War of Choice: Marco Rubio and the G.O.P. Play a Dangerous Game on Immigration
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Marco Rubio, a Republican who is the junior senator from Florida, has a full head of thick black hair and a movie star’s baby face. He speaks passionately and argues persuasively. Just forty years old, he has the youthful glamour of a Kennedy, with an attractive wife and four children. Tea Party activists love Rubio, and he is surely the most prominent Hispanic Republican in America. His longtime political mentor, Al Cardenas, who is the former Florida Republican state chairman, thinks Rubio’s most winning quality is his humility: “He’s the kind of young man you want as your own son.” Rubio’s parents immigrated from Cuba during the Eisenhower years, and, in his first speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in June, Rubio sounded a little like a certain former junior senator from Illinois, who soon went on to bigger things. “We should never forget who we Americans are,” he said. “Every single one of us is the descendant of a go-getter. Of dreamers and of believers. Of men and women who took risks and made sacrifices because they wanted their children to live better off than themselves. And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world.”
National Republicans say openly that Rubio is a top contender to be the Party’s 2012 Vice-Presidential nominee. He could, they suggest, secure victory for the Party in Florida and win over Hispanic voters in other states, many of whom have been angered by the G.O.P. Presidential candidates’ harsh positions on immigration. Political betting markets list Rubio as many times more likely than anyone else to be the nominee. “Rubio is our superstar,” Ed Rollins, a former Presidential campaign manager for Ronald Reagan, Mike Huckabee, and Michele Bachmann, says. “He would be my first choice. My premise is that if you can add someone to your ticket that gives you a state you don’t have you’re way ahead of the game. No Republican can win without Florida.”