Marco Rubio and the Problem of the Political Natural
Rubio’s conservatism is not in any major substantive way an update of George W. Bush’s, and if you hated the original you probably won’t love the sequel, which harbors the same instinctive militarism, rigid social conservatism, and gauzy talk of freedom. But Rubio has President Obama’s sharp, outsider eye for human longing and suffering: his talent is in giving stray, chaotic conservative interests an emotional coherence. Walking away, I had the same feeling I’ve had each time I’ve seen him: the man is a natural.
.. The comedy of this combat is that the politics of the Republican primary more or less forbid Rubio from making the obvious case against Cruz—that he is too conservative to be elected President—and so Rubio has gamely fought to tarnish Cruz as an “isolationist hawk,” noting that taking an isolationist line during the Tea Party ascendancy, as the Texan did, before insisting that he would “carpet bomb” ISIS until “the sand glows,” as Cruz has done recently, suggests someone who is fundamentally not serious about being President.