Marco Rubio — he of the unlined cheeks and recently paid-off student loans and strongly felt preference for Tupac over Biggie Smalls — might be just the thing to get young people to come out and vote Republican in 2016.

So say old people.

“I hope that the young people won’t keep being bumfuzzled by Democrats,” said Larry Trickle, a 77-year-old who came to see Rubio speak this week at a Holiday Inn here in Council Bluffs. “Here’s a guy that can speak their language, and maybe teach them a thing about work ethic.”

Sure, there were only a handful of folks younger than 35 in this ballroom rally packed with a couple hundred Iowa voters. But to Larry’s wife, Sue, 70, it was a youthful crowd compared to other GOP events she’d been to recently.

“You should see them,” she said. “The average age of most is like 70s or 80s. Here, it’s gotta be all the way down to the 50s!”