Presidential candidate Marco Rubio suspended his campaign last Tuesday night, leaving us all to wonder: what exactly happened to the man who seemed to have it all together?
Marco Rubio, coming from a Cuban immigrant background, first became a political celebrity in 2010 when he won his seat in the U.S. Senate. Only 39 years old at the time, he brought a new look to the Republican Party, changing the image of what was previously seen as only old, wealthy, white men. He quickly became the Republican golden child. Rubio’s immigration speech, made just four years ago, further proved that he could be a star. He wanted immigration reform that could bridge the gap between the Republican and Democratic parties and bring them together.
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When he began his race to the White House in early 2015, this is the brand Rubio campaigned on. He ran on the idea that he was a charming, intelligent man with Cuban heritage who could seemingly change the face of immigration. His campaign team was sure that this would make him the frontrunner for the Republican Party.
Off the bat, even Rubio himself was surprised by the support of his following. He credited the success to his conservatism. Rubio campaigned for lower taxes, a smaller government and was a huge advocate for following the constitution at all costs. Voters found this appealing and Rubio knew it. So where did it all go wrong?
Different people will say different things about Rubio and why his campaigned ended so poorly, but it all comes down to strategic movements. In such an important presidential election, every candidate has to make the right decision at the right time. Rubio didn’t seem to do this.
Every candidate in the race out-hustled Rubio and his campaign team. While others were pouring all their resources into different states and demographics to win them over, Rubio was not. In order to win the election, you have to win states. Rubio wasn’t visiting states or raising money. He didn’t invest his time or resources. This caused voters to question his tactics. Did he really want the presidency? Was he willing to work hard?
You could say that Rubio campaigned too heavily on his image and personality. His campaign had an aesthetic appeal, but not a logical one. This caused his proposals to slip through the cracks. Rubio shared his same story of his parents’ sacrifices, building on his immigration reform concept.
“My father stood behind a small portable bar in the back of a room for all those years, so that tonight I could stand behind this podium in front of the room,” Rubio said during his announcement to run for president last April.
The problem with this is that he told the story too many times. It became obviously repetitive. All of his speeches became the same thing, and Rubio wasn’t focusing hard enough on what his presidency would offer the nation. What gave him a leg up in the race for the White House soon became his greatest weakness. And people began to notice.
In order to stay away from falling into any holes when questioned, Rubio stuck to the script. He answered the same questions with the same answers. His campaign became so disciplined that it wasn’t working anymore. Then candidate Chris Christie called him out on his tactic, calling it his “memorized 25-second speech.”
This harmed Rubio’s overall plan. Trying to come from behind in the polls, Rubio was campaigning with what is nicknamed a “3-2-1” strategy. He planned to place third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire and first in South Carolina. After securing his Iowa and New Hampshire goals, it was a rough blow when he didn’t pull through in South Carolina.
This is when Rubio began to fall behind in the polls. Some accredit this slide to his demographic focus, or lack thereof. Throughout his candidacy, Rubio never prioritized one group or state over another. He was not winning any one category. People were split on whether or not they should vote for him. Rubio wanted to be everything to all types of voters, thus he couldn’t find a sufficient following. In addition to this, the Rubio campaign estimates that his opponents spent more than $50 million to run the senator out of the presidential race.
As he slipped in the polls, Rubio’s campaign became sloppier. He began to take the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, head on. Rubio started to bring light to flaws in Trump’s establishment and tried to get under his skin, just as Trump was doing to him. The senator attacked Trump over his lack of policies, his use of immigrant labor in his businesses, the lawsuit he is facing on Trump University and more. He even went as far as to mock the business mogul for having a spray tan and small hands. His upstanding, conservative image began to disappear before the eyes of his voters and people feared that it would jeopardize his entire political future.
While Rubio’s campaign team called it a necessary evil, it ultimately caused the senator to fold in his run for office. On Super Tuesday, Rubio won only the Minnesota caucuses, being nearly shut out of the race. After dragging further in the polls, Rubio’s team hoped that his home state of Florida and its 99 delegates would pull through and save his campaign. Unfortunately, he lost Florida drastically to Trump: 46 percent to Rubio’s 27 percent.
It was after this loss that Rubio decided to pull from the campaign. Even though he did not state Trump by name, Rubio’s closing remarks clearly eluded to his thoughts on the Republican front-runner. He condemned Trump for invoking fear in the American voters to prey upon their insecurities for the future of the nation.
Rubio and his campaign team accredited his loss to two things: his optimistic message during an angry time in politics and the immense presence of Trump, who's been blocking him from the race since the beginning of the election. “After tonight, while it is clear that we are on the right side this year, we were not on the winning side,” Rubio said after he withdrew from the race Tuesday night.
Candidate Donald Trump has remade the Republican image into something that Rubio could not keep up with, and didn’t want to. While Rubio tried to uphold the Republican era of Presidents Reagan and H.W Bush, the following of the Party this year is clearly behind Trump. Any other year, Rubio might have been successful in his campaign. But in the year of Donald Trump, he just could not shine through the way he had planned. While Rubio had everything going for him from the start, it was seemingly not enough in a year with such a crucial and cruel election.
