Rubio also did a battery of interviews with outlets across the political spectrum — a media-friendly strategy he plans to continue throughout the campaign. “It’s great if you can do it,” one GOP strategist tells NR. “But it’s a high-wire act.” Case in point: Rubio spoke not just to Fox News’s Sean Hannity but also to NPR and to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who angered Republicans with his unexpected questions about contraception during a Republican primary debate last cycle.
Such a use of the press, his advisers believe, will help him compete in all the early-primary states, despite the difficulty of trying to win Iowa and New Hampshire without the benefit of a preexisting campaign organization. Most of the top-tier candidates have that problem, though; what they don’t have is Rubio’s political talent.

“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.