Exclusive: Marco Rubio rejected 'unity ticket' with Ted Cruz

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Ted Cruz’s campaign has been exploring the possibility of forming a unity ticket with ex-rival Marco Rubio — going so far as to conduct polling looking into how the two would perform in upcoming primary states.

The motivation, hashed out in conversations among Cruz’s top aides and donors: to find a way to halt Donald Trump’s march to the Republican nomination.

It’s unclear whether Cruz’s campaign brass views a partnership with Rubio as realistic or quixotic. In Rubio’s orbit, according to three sources, it’s seen as an outright nonstarter — with Rubio telling his team that he isn’t interested.

Yet in recent weeks, within Cruz’s camp, talk of a joint ticket has run rampant. Utah Republican Mike Lee, one of two senators to endorse Cruz, has emerged as an outspoken supporter of a unity ticket — and as a potential broker. The freshman senator, according to several sources briefed on the talks, has reached out repeatedly to Rubio to gauge his interest, but has been rebuffed.

Shortly before Lee endorsed Cruz on March 10, Lee and his advisers discussed the possibility of organizing a meeting between the Utah senator and Rubio in Florida, just days before the state’s primary, according to two sources. The meeting, though, never happened.

A Lee spokesman, Conn Carroll, declined to comment for this story. So, too, did spokespersons for Cruz and Rubio.

But the Cruz camp’s apparent fascination with the idea of joining forces with Rubio didn’t end with Lee’s efforts.

In recent days, Cruz’s team has begun to investigate how the two would fare on a prospective ticket. Over the last week, according to a person familiar with the Cruz team's internal deliberations, the campaign has conducted polling in forthcoming contests — including the the one on Tuesday in Utah — in which questions are posed about the two running side-by-side.

The deliberations come at a time of rising anxiety among Republican leaders and donors about Trump, who many fear is becoming unstoppable. The real estate mogul holds a 256-delegate lead and is seen as the favorite in a number of upcoming primary states, including New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — contests that could push Trump toward the 1,237 delegate number he needs to secure the Republican nomination.

At the very least, Cruz’s team is hoping for a Rubio endorsement. The two have been in touch since Rubio dropped out last week, and those close to he Florida senator say he’s open to endorsing his Texas colleague — especially if he believes there’s a pathway for Cruz to defeat Trump.

Yet some have pushed for more. Among the Cruz supporters who have been vocal about forging an alliance has been Doug Deason, the son of billionaire mega-donor Darwin Deason, who has deep connections in the Charles and David Koch fundraising network.

On March 2, the day after Super Tuesday, the younger Deason reached out to Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe. Rubio had suffered a rash of defeats the night before, and Deason told Roe that it would make sense to reach out to the Florida senator’s team. By that time, Deason had been talking to a number of major Rubio donors, but now wanted to go to the official campaign to pitch the unity-ticket idea.

In an interview, Deason recalled telling Roe he wanted to call Marc Short, a senior Rubio adviser and former operative for the Koch-founded Freedom Partners political operation. After Roe didn’t object, Deason connected with Short and gave him his pitch.

Short’s response, Deason said, was unequivocal: Rubio wasn’t interested. (Short didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

“Rubio was too pompous too act on it. He believed his own internal polls and there was no swaying him away from staying in the race through the Florida primary,” Deason said. “If he had signed on before the first Super Tuesday, Cruz would have won all of the Texas votes and a lot more delegates. They may have very well won Florida.”

Erick Erickson, a vocal Trump critic who has floated the idea of a Cruz-Rubio alliance and last week organized a call by prominent conservative activists for a Republican “unity ticket,” said he thought it would be “very effective in stopping Trump.”

“I wish they would do it because it would provide counterprogramming to the Donald Trump show,” he said in an interview.

But Rubio’s camp is uniformly dismissive of the idea. “Different combinations have been floating out there for a little while — who could partner up with whom," said Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Rubio endorser. "But I didn’t take it too seriously.”

COMMENTS

With Marco Rubio Out, Ted Cruz Confronts a New Foe in John Kasich

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By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and THOMAS KAPLANMarch 16, 2016

HOUSTON — After months squaring off against Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, presuming him to be the chief obstacle to a one-on-one showdown with Donald J. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz on Wednesday emerged from the latest Republican primaries with a new foe who was actually there all along: Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

The transition seemed a bit jarring for all involved. The men had scarcely said a cross word about each other before Tuesday night’s contests.

There had been little need. While Mr. Cruz, of Texas, has moved to consolidate support among evangelical and Tea Party voters, Mr. Kasich has made a play for party moderates, outlasting establishment rivals like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mr. Rubio, who dropped out Tuesday after losing his home state.

Now, it seems, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Kasich will get to know each other a bit better. And their opening gambits were to argue that the other has no chance of becoming president .

“There are only two people who actually have a viable path to the nomination,” Jason Johnson, Mr. Cruz’s chief strategist, told reporters. “There’s one spoiler in the race: John Kasich.”

Mr. Johnson likened Mr. Kasich’s run to some quixotic ambitions of his own. “It’s like my dream of making the senior tour on the P.G.A. or my dream of being a Nascar driver,” he said. “It ain’t going to happen.”

Mr. Kasich countered on Wednesday by suggesting that Mr. Cruz, along with Mr. Trump, was too extreme to attract wide support in the fall.

“Neither of those guys can win a general election,” he told reporters after a town hall-style event outside Philadelphia. “So maybe they’re spoiling it for the Republican Partyand for the conservative movement.”

So far, little of the sparring has focused on substance. Late Tuesday evening, as election returns still trickled in, senior Cruz aides seemed unsure how they might proceed against Mr. Kasich.

Jeff Roe, Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager, suggested the senator stood to gain little from attacks on his unlikely rival.

“That’d be the wrong move to start engaging with John Kasich,” Mr. Roe said, before adding that he might send “a calculator” to the Kasich campaign to signal the governor’s large delegate deficit, more than 250 behind Mr . Cruz. (Mr. Cruz himself is more than 250 behind Mr. Trump.)

But hours later, Mr. Johnson hinted that a look at Mr. Kasich’s résumé might be in order.

“He has an interesting record that’s gone without examination,” he said coyly.

A spokesman for Mr. Kasich, Chris Schrimpf, welcomed an examination of the governor’s record both in Ohio and during his time in Congress. “Let’s compare Governor Kasich’s record when he was in Washington toTed Cruz’s,” Mr. Schrimpf said. “What is Ted Cruz’s greatest accomplishment?”

If Mr. Cruz does plan to escalate hostilities, he seems likely to highlight Mr. Kasich’s decision to expandMedicaid in Ohio under the Affordable Care Act, a decision that puts him at odds with many conservatives.

Mr. Kasich has largely avoided offering direct criticism of other candidates, and his positivity is now at the center of his message, so it is not likely that he will go after Mr. Cruz in a direct way. Still, he has offered hints of how he views the senator’s campaign promises. At a town hall event in Michigan last week, he asked audience members to raise their hands if they believed that a year from now, after the election, the Internal Revenue Service would not exist and the country would have a 10 percent flat tax — two planks of Mr. Cruz’s campaign.

“Not one hand has gone up!” Mr. Kasich observed.

Mr. Kasich’s team believes that Mr. Cruz’s message will not be well received in more moderate states that have yet to vote, like New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kasich was born and raised. “John Kasich’s story began in Pennsylvania,” read a flier at his event on Wednesday, showing the Pittsburgh skyline.

Aides to Mr. Cruz said he planned to campaign aggressively across the electoral map, despite the assumption that his message of conservative purity and religious faith could be a difficult fit in places like the Northeast. “If you think we’re ceding New York because Donald Trumphails from Queens and lives in Manhattan, that would be a mistake,” Mr. Johnson said.

First, attention will turn to Arizona and Utah, which vote on Tuesday. With Mr. Trump poised to do well in Arizona, Mr. Cruz’s hopes are higher in Utah, powered by an endorsement from Senator Mike Lee. But Mr. Kasich, who plans to campaign there on Friday and advertise in the state, could undercut Mr. Cruz’s effort to sweep the state’s delegates with a majority of the vote.

The odds of either man catching Mr. Trump before the convention are long. And now it appears both candidates will have one less chance to prove themselves against him. Mr. Trump said Wednesday morning that he would skip a debate scheduled for Monday in Salt Lake City.

Mr. Kasich’s team signaled he would not attend without Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cruz revived an attack he tried in January, when Mr. Trump missed a debate in Iowa. “#DuckingDonald strikes again,” Mr. Cruz posted on Twitter. “Tell @realDonaldTrump to debate.”

But by the afternoon, given the possibility of extremely low turnout, the debate was canceled.

COMMENTS

Rubio’s Exit Leaves Trump With an Open Path to 1,237 Delegates

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www.nytimes.com

Donald J. Trump’s series of victories on Tuesday extended his delegate lead and forced Senator Marco Rubio of Florida out of the presidential race. Mr. Trump’s path to winning enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination is not assured, but he is in a strong position.

Here are some ways the Republican nominating contest could unfold. Try adjusting the sliders to see how the outcomes change. Each line in the chart represents one possible outcome. See Democratic scenarios »

If Mr. Trump maintains his current level of support in the remaining races, he would almost certainly secure the nomination.

After Tuesday’s contests, no other candidate retains a real chance of capturing the delegates required to win the nomination outright. Mr. Rubio dropped out, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio is too far behind, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas would need to win the vast majority of the remaining delegates — a near impossibility.

But Mr. Trump still needs to win most of the remaining delegates to avoid a contested convention.

If he continues his current performance and wins a series of key states — like Arizona, California and New York — he would get the needed delegates.

Mr. Trump will probably need to win California, which has 172 delegates. California is winnable for Mr. Trump, but it could be a difficult state for him. California includes a mix of well-educated voters who could support Mr. Kasich and conservative voters who could support Mr. Cruz.

Exit polls have indicated that most of Mr. Rubio’s support could be distributed to Mr. Trump’s competitors. Say 80 percent of Mr. Rubio's voters go to Mr. Cruz. This would cut into Mr. Trump’s delegate lead.

But even that may not prevent Mr. Trump from winning the key states — like California — that ensure him enough delegates.

This interactive delegate calculator uses each state’s delegate allocation rules, along with estimates of how favorable each district is for each candidate. To compute these estimates, we used a model based on polling, demographics and results from past primaries and caucuses.

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5 Facts You Need to Know About SCOTUS Pick Merrick Garland

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The Associated Press

by JOEL B. POLLAK16 Mar 20162313

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Here are five quick facts you need to know about Garland.

1. Garland is considered anti-Second Amendment. As the National Review notedlast week: “Back in 2007, Judge Garland voted to undo a D.C. Circuit court decision striking down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation” and voted “to uphold an illegal Clinton-era regulation that created an improvised gun registration requirement.” Obama will use his pick to pursue a gun control agenda.

2. Garland has favored environmental regulations. As SCOTUSblog noted in 2010: “On environmental law, Judge Garland has in a number of cases favored contested EPA regulations and actions when challenged by industry, and in other cases he has accepted challenges brought by environmental groups.” That could be very important, with Obama’s Clean Power Plan in the balance.

3. Garland’s positions on abortion and social issues are murky. Some liberals are worried that Garland may not be unambiguously pro-choice. Richard Wolf of USA Today writes: “During 19 years at the D.C. Circuit, Garland has managed to keep a low profile. The court’s largely administrative docket has left him without known positions on issues such as abortion or the death penalty.”

4. Garland would maintain the Court’s demographic profile. He is the second Chicagoan Obama has nominated. He is no “wise Latina,” and is the first man Obama has chosen. But Garland, like Scalia, is a graduate of Harvard Law, keeping the number of Crimson justices at five. If confirmed, he would also be the fourth Jew on the Court, preserving the odd exclusion of evangelical Protestants.

5. Republicans have supported Garland in the past. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in particular has been outspoken in his support for Garland as the best Republicans could expect from the Clinton administration. More recently, he suggestedhe would welcome Garland’s nomination but predicted that Obama would make a more ideological pick. That makes Garland harder for the GOP to oppose.

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John Boehner Endorses Paul Ryan for President

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AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

by JOEL B. POLLAK16 Mar 20161656

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner has endorsed current Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for president, in the event that no Republican candidate achieves a majority on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

Politico reports that Boehner, speaking at a conference in Boca Raton, Florida, said: “If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I’m for none of the above. They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I’m for none of the above. I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee.”

Late Tuesday evening, as results from primary contests confirmed Donald Trump’s victories in four out of five states, CNBC reported that Ryan had not ruled out accepting such a nomination.

Ryan was welcomed by conservatives as Mitt Romney’s choice for running mate in 2012. The pro-life fiscal conservative had led the charge to reform entitlements, and used his policy prowess to point out the deep flaws in Obamacare during the intense debates of 2009-10.

In the aftermath of that 2012 loss, Ryan turned his attention to the task of governing rather than opposing, convinced that Republicans shared responsibility with Democrats and the president. As a result, he showed an openness to compromise on immigration and on budget issues that resulted in the erosion of some conservative support.

When Boehner resigned as speaker in 2015, however, Ryan remained the only candidate capable of pulling the fractious House majority together.

Both Trump and rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)have warned against a brokered convention.

Twice, Ryan has declined the opportunity to run for president on his own. But for Republicans frustrated with Trump’s success, and unwilling to accept Cruz as an alternative, Ryan is a possible Plan B.

A recent poll by the Democrat-aligned Public Policy Polling found Americans every divided, 38%-39%, over Ryan’s performance thus far as Speaker.

His favorability among Republicans hasdropped significantly, from two-thirds to less than half, since he became Speaker, owing partly to his inclusion in the party “establishment,” and partly to his approval of budgets that raised spending and included funding for controversial programs.

Boehner has offered a “Plan B” before, in the context of debate in late 2012 over the “fiscal cliff” as the Bush tax cuts expired. His caucus rejected the plan.

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Math and momentum point to Trump, Clinton nominations

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With math and momentum on his side after more big wins, Republican front-runner Donald Trump called on GOP leaders Wednesday to embrace the public's "tremendous fervor" for his candidacy. If GOP leaders try to deny him the nomination at a contested convention when he is leading the delegate count, Trump predicted, "You'd have riots."

Trump, making a round of calls to morning TV talk shows, predicted he'd amass enough delegates to snag the nomination outright before the Republican convention, but added that "there's going to be a tremendous problem" if the Republican establishment tries to outmaneuver him at the convention. He also said some Republican senators who are publicly trashing him have called him privately to say they want to "become involved" in his campaign, eventually. Trump did not name any.

Democrat Hillary Clinton, ready for a November matchup against Trump, took aim at him after strengthening her position against rival Bernie Sanders with another batch of primary victories of her own.

"Our commander-in-chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it," Clinton said in a speech that largely ignored Sanders. "We can't lose what made America great in the first place."

Clinton triumphed in the Florida, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina presidential primaries, putting her in a commanding position to become the first woman in U.S. history to win a major-party nomination. Trump strengthened his hand in the Republican race with wins in Florida, North Carolina, and Illinois but fell in Ohio to that state's governor, John Kasich. Votes were also being counted in Missouri, though races in both parties there were too close to call.

Kasich, celebrating his win, told NBC's "Today" show, "I dealt him a very, very big blow to being able to have the number of delegates." He added that neither Trump nor Texas Sen. Cruz can win the general election.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio ended his once-promising campaign after a devastating home-state loss that narrowed the field to just three candidates: Trump, Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Even before Tuesday's results, a group of conservatives was planning to meet to discuss ways to stop Trump, including a contested convention or rallying around a third-party candidate. While no such candidate has been identified, the participants in Thursday's meeting planned to discuss ballot access issues, including using an existing third party as a vehicle or securing signatures for an independent bid.

A person familiar with the planning confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the gathering by name.

Even House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., did not rule out the idea of being drafted by the party at the convention.

"People say, 'What about the contested convention?' " Ryan said in an interview with CNBC. "I say, well, there are a lot of people running for president. We'll see. Who knows?"

With more than half the delegates awarded through six weeks of primary voting, Trump is the only Republican candidate with a realistic path to the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination through the traditional route.

Kasich prevented a total Trump takeover by denying him victory in Ohio. But after Tuesday's contests, it's mathematically impossible for the Ohio governor to win a majority of delegates before the GOP's July national convention.

"No candidate will win 1,237 delegates," Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, declared in a post-election memo. He suggested Kasich is well-positioned to amass delegates in the upcoming primary contests to help bolster his position in a contested convention.

Cruz is in better position than Kasich, but he too faces a daunting mathematical challenge after losing four of five contests Tuesday. The Texas senator needs to claim roughly 75 percent of the remaining delegates to earn the delegate majority, according to Associated Press delegate projections.

With Rubio out of the race, Cruz welcomed the Florida senator's supporters "with open arms." The fiery conservative tried to cast the GOP nomination battle as a two-person race between himself and Trump.

On the Democratic side, Clinton's victories were blows to Sanders and bolstered her argument that she's the best Democrat to take on the eventual Republican nominee in the general election. Her win in Ohio was a particular relief for her campaign, which grew anxious after Sanders pulled off a surprising win last week in Michigan.

Clinton kept up her large margins with black voters, a crucial group for Democrats in the general election.

Clinton has at least 1,561 delegates, including the superdelegates who are elected officials and party leaders free to support the candidate of their choice. Sanders has at least 800. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.

Trump's Florida victory brought his delegate total to 621. Cruz has 396 and Kasich 138. Rubio left the race with 168 delegates.

Clinton was more willing than Republican officials to recognize the likelihood of a Trump nomination, warning supporters that the New York real estate mogul has laid out a "really dangerous path" for the country.

Republican voters continue to back Trump's most controversial proposals, with two-thirds of those who participated in GOP primaries Tuesday saying they support temporarily banning Muslims from the United States, according to exit polls.

"There is great anger, believe me, there is great anger," Trump said of voters.

___

AP writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

COMMENTS

Rubio’s demise marks the last gasp of the Republican reboot

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www.washingtonpost.com

By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker,   

WEST MIAMI, Fla. — Years of carefully laid plans to repackage the Republican Party’s traditional ideas for a fast-changing country came crashing down here on Tuesday when Sen. Marco Rubio suspended his campaign for the presidency after a crippling defeat in his home-state primary.

Since Mitt Romney’s devastating loss in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican National Committee and leading voices at think tanks, editorial boards and Capitol Hill symposiums have charted a path back to the White House based on inclusive rhetoric and a focus on middle-class issues.

Nobody embodied that vision better than Rubio, a charismatic standard-bearer for conservative orthodoxy who readily embraced the proposals of the right’s elite thinkers. The senator from Florida spoke urgently and eloquently about raising stagnant wages and eradicating poverty. He had an immigrant’s tale to match the rhetoric. And on foreign affairs, he was a passionate defender of the GOP’s hawkish tilt.

But Rubio’s once-promising candidacy, as well as the conservative reform movement’s playbook, was spectacularly undone by Donald Trump and his defiant politics of economic and ethnic grievance. The drift toward visceral populism became an all-consuming rush, leaving Rubio and others unable to adjust.

“The party finds itself catching up to its base. Those very elegant papers it published and conferences it held may have been good and smart, but they didn’t really matter,” said William J. Bennett, a conservative talk-show host and former education secretary in Ronald Reagan’s administration. “Instead, everyone who’s been prominent for the last 15 to 20 years finds themselves getting pushed out.”

Rubio’s fall comes weeks after others who advocated for conservative reforms, such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have dropped out of the race, and as the donors and institutions who have long supported hawkish policies on fiscal and foreign policies find themselves scrambling to hold onto the consensus that has shaped the GOP for decades.

For many of them, Trump represents a threat to the traditional order of the party and its platform. He does not support overhauling Social Security — a key plank for Romney and GOP congressional leaders — and he was a vocal critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq in its aftermath, setting him apart from much of the party’s high command.

Rubio, whose ascent was propelled by a network of powerful players for years, was supposed to be the candidate best positioned to stop Trump and prevent a Republican rupture.

“Rubio was ready and briefed on policy, that’s for sure, but I just think he never connected,” said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is friendly with Trump. “He sounded like someone who was trying to be a lot for a lot of people. That’s hard to do.”

Following Romney’s defeat in an election many Republicans thought they should have won, party leaders concluded that the only way to regain the presidency would be to engage the growing and diverse electorate that President Obama had won over twice. The RNC drafted an “autopsy” that recommended bolstering appeals to women and minority voters, while reform conservatives drafted their own manifesto.

Rubio had been building his base among these Republicans since January 2011, when he began his Senate term. He joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and began to speak at think tanks and meet with scholars, most of them former staffers from George W. Bush’s administration. He hired a number of them for his own staff.

During his breaks in the Senate, Rubio would often tell colleagues how he was reading papers sent to him from former Republican officials or how he was about to have lunch with another bold-faced name from the Bush years. On his computer, he kept a “drop box” of related policy files compiled by his advisers.

Meanwhile, a group of writers and intellectuals on the right were frustrated and stewing about the GOP’s lack of outreach to working-class voters during Romney’s campaign. By 2013, they began to call themselves “reform conservatives” and sought to turn the party policy discussion away from its emphasis on small business and toward working men and women, as well as families, who were struggling.

As Rubio took the lead on immigration reform that year — a move that riled the hard right — he continued to bolster his relationships with reform conservatives who were unveiling plans for new child tax credits and revamped federal subsidies. He put out a book,“American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone.”

Rubio followed a similar path with foreign-policy hawks as they began to look for a favorite ahead of the 2016 contest: a flurry of meetings and op-ed articles and, most critically, solidarity on the issues as they bubbled up.

Although Rubio entered 2015 hobbled with parts of the GOP base because of immigration, he carried goodwill among those two constituencies that were driving the Republican establishment: the reformers and the hawks.

“The critique was there: The Republican Party was out of touch,” said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former George W. Bush speechwriter. “But the breakdown occurred because we got into a cycle where policy didn’t matter at all. Policy was not just secondary, but it was almost not even in the conversation. And when people tried to interject policy — whether it was Rubio or Bush or others — there was just no appetite for it. It didn’t catch on.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said that Rubio campaigned in a way that quickly became obsolete.

“Rubio was prepared, much like Jeb Bush, for a reasonable dialogue in Washington policy language, offering positions that reflect 40 years of national security and foreign-policy experts. All of that disappeared. The market didn’t care,” Gingrich said.

Rubio’s hawkish foreign-policy footing, thought to be an asset, was challenged. Trump’s claims of being “militaristic” even though he was inclined against intervention muddled how voters perceived the candidates, disassociating American power with the hawkish ideology of Rubio and the Bush orbit. Trump’s denunciations of George W. Bush’s decision to go into Iraq did not make the hawkish cause any easier.

“Trump has sounded hawkish without sounding graceful, and he’s expressed admiration for authoritarians. So it was a weird mix for all of the candidates,” said Kori Schake, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who has advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “At the same time, Republicans are still wrestling with the legacies from the Bush administration . . . and I don’t think we’ve made peace on that.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, having won his home-state primary on Tuesday, could be someone whom Rubio’s coalition turns to next, although his maverick style has turned off some in the establishment. Still, he, too, holds hawkish views and has a compassionate pitch on domestic policy with a call to help people “living in the shadows.”

Stuart Stevens, who served as chief strategist to Romney’s 2012 campaign, chalked up Rubio’s troubles as a sign of a first-time presidential candidate still learning how to run nationally and inspire voters, rather than as a sign of the Republican Party cracking apart. In a year infused with anger, he said, Rubio failed to meet the moment with the policies he had spent years studying.

“Rubio had been told that he’s the future of the party. But it’s not enough to say, ‘I have a great future, vote for me,’ ” Stevens said. “You have to do more than use your biography. You’ve got to connect your ideas in a real way to the economy. . . . People ended up walking out of Rubio rallies misty-eyed and out of Trump rallies with blood in their eyes.”

Whit Ayres, Rubio’s pollster, spent the last several years compiling data and published a book showing that Republicans could not afford to alienate minority voters, especially Hispanics, if they ever hope to retake the White House. Watching Rubio’s concession speech on Tuesday night, Ayres was despondent.

“After 2012,” he said, “you thought we’d learned our lesson.”

Ed O’Keefe in Miami contributed to this report.

COMMENTS