Time for Rubio to Cut a Deal With Trump

Crispin Rovere

Politics,

Now is not Rubio’s time, and timing is everything.

Marco Rubio should drop out of the White House race and become Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.

Rubio devotees; hear me out. First, some facts:

1) Every Republican candidate who has been the frontrunner for as long as Trump has gone on to win the nomination.

 

2) Never has a Republican candidate who has lost both Iowa and New Hampshire become the nominee.

 

3) Trump won New Hampshire convincingly. New Hampshire has a 2-1 lead over Iowa when it comes to predicting the Republican nominee.

 

4) Trump came second in Iowa, yet won more votes than any previous winner of that caucus.

The last point is worth delving into a little. Trump’s popularity is lowest among voters who consider ‘values’ to be the most important issue (as opposed to ‘jobs,’ ‘economy’ or ‘national security’). In Iowa, a majority of Republican caucus-goers identify as ‘evangelical Christian,’ and 40 percent consider themselves ‘very conservative.’ Given Trump’s relatively weak religious and/or conservative credentials, and his oft maligned lack of ‘ground game’ in Iowa, where retail politics is at a premium, gaining the second highest vote count in Iowa caucus history is not a terrible result.

In the days after the Iowa caucus, pundits and media piled on Trump to talk down his chances of winning the nomination. This was partly Trump’s own doing. The candidate failed to frame his real chances of winning Iowa, and lost some momentum when the result did not reflect the inflated expectation. The reverse was true for Rubio, even though he came in third.

Yet that criticism was largely catharsis masquerading as analysis. It was the yearning of failed pundits for vindication and an emotional purge by those desperate to see Trump falter. In other words, the importance of the Iowa result was massively overstated. The predictions of Trump’s imminent demise did not reflect reality.

Enter Rubio: a young, articulate, first-term senator from a minority background who shows great promise. He has a compelling personal story of overcoming adversity to reach public office. He looks, sounds and behaves like someone who might have succeeded as president after eight years of George W. Bush.