How the GOP Sabotaged Marco Rubio, the Man Who Was Once Its Savior [View all]

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It was a mere two days after the 2012 election, and the shock of defeat had barely worn off when the Republican Party’s answer suddenly became clear, and it was Marco Rubio. The announcement came in a column, portentously titled “The Way Forward,” by Charles Krauthammer, the operative-pundit, Fox News panelist, and columnist whom a National Review cover story had deemed the leader of the opposition to President Obama. The party’s predicament could be solved, Krauthammer announced, with “a single policy change: border fence plus amnesty.” Then, having softened on immigration and thus endeared itself to Latinos, the party need only elevate the handsome, right-wing young senator to the top of its ticket. “Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016,” rhapsodized Krauthammer. “It would transform the landscape.”

The Rubio Plan sounded awfully appealing to Republicans, not least of them Rubio himself, who set about constructing the fund-raising and advisory apparatus of a top-tier presidential contender. For a few months, the plan proceeded to near perfection. Then everything started falling apart, and it has kept falling apart ever since.

The Rubio Plan required the senator, heretofore a reliable conservative soldier on every issue including immigration reform, which he ran against in 2010, to reverse himself and persuade a large chunk of the party to follow along. This Rubio did with astonishing speed. Working with Senate Democrats to forge a compromise, he undertook a listening-and-persuasion tour among the party figures who had revolted against the last immigration-reform compromise, under George W. Bush. Rubio explained that his immigrant mother had left him a voice-mail, in Spanish, pleading for him to look out for immigrants. “They’re human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we came,” said Mrs. Rubio, via her son, in impressively polished, stump-friendly phrasing. “To work. To improve their lives. So please, don’t mess with them.”

Once-fervent restrictionists like Sean Hannity and even Rush Limbaugh showered Rubio with praise. In February of last year, Time displayed Rubio on its cover, anointing him “The Republican Savior.” (“There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus,” Rubio tweeted, deftly ­averting a John ­Lennon–esque controversy while reflecting the general political reality that if you’re in a position to deny comparisons between yourself and the Messiah, you’re ­winning.) Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, gushed that Rubio was “so hot right now.”

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