Marco Rubio was finished. The Republican Party’s handsome, young Cuban-American rising star had been exposed. Behind that pretty, conservative — but optimistic and multicultural — face, lay a robot programmed by Dinesh D’Souza, one built too poorly to withstand Chris Christie’s assault on its mainframe at the Republican debate in New Hampshire, where it finally was reduced to sputtering the same line about Obama deliberately sabotaging America, over and over and over.
Worse: Donald Trump proceeded to humiliate “Lil Marco” so thoroughly, the Florida senator started humiliating himself. In a desperate bid to salvage his presidential campaign, Rubio tried to beat Trump at his own game, casting aspersions about the size of the mogul’s genitalia. But all this did was allow Trump to tout the size of his penis at a debate, and a bevy of pundits to draft eulogies for Rubio’s career.
After all, Rubio had expressed his total disinterest in seeking reelection to the U.S. Senate, and other Republican candidates were already getting their campaigns in gear.
And then Rubio changed his mind. And he was still an incumbent with national name recognition and ties to the wealthiest donors in red America.
His challenger, 33-year-old Democratic representative Patrick Murphy, made a race of it. But as of this writing, Rubio has secured a comfortable 8-point victory, per the Upshot’s projections.
