrats have a chance to stop Rubio before he’s a contender for the big show. You can bet Republicans wish they had, somehow, stopped Obama six years ago.
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