Rubio didn’t take the advice. And two years later, immigration remains the freshman senator’s No. 1 liability in his bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination — though not necessarily the deal breaker it appeared to be after the reform effort Rubio helped shepherd to passage in the Senate hit a brick wall in the House.

“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.”…

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.”