While I’m not sure Rubio is going to last too long in this race, I guess Rubio should get his own thread along with the other 'serious ’ candidates.
Rubio seems to be at the bottom of the three first term Senators running this year. I watched his announcement speech at a bar and even non political folks near me shared my opinion that Rubio looks like a kid wearing his Daddy’s suit.
Rubio is pretty stupid to give up his Senate seat, although that race is far from a certain win. If Jeb wins the nomination, Rubio can’t be the VP.
Rubio seems to be making his foreign policy expertise the foundation of his pitch to voters. That may be effective in the primary, when he’ll be up against a couple other freshman senators, some governors with no FP experience, and a neurosurgeon. But I really struggle to see how it’s supposed to work in the general election against Hillary Clinton. She is as hawkish on foreign policy as any Republican (my main beef with her) so he can’t credibly attack her from the right without sounding crazy (as he already does talking about Cuba, among other issues). So what does he do? If, instead, the strategy starts with a B and rhymes with “gauzy,” he’ll find out in a none-too-pleasant way how many fucks independents give about that issue.
As for his other strength, his youth and Hispanic background, I just don’t see Hispanics being as fired up by Rubio’s candidacy as Aftican-Americans were by Obama, simply because most blacks are Democrats and most Hispanics are not Republicans. Likewise for the youth vote. And whereas Obama, love him or hate him, was undeniably cool in 2008, Rubio’s just dweeby (cheerleader wife notwithstanding).
My guess is that the Republican establishment will rapidly come to appreciate his inherent ineffectiveness vs Clinton and will ensure that he is not the nominee. Facing off on the debate stage against Rubio would be a dream come true for Clinton.
Rubio has a lot of strengths. He’s conservative enough to win over the Republican base but he’s not perceived as being so conservative that it hurts him with the general electorate. He’s got a good personality and projects well on camera. He’s Hispanic which gives him a good chance of getting votes from a large bloc of voters who usually swing Democratic. And he seems to be working on a positive platform of why people should vote for him rather than just a negative platform of why people should vote against Hillary Clinton.
He’s Cuban-American, which isn’t necessarily an ethnicity that most other Latinos feel a great deal of fellow-feeling for. Cubans have not been treated the way Mexicans are treated.
True. But Obama’s past is not that of a typical African American - he’s biracial, the child of an African immigrant, was raised by his white mother, and lived in Hawaii and Indonesia. But nonetheless black people seem to have accepted Obama as “one of them”. The same was true for Kennedy when he was the first Catholic elected President - all Catholics felt he represented them and not just wealthy Irish Catholics from Massachusetts.
I think the same would be true of many Hispanics. If Rubio (or Cruz) gets nominated, many Hispanics will support him for being the first Hispanic nominee even if his background is not typical for Hispanic Americans.
But do you think black voters would have embraced Herman Cain? Because I view it as something where sure, all things being equal, you’re going to be more enthusiastic about the candidate who represents something that’s important to you, not that you just vote for the Latino guy because he’s Latino and hey, so are you.
I’m not going to vote for Fiorina, even if Hillary Clinton drops out. But if a male version of Hillary Clinton is running, I’ll pick her over him.
Republicans seem to view it as “Hey, women will vote for Palin because she’s a woman, even if she shares none of the values of the women we’re hoping to lure.”
He can, actually, but it would prevent the Florida Electoral College voters from voting for both of them. Otherwise, there’s no bar.
I don’t know whether to laugh or be angry at Rubio playing the Cuban refugee card when his parents came to the US three years before Castro took over in Cuba. Not to mention that his grandfather was in the US illegally …
I did edit my stance though, and I’m going to edit it again based on new things I’ve read.
Stance #1:
Rubio can’t win. This is a dumb move because he will lose his Senate seat.
Stance #2:
Rubio can’t win, but you have to lose the GOP nomination before you can win it, and he will be free to run for governor in two years or might even be VP to pad his resume. The Senate is a poor place to run for President from.
Stance #3:
Rubio can win. He’s got a great campaign team, plenty of big money support, he’s electrifying when he’s on his game. But most importantly, he’s practically everyone’s second choice. He’s the most broadly acceptable candidate in the race. Which means he can’t win on his own, but he can win if other candidates implode, which is not unlikely.
For me though, he remains unready to be President. I will support him over Clinton, but not against a better Democrat like Biden or O’Malley.
The important thing to remember is that the Republicans don’t need to win an overwhelming percentage of the Hispanic vote, even remotely similar to what Obama won of the African-American vote. (There is obviously no chance of that happening.) All the Republicans need is to increase their percentage of the Hispanic vote and let their majority among white voters prevail.
While the majority of Hispanics are more aligned with the Democrats, there are some who vote Republican, and there are obviously a lot whose votes are in play. It’s with these voters that Rubio’s background can have an impact.
This is possible – I think it’s very likely that if Rubio started to look like he had a serious chance to win the Republican nomination, the Democratic nominee (or leader, presumed to be HRC at this point) would start to look at which Hispanic Democrat to choose as VP (like Julian Castro) to counter this possibility. Also, Rubio is a likely VP choice if he doesn’t win the nomination.
It’s a tough call. I feel black voters wouldn’t have rallied to Cain. But I feel they would have to a less extreme black Republican candidate. If Colin Powell had run as a Republican nominee, he would have got the black vote; Alan Keyes probably wouldn’t have. A candidate can be so extreme that his ideology overwhelms his demographic connection. And based on that principle, I don’t think Sarah Palin could count on the same support among women that Hillary Clinton can and I don’t think Ted Cruz can count on the same support among Hispanics that Marco Rubio can.
There’s obviously some truth to that, but it’s not so simple.
For example, blacks were more supportive of the Clarence Thomas nomination than whites, despite the overwhelming opposition of the civil rights establishment. cite.
My personal guess is that he knows he’s a long shot for 2016. He’s probably figuring he’ll make a good showing and maybe get a VP slot - and then Hillary Clinton will win the election.
And then he’ll wait until 2020. President Clinton will be 72. The Democrats will have been in the White House for three terms and the voters will be looking for a change. Rubio will be 47 and as the most recent VP candidate it’ll be his turn. That’s what I think his plan is.
Just to run in the primary? I can see where he’d need to drop his Senate seat if he wins the nomination (since his Senate term is up in 2016, and running for both simultaneously would presumably be somewhere between difficult and impossible).
But I don’t see why he’d give up his Seat until he had the nomination tied up. He’d be screwing over his party by giving up a swing Senate seat in a year likely to favor Dem candidates, and in the likely event that he lost the Primary, he’d basically be out of politics.
Plus it kind of gives him a “quitter” vibe. Like if he can’t be in charge of the game, than he doesn’t want to play anyways.
If he wants the VP slot, I think he’d be better off staying out of the race. The last several GOP candidates have chosen people that weren’t in the primary (I think Reagan was the last one to do so). And if he runs in the primary, his opponents are going to spend months hanging immigration reform around his neck, which will make it difficult of the winner to turn around and make him a running mate.
I guess someone might want him pre-vetted to see how he’ll stand up to scrutiny. But you’re right that it hasn’t been the norm lately to bring in another candidate as the VP.
