Rubio caps CPAC with positive message

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland—On the last day of the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sought to further distance himself from GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s boisterous antics and establish himself as a unifying Republican presidential candidate.

“Our young Americans won’t have a chance if the conservative movement is hijacked by someone who is not a conservative,” Rubio said at the end of his speech.

The senator from Florida was the third and final remaining GOP presidential candidate to speak at CPAC, getting Saturday all to himself after the Trump campaign announced Friday he would skip his scheduled speech today. Currently in third place in most national polls, Rubio addressed some recent criticism for playing into Trump’s name-calling game, but he made an effort to take the high ground.

CNN’s Dana Bash sat down with Rubio in front of a packed auditorium and couldn’t help but ask the senator about his feud with the billionaire businessman. Rubio was unapologetic about attacking Trump’s character, saying, “Where I come from, if someone keeps punching you in the face, eventually you’re going to have to punch them back.”

But Rubio soon became frustrated with the line of questioning from Bash. People in the audience yelled, “Why don’t you ask him about his own policies.” Someone else in the back of the room simply shouted, “Issues!”

“I have been sitting here for five minutes and two of the three questions have been about Donald Trump—that’s the problem,” Rubio expressed. The audience roared with applause and chanted, “Marco! Marco! Marco!”

After Rubio left the stage, hundreds of college students funneled out of the over-capacity room, many wearing Marco Rubio stickers. Two of those students, Madalyn Brooks and Hayden Duncan, traveled from Campbell University in North Carolina to support the senator from Florida.

Brooks has been a Rubio supporter since the day he announced his candidacy: “As soon as I heard he was running, I went online and got a Day One [supporter] sticker. It’s on my laptop right now.”

She said her father is a big supporter of Ted Cruz, but she believes the senator from Texas is too radical for a general election. “I believe Rubio is the only candidate that will be able to defeat either Bernie [Sanders] or Hillary [Clinton],” Brooks said. “Rubio can unify us.”

Duncan attended CPAC all four days but made the trip with the goal to see Rubio. He said Rubio is the only Republican talking about the issues facing millennials and was worth the wait: “I loved that he said this race needs to be more about substance and less about personality. I think that is something we all need to embrace.”

But other CPAC attendees had no interest in Rubio.

Michael Najvar of Gonzales, Texas, came to the conference with a red Trump “Make America great again” baseball cap. He took off the cap and showed me the labeling: “That is the official Trump hat from the Trump Tower, made in the USA.”

Najvar was sympathetic to Trump’s decision not to speak at CPAC. “If your intelligence reports come in and say there is going to be an ambush, do you still go in and get slaughtered or do you go somewhere else?” he said. “Trump is no fool.”

Najvar and his wife were one of the few CPAC attendees wearing Trump apparel. He said Trump’s supporters were everywhere at the event but undercover. They don’t want to endure verbal attacks from Cruz and Rubio supporters, he explained.

“I came here with my Trump hat and my Trump shirt and I was amazed at the number of people who tell me they love my hat and they love Trump, but they don’t wear the hat,” Najvar said.

Even with Trump claiming nearly three times as many delegates as Rubio thus far, Rubio supporters believe he can still win the nomination.

“He is the Goldilocks candidate for me—where everything is in place,” Brooks said. “He can appeal to a broad audience. This is not the time to doubt.”

CPAC concludes this afternoon with the announcement of its presidential straw poll.

UPDATE (5:01 p.m.): Ted Cruz won the CPAC straw pollwith 40 percent of the vote, followed by Marco Rubio (30), Donald Trump (15), and John Kasich (8).