Rubio could be the GOP's main attraction in 2016

This article is the 19th in the White House Wednesday series by The World and Everything in It looking at potential 2016 candidates for president. Earlier installments profiled Republicans Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Mike Pence, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Bernie Sanders.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was the opening act for the main event, the introduction of Mitt Romney, at the 2012 Republican National Convention. But at the 2016 convention, another up-and-coming Republican voice may be introducing Rubio as the Republican nominee for president.

The Florida senator’s path to prominence was improbable. To win his Senate seat in 2010, he had to pull off a series of difficult wins. First, he had to engineer a primary upset against the well-funded and popular Florida governor, Charlie Crist. Then came the second big hurdle: Crist quit the GOP and decided to run as an independent. He could have divided Republican votes and allowed unified Democrats to claim the seat, but instead Rubio buried Crist by nearly 20 points in the three-way race.

Many within the party hailed Rubio’s inspiring vision of the nation’s future as “Reaganesque,” but more in line with America’s changing demographics. Rubio is the product of a blue-collar family, the son of Cuban immigrants.

Rubio tells the story of listening to his grandfather on the porch of his house: “The one thing I remember was the one thing he wanted me never to forget, that the dreams he had when he was young became impossible to achieve. But there was no limit to how far I could go because I was an American.”

Almost immediately following the 2012 election, Rubio-White House talk began. Some even anointed him the Republican presidential frontrunner four years ahead of the next election. In February 2013, Time put him on the cover with the headline, “The Republican Savior.” Rubio then tweeted, “There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus.”

It seemed nothing would slow Rubio’s rise, until he shifted his stance on immigration, sponsoring the so-called Gang of Eight bill.That plan would have granted conditional temporary legal status and a long-term path to citizenship to immigrants in the U.S. illegally, provided they met certain criteria, submitted to background checks, and paid back taxes. Legalization was contingent upon meeting certain border security benchmarks. But critics said the bill was riddled with loopholes that made border security meaningless. The bill passed the Senate overwhelmingly, but never saw the light of day in the Republican-controlled House.

The biggest political problem for Rubio on immigration is his reversal on granting legal status to those here illegally before securing the border. Rubio might have been trying to take the lead and make an effort to change the Democrat-promoted image of the GOP as anti-immigrant. He said Republicans need to be seen showing leadership on immigration and not cede that ground to Democrats. But he failed to win many conservatives to his point-of-view

Rubio has been working hard to rebuild his reputation with the Republican party base, and, by some accounts, he’s steadily regaining lost ground. Setting the immigration issue aside, he has been a very conservative senator. And he’s definitely working hard to make sure Republicans know that. He’s backed away from the immigration issue, expressing full support for House Republicans taking a piecemeal approach.

He said he would assess a possible presidential run at the end of this year. Florida has a law that bars candidates from running for Congress and the presidency at the same time, and Rubio has said he has no intention of trying to do both. If thinks he realistically can’t win, he might sit out the 2016 presidential campaign.

He and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are also close, and some in Washington say if Bush runs, Rubio won’t.

To the extent Rubio has smoothed things over with conservatives, he is a candidate both the Tea Party and establishment wings of the GOP can accept. But Rubio’s greatest strength is his personal appeal. He’s an inspiring figure and a great communicator. While he may have lost his momentum, if and when he gets out on the debate stage, those qualities will once again be on display, making him a formidable candidate.

One more clue he plans to run came in a recent tweet by a Rubio spokesperson. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman just announced he would not run for president. Alex Conant, a Rubio spokesperson, reacted to that announcement on Twitter by saying, “Thank you Rob Portman for sparing my household lots of potential awkwardness.”

Conant’s wife is Portman’s communications director. In other words, the couple won’t be working separately for presidential rivals.

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