The uses of Marco Rubio

He did bad on the Gang of Eight, and he badly miscalculated how deeply Americans in general and conservatives in particular care about immigration. (And not just illegal immigration.) Some conservatives have just pronounced anathema on him: He’s dead to them. That’s excessive, an overreaction, but it is a political fact.

For those of us who remain alive to the possibilities of a President Rubio, the question is: To what uses could he be put? The first is preventing a second President Clinton or, angels and ministers of grace defend us, the inauguration of Comrade Muppet and His Glorious Socialist Revolution. Second: Immigration reform is still going to need to be done, and Rubio might just be beat up enough on the issue to get behind a robust, enforcement-first/citizenship-never program, designed with the assumption that you don’t have to deport 11 million illegals if you lock up a dozen meatpacking executives and hoteliers on immigration charges. Third: For pete’s sake, the guy’s a conservative, and a young, Latino conservative at that, from a modest background, who could sign a great deal of conservative legislation while being very difficult to caricature as Thurston Howell III.

Right about now, those who are not well-inclined toward Rubio are thinking: Yeah, Ted Cruz offers all the same things, plus he’s a better debater, and he didn’t try to cozy up with Chuck Schumer and stab us in the back for amnesty. This is true. The question, then, is: Do you think you can get across the line with Ted Cruz? I am by no means an expert in what makes a candidate “electable,” whatever that means, but I cannot help but like the prospects of Cruz up against Herself or (egad) Comrade Muppet. Cruz has been ferocious since winning Iowa – anybody else notice that his voice has dropped about half an octave? – and, while he’s acquitted himself well thus far when being attacked from the right, what he’s really used to is being attacked from the left, and Mrs. Clinton (again, or . . .!) with her record, faces a forensic meat-grinder.

My instinct is that Senator Rubio provides a better contrast to Mrs. Clinton, who after a long career as Dorian Gray is turning into the picture. He is only a few months younger than Cruz, but seems more youthful, and even when he is trying to be severe he is a ray of sunshine next to the sterner Cruz. (That isn’t a criticism of Senator Cruz, incidentally; a lot of us like him for that very quality.)