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Rubio Isn’t an “Upper Tier” Candidate

Rubio wants to fill a role in the 2016 field that is already being filled without him.
rubio

Gerald Seib has been misinformed:

In the eyes of many in the party, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has quietly moved into the upper tier of that long list of potential candidates.

I’m sure there are some Republicans that claim to see Rubio in the “upper tier” of candidates, but then more than a few of them once imagined that Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry were first-tier material as well. Some of that comes from overestimating the importance of how good a candidate looks “on paper,” and some of it comes from the GOP’s impulse to over-promote new political talent too quickly. A candidate that seems ideal “on paper” often has weaknesses that his boosters can’t or won’t see. Republican rising stars are now egged on by party members to seek higher office too quickly, and then they are treated as if they are serious contenders without having first established a record on which they can run a credible campaign. Some of these rising stars go for the bait and become presidential candidates against all better judgment. Because these rising stars are well-regarded in D.C., their chances are exaggerated. They are classified with the most competitive candidates early on when they don’t belong with them. That makes their collapse and failure later on seem all the more “surprising” and damaging than it would be if no one had previously given them much of a chance.

Lesser-known presidential candidates that get promoted to the “upper tier” early on are often overrated for one reason or another. Maybe one such candidate has won over a certain faction inside the party, and for their own reasons that faction’s members encourage the politician by making him believe that he is more competitive and popular than he is. The experience of the campaign then forces everyone to realize that the “upper tier” candidate was never anything of the kind. I have argued in the past that Rubio has been greatly overrated from the start, and that still seems to be true. The speculation about a presidential bid only encourages more of the same. There is still no compelling rationale for a Rubio campaign at this point, which is another reason to doubt that he is, in fact, an “upper tier” candidate. He wants to fill a role (hawkish, quasi-wonkish, pro-immigration) that is already being filled without him, and he has unique liabilities on immigration, among other things, that make him an extremely unlikely standard-bearer for the party. Because he is up for re-election next year, a doomed presidential bid makes even less sense that it normally would. If he seriously pursues the presidential campaign for very long, he is at great risk of being out of office in January 2017. Unless Rubio doesn’t care about ending his political career so soon, that is a very strange gamble on his part. It may be true that Rubio has allowed himself to be convinced that he is an “upper tier” candidate, but if so he has been poorly advised.

How would we be able to tell if Rubio is truly an “upper tier” candidate for 2016? For one thing, he would need to have a clear base of support that other candidates couldn’t easily poach. He would have to have a message and an agenda that stand out from the crowd and give donors and voters a clear reason to prefer him over the rest. He would need to have qualifications that all or most of the other candidates lack. Ideally, he would be the main representative of an important party faction, but would not be limited by his identification with that faction. Finally, he would not be at odds with the bulk of his party’s rank and file on a major policy question. There are probably other tests one could use, but these seem reasonable. It is hard to see how Rubio passes any of these tests. He has alienated a large bloc of voters on immigration, and he has further disillusioned others with his shambolic retreat on the same issue. Neoconservatives and other hard-liners undoubtedly like Rubio for echoing their foreign policy views, but he has done this so often and so vocally that he has allowed himself to be pigeonholed as little more than their factional candidate. Rubio touts those same hawkish foreign policy views as his main advantage in a crowded 2016 field, and yet hawks are a dime-a-dozen this cycle and Rubio doesn’t actually have much that sets him apart from the rest. Why shouldn’t we regard Rubio as a younger hawkish protest candidate in the mold of Lindsey Graham? Why is the newer hawkish, pro-immigration senator’s presidential bid any less ridiculous than that of the older hawkish, pro-immigration senator? I submit that it isn’t, as we may discover in the months ahead.

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