Good god — another day, another campaign announcement. This is starting to get out of hand. There’s what, 18, 19 months until the election?
Keeping in mind there’s more than a year and a half until the big day, we promise we’ll find something else to talk about as soon as we’re done with this editorial. But first, we have to talk a little bit about Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio, like Hillary Clinton, has hinted at a presidential campaign at several junctures over the past few weeks. His Twitter — “Big News is Coming” — was one of the many public figure and corporate accounts to abuse Sunday night’s “Game of Thrones” premiere.
Well, the big news came. Rubio made it official Monday at 6 p.m. in Miami, the freshman senator’s hometown, and the place he first entered politics in 1996 on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign.
Our general stance? He’s the most realistic Republican candidate to announce so far.
Whatever you think of his politics, Rubio’s story is compelling and will definitely work to his advantage over fellow Republican candidates, if not in the general election. His parents came from Cuba. He once claimed it was during the period of mass exodus following the Cuban Revolution, but it turned out they arrived in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro took power. Still, his parents are just as much the political exiles they’d be if they fled the island later on.
He attended UF, and he is currently representing Florida in the U.S. Senate.
Since then, Rubio has made a rapid political ascent and has often defied odds and the Republican Party elite in the process. In 2010, for example, Rubio decided to run for Senate. Problem was, a then-Republican Charlie Crist was the Grand Old Party’s choice for the seat. Party elites told him to wait his turn; he told them to shove it (figuratively speaking, we assume). With the help of his mentor — and potential presidential rival — Jeb Bush, Rubio rose out of practically nowhere and defeated Crist.
Rubio stands a pretty good chance for a hefty bunch of reasons. His personal narrative embodies family and free enterprise, values that make up the rich ideological ground of American conservatism. He’s still squarely in the GOP’s hard-right camp. In his eyes, there isn’t any room for social liberalism. Rubio doesn’t support abortion, same-sex marriage or relaxing drug laws.
Overall, the biggest advantage Rubio has is his heritage. Part of why Republicans lost the White House in 2012 was because they ignored America’s Hispanic population. By choosing to announce in Miami, Rubio signaled that he’s going after this base, which is unlike fellow Cuban-American Ted Cruz, who decided to pander to the religious right. Rubio will have to reconcile with the mainstream GOP — once, he kind of got in trouble with fellow conservatives for drafting a comprehensive immigration reform bill (which he later abandoned when the House didn’t take up the cause) — but, assuming he can do that, Rubio is the strongest Republican candidate out there yet. His campaign is more electable than Rand Paul’s quasi-Libertarianism or Ted Cruz’s evangelical pandering.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 4/14/2015]
Correction: The original article named Rubio as a member of Florida Blue Key. He was not a member while at UF, but he was named an honorary member later.
