Marco Rubio

Rubio Bags the Crom Endorsement

Featured image Michael Cromartie (“the Crom” to me for 30 years now) is the most significant person in Washington DC that you’ve never heard of. And that’s just the way he likes it. Not because he’s a backroom K Street wire puller from the shadows of House of Cards. To the contrary: he is the rarest thing you can find in Washington: a truly honest broker; a person of faith, understated on »

Jeb Bush’s strange defense of his immigration flip-flop

Featured image Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio weren’t the only candidates exposed in last night’s debate as having changed their position on immigration reform. Rubio pointed out that Jeb Bush has also changed his. Bush’s current position, and the one set forth in a book he wrote (with an eye, surely, towards a presidential run) is that illegal immigrants should have a path to legalization but not to citizenship. But when Sen. »

The Fun Indicator, Rubio Edition

Featured image A couple weeks ago I mentioned “The Fun Indicator,” which suggested that the candidate and campaign that is having the most fun often turns out to be the winning campaign. And the person obviously having the most fun this cycle is Donald Trump. But don’t count out Marco Rubio, who stars in this new video, which has an awesome collection of cameos and inside jokes with the joke (especially Senator »

Jeb Bush’s joyless campaign

Featured image Before entering the presidential race, Jeb Bush said he wanted to run “joyfully.” And when Bush appears on talk shows, he seems sunny (especially for a candidate who is running, what, in fifth place with about 5 percent support in the polls) and eager to talk policy. But meanwhile, as Steve has pointed out, Bush’s Super PAC is smearing the candidate’s one-time protege, Marco Rubio. The latest example is a »

Time to Uproot the Bushes for Good?

Featured image The most infuriating thing I’ve read all week is Steve Hayes’s story in the Weekly Standard about how Jeb Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, has held its fire on Trump, instead directing its fire on the one candidate who is best positioned to win in November: Marco Rubio: In the “fight” between Donald Trump and conservatism, Trump has had few better allies than Right to Rise, the super PAC »

Rubio Crushes Clinton In Minnesota

Featured image The Minnesota Poll on the 2016 presidential race is out, and its results will be shocking to some. On the Republican side, opinion is split: Marco Rubio leads with 23% and Ted Cruz is second with 21%. But in a general election matchup, Rubio wallops Clinton by nine points, 49-40. It’s no fluke: 52% of Minnesotans disapprove of Hillary, so she is eminently beatable here. Cruz tops Clinton by two »

For President, Marco Rubio

Featured image As regular readers know, I have long been a fan of Marco Rubio, the original anti-establishment Tea Party rebel. I don’t claim to be a personal friend, but I have interviewed Rubio quite a few times, have worked with him in various circumstances, and think very highly of him. He was in town yesterday morning for a breakfast fundraiser. Afterward, he was gracious enough to give me a few minutes »

Rallying to Rubio on Iranian Hostage Taking

Featured image Marco Rubio is taking fire from the usual “fact checkers” for his comment over the weekend that Iran released our 52 hostages on January 20, 1981 as soon as Ronald Reagan took office because Iran perceived that America was “no longer under the command of someone weak.” Politifact huffs: We flagged Rubio’s comment as a misleading framing of history. Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 may have coincided with the release of »

Debate Night Post Mortem

Featured image I don’t think a lot of minds were changed by last night’s GOP presidential debate. That was the impression I got following the action on Power Line Live, and the impression was reinforced this morning hosting the Laura Ingraham show. I may have thought Trump had an off night–his attempt to smear Ted Cruz with a “birther” theory was embarrassing–but his supporters are undaunted. The exchange between Trump and Cruz »

Does Rubio’s Gang of Eight membership doom him?

Featured image It wasn’t long ago that conservative proponents of comprehensive immigration reform were insisting that the idea is popular among Republican voters. In 2014, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin told us, “nope, immigration reform [isn’t] toxic” and that “the anti-immigration forces are loud but in the distinct minority” within the Republican party. To be fair, Rubin and others of the same view backed up their claim with poll data, but they »

Bernie Sanders Sues the DNC [Updated]

Featured image Bernie Sanders has sued the Democratic National Committee over the DNC’s withholding of a Democratic voter database from the Sanders campaign. The dispute is somewhat convoluted; if you want the details, the Washington Post has a good report. The bottom line, though, is as described by Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver: Weaver accused the party of purposely sabotaging Sanders by refusing to restore access to the voter information. “By their »

The winner of the Rubio-Cruz immigration fight? Donald Trump

Featured image Open warfare between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz broke out during Tuesday’s debate. The topics were (1) intelligence gathering to protect the national security and (2) immigration. As I wrote immediately after the debate, it’s the immigration clash that will count most. Both issues matter greatly to Republican voters, but disagreements about immigration matter more than disputes about particular data collection methods. This is why Rubio was desperate to claim »

Marco Outsmarts the Democrats

Featured image We conservatives think we are a hundred times smarter than liberals. So why does it seem that our representatives in Washington so often get the short end of the stick? That’s a long story, but at least part of the answer is that we need representatives of conservatism who are not only good on the stump and adept at firing up the base, but who understand the intricacies of legislation »

Ted Cruz and Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment

Featured image Remember when Ted Cruz refused to criticize Donald Trump over his position that Mexico is sending its worst citizens, including murderers and drug dealers, into the U.S? Cruz explained that he was following Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment — thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans (Cruz has spoken ill of fellow Republican Senators such as Mitch McConnell, so he must have been interpreting the Commandment to apply to fellow »

Discipline in the 2016 race

Featured image John Sears, Ronald Reagan’s one-time campaign manager, once said “discipline is nine-tenths of politics.” And, as Tevi Troy reminds us: Candidate Reagan put Sears’ dictum into action, running a relentlessly focused communication operation that kept to its message of the day, often to the consternation of the reporters following the campaign. This approach continued into Reagan’s presidency. As the authors of All the President’s Spin put it: “Ronald Reagan’s administration »

Ted Cruz surges in Iowa

Featured image A new Quinnipiac poll of likely Iowa caucus-goer shows Ted Cruz surging into a virtual tie for first place with Donald Trump. Cruz comes in at 23 percent, just two points behind Trump. Ben Carson has slipped to 18 percent (from 28 percent in the previous Quinnipiac poll). Marco Rubio is in fourth place at 13 percent. The margin of error is +/-4 points. Cruz is the natural beneficiary of »

Live from Council Bluffs, it’s Marco Rubio

Featured image Nebraska attorney David Begley continues his series of reports on appearances of the presidential candidates in Iowa for us. Today Dave attended the appearance of Senator Marco Rubio in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Des Moines Register has posted its report of Rubio in Carroll this morning before his appearance in Council Bluffs here. Dave’s report is below. When I saw Marco Rubio in person, I was reminded of a line »