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The Odd Idea of a Trump-Rubio Ticket

For one thing, Rubio represents everything about the GOP that the average Trump supporter can't stand about the party.
marco rubio

It’s still awfully early to start speculating about possible VP candidates, but Jacob Heilbrunn has a suggestion for Trump:

Perhaps there is a final option for neocons such as Kristol, however. It’s that Trump reaches out to Florida senator Marco Rubio to be his vice president. Before his battering at the hands of Trump — who crowned him ‘little Marco’ — Rubio was the neocons’ finest creation. He is a foreign policy ultra-hawk who touted as his campaign slogan nothing less than a ‘new American century’. On Tuesday, Rubio indicated he would back Trump. Might Trump return the favour by making him his running mate?

A Trump-Rubio ticket would enable a Trump-neocon rapprochement.

If neoconservatives weren’t allergic to the idea of rapprochement, I could almost see this working, but it won’t. For one thing, Rubio represents everything about the GOP that the average Trump supporter can’t stand about the party. Adding Rubio to the ticket wouldn’t provide balance or unity so much as it would convince Trump’s heretofore loyal backers that he was already selling them out. It would represent a betrayal of the supporters of both men at the same time. Trump would be crazy to offer, and Rubio would have to be out of his mind to agree.

Rubio’s one-time fans are already mortified that he is willing to support Trump as the nominee. They would be apoplectic if he were to accept a spot on the ticket. Anti-Trump die-hards have taken to applying the absurd label of “Vichy Republican” to anyone that joins with Trump, and they would do the same to Rubio. Then there is Rubio himself. Not only would he instantly lose whatever standing he still has with his boosters if he accepted, but he would have to humiliate himself for six months as Trump’s defender and surrogate after having spent the end of his campaign attacking Trump in every way possible.

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