But alas for Rubio it turned out that Republicans didn’t want any of this.

They didn’t want comprehensive immigration reform, which shouldn’t have been surprising because they hadn’t wanted it when Bush was president, either; it was an idea that had hung around and hung around without ever finding a conservative constituency outside Washington.

They didn’t want an optimistic, next-generation version of social conservatism, preferring either Ted Cruz’s old-time religion or Donald Trump as the church’s heathen bodyguard in a post-Christian landscape.

They didn’t care about the size of Rubio’s tax cut, because all the candidates were promising a big tax cut, they were all equally implausible, and voters — even conservative voters — just aren’t as tax-obsessed as they were in the Reaganite glory days.

They did want, perhaps, a different domestic policy than the uncreative platform Romney had offered, one that promised less to the wealthy and more to the working class. But Rubio’s halfhearted reform conservatism was outbid and overwhelmed by Trump’s brassy promises to renegotiate trade deals, slap on tariffs, leave entitlements untouched and bring back the jobs of 1965.