New York Times
By Ashley Parker
April 13, 2015
The Coalition
Mr.
Rubio will try to position himself as a next-generation conservative
who can unite the Republican Party, impressing moderates while
satisfying social conservatives
and galvanizing the Tea Party fiscal hawks who helped elect him to the
Senate in 2010. His fluent Spanish certainly will not hurt him with
Hispanics. Admirers see Mr. Rubio as a charismatic speaker with an
optimistic message, someone who could be a fresh ambassador
for the party, exciting not just younger voters but those looking for a
politician for the 21st century. But if that sounds like another
politician who was elected president not long ago, the Rubio team is
quick to reject any comparisons to President Obama,
who remains wildly unpopular among Republican primary voters.
The Map
Mr.
Rubio hopes to compete in all four of the early nominating contests,
and will need to finish first in at least one, or come close in a number
of them, to be considered
viable. He campaigned for Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa during the 2014
midterm elections and has a strong ground operation in New Hampshire,
where the state’s predilection for town hall events should highlight his
strengths as a speaker. His operatives include
several people from South Carolina, giving him useful connections in
that state. He spent his formative years in Nevada, a heavily Hispanic
state, and has relatives there. But it remains unclear which early
nominating contest offers Mr. Rubio the best chance.
And he could still face Jeb Bush, the former governor, in a
winner-take-all primary in Florida, the state that has elected them
both.
The Message
Mr.
Rubio, 43, hopes to persuade Republicans to entrust the party’s future
to a new generation of leaders with him as its standard-bearer. Expect
an optimistic theme that
connects his biography, the story of a son of Cuban immigrants who made
it to the upper echelon of American politics, to specific economic
policies. These include allowing investors to cover college students’
tuition in exchange for a percentage of their future
earnings, as he suggests in his book “American Dreams.”
Why He Will Win
Running
neither as hotly conservative as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas nor as
coolly establishment as Mr. Bush, Mr. Rubio could be the right contender
to unite the unruly
factions of his party. An often inspiring speaker, he starts with high
favorability ratings in polls and performs well on the stump. He would
look for a breakout performance in the debates, perhaps on foreign
policy, a strong suit.
Why He Won’t
Mr.
Rubio is navigating a fine line as a man for all factions, and he could
instead find himself with no obvious base. He was a part of the
Senate’s “Gang of Eight” that
helped push through a broad bipartisan immigration bill in 2013, but he
later distanced himself from his own legislation, saying he realized
that an overhaul could come through only a step-by-step process that
starts with border security. Mr. Bush — also a
Spanish-speaking Republican from Florida — undercuts Mr. Rubio’s
natural base, forcing him to compete harder for money and support in his
home state. He might have to rely on factors outside his control —
faltering efforts by Mr. Bush or Gov. Scott Walker
of Wisconsin, for instance — to get the second look that would allow
him to surge.
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