Sen. Marco Rubio is proceeding as if he is going to make a run for the presidency. The question is “Why?”
Sen. Marco Rubio has begun taking concrete steps toward launching a presidential bid, asking his top advisors to prepare for a campaign, signing on a leading Republican fundraiser, and planning extensive travel to early-voting states in the coming weeks, ABC News has learned.
“He has told us to proceed as if he is running for president,” a senior Rubio advisor tells ABC News.
Let me look at this from a few different angles. First, as been noted ad nauseam, most of his strongest political support comes from his home state of Florida, but this has been wrenched from him by former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s decision to get in the race. He will struggle to raise the money he needs to build an organization even if Jeb eventually falters badly and drops out early. And, while he can credibly carve out a position to the right of Jeb on many issues, on immigration reform he is branded by his successful effort to pass legislation through the Senate at the outset of President Obama’s second term. Both he and Jeb will be occupying the “moderate” and “reasonable” pro-business position on immigration.
To catch on as the better Florida alternative, he’ll have to draw distinctions with Jeb, and getting rough with him will cause Rubio problems with his own local base.
Yet, if he isn’t getting “in it to win it,” perhaps he is angling for the vice-presidential slot. In that case, it makes sense to raise his profile and to get as many committed delegates as he can, but he’s constitutionally prohibited from running on the same ticket as Jeb, so he’d be depending on someone else coming away with the prize. And, in any case, getting picked to be the number two is a long-shot.
Perhaps, then, the explanation is that he wants to set himself up for a more credible run in four years, on the assumption that Hillary Clinton will be running for reelection at that time and the country may be ready to ditch the Democrats after a 12-year run in the Oval Office.
But there’s a hitch in this theory. He’s up for reelection next year, and according to Florida law, in order to be on the presidential ticket Rubio must drop off the Senate ballot line. He cannot be on both lines of the ballot. The filing deadline in Florida isn’t until May 2016, so he should know by then whether he has a shot at either winning the nomination or being selected as a running mate, and that may be how is going to play it. Still, he will have to make a decision well before the Republican National Convention rolls around. As for setting himself up for a run in four years, he’d be in better position as a sitting U.S. Senator who hasn’t run for president before than he would be as a private citizen who has.
Overall, it just seems like the downsides of running should outweigh the potential upsides.
