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The Rubio Mirage (II)

Walter Russell Mead looks ahead to the general election and indulges in some Rubio-as-VP speculation: •the selection of Marco Rubio as a vice presidential candidate could shake up the race, making the GOP more competitive in New Mexico and Colorado while perhaps swinging Florida into the GOP column Contrary to what many people expect, early […]

Walter Russell Mead looks ahead to the general election and indulges in some Rubio-as-VP speculation:

•the selection of Marco Rubio as a vice presidential candidate could shake up the race, making the GOP more competitive in New Mexico and Colorado while perhaps swinging Florida into the GOP column

Contrary to what many people expect, early polling shows that Rubio doesn’t help the Republican ticket in Florida. According to a PPP survey from last October, Rubio’s presence on the ticket would hurt the GOP with independents:

By a 24-37 margin, independents say Rubio as the #2 would actually make them less likely to vote Republican.

If Rubio can’t help the ticket in Florida and might actually hurt it, it doesn’t make much sense that he would be able to make Southwestern states more competitive. Would Rubio help the Republican ticket in New Mexico and Colorado? The Miami Herald reported on this last December:

[Rubio’s] priority, he says, is to shrink the federal government, reduce taxes and get out of the way of the free enterprise system. He’s praised the proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to transform Medicare into a system that would provide vouchers to help the elderly buy private health insurance.

“The single biggest driver of our national debt is a Medicare program that will disappear if it continues as it is now,” he noted. “It’s irresponsible.”

Those are all respectable positions — especially inside the tea party. But they’re not that likely to win support from Hispanic voters in states like Colorado and New Mexico [bold mine-DL]. When a GOP think tank called Resurgent Republic polled Hispanics in those states in September, solid majorities said they thought the best way to improve the economy would be “to increase government investments in job training, education and infrastructure.”

In other words, large majorities of Hispanic voters in Southwestern swing states prefer Democratic policy priorities, and this is one reason why they tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates at the federal level. In 2008, 69% of Latinos in New Mexico voted for Obama, as did 61% of Latinos in Colorado. There’s no real reason to expect that having Rubio as a running mate is going to close that gap significantly. Making Rubio the VP nominee would be another blunder of promoting an unqualified rising politician too quickly for his own good in the name of generating enthusiasm for the presidential ticket.

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