It seems like ancient history now, but the Republican presidential race was supposed to be a contest between conservatives and the party establishment. That’s how competitive GOP primaries frequently go. And that’s how it appeared 2016 would go as well.
The expectation was that we would see two primaries within a primary, with Jeb Bush and Chris Christie potentially vying for establishment support while Scott Walker, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were among the competitors in the conservative primary.
Donald Trump and Ben Carson upended all that. Walker is already out of the race, and some of the previously mentioned candidates are barely clinging to life. Bush is looking like the weakest establishment candidate since Nelson Rockefeller lost to Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Now it’s outsiders versus insiders. So far, the outsiders are winning in a walk. The three candidates who have never held elected office are averaging close to 55 percent of the vote nationally. The 11 candidates who have held office are winning 30 percent. The early state numbers aren’t much different.
This breakdown isn’t perfect. Cruz, Paul and Bobby Jindal don’t look much like insiders from a Beltway vantage point. Carly Fiorina is only an outsider by virtue of losing her 2010 Senate race in California. But it does tell us something about what Republican primary voters think of their politicians.
Marco Rubio has an opportunity because he can straddle the various categories better than any of the other candidates. He is the only Republican elected official who consistently hovered around the low double digits nationally in October. He is both an insider, as a U.S. senator and former Florida House speaker, and an outsider, as an absentee senator who arrived in the upper chamber over party leaders’ opposition and is leaving after only one term.
Rubio can also claim to have one foot in the Tea Party camp, having won his primary in 2010 with the support of conservative groups against establishment entities like the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the other foot in with the establishment, as more than a few Bush donors look his way.
Bush’s attacks have allowed Rubio to maintain his anti-establishment appearance. His successful responses to those attacks have impressed establishment Republicans looking for an alternative to what they see as the inexplicable Trump-Carson phenomenon.
“The anti-Trump candidate in N.H. and S.C. must be acceptable to the social-conservative GOP base, Tea Party activists who want an outsider, and a desperate GOP establishment,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos wrote in an email. “The candidate most likely to have that broad reach today is Marco Rubio.”
Rubio’s middling fundraising and early state poll numbers likely require him to supplant Bush as the establishment choice if he’s going to win the nomination. But if that happens, he will acquire all the disadvantages of being an establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year.
There is also an issue on which Rubio remains vulnerable: immigration. “It’s the reason a lot of our people don’t trust him,” a leading Tea Party activist said. Rubio’s Gang of Eight deal contained what many conservatives consider amnesty and involved collaborating with liberal Democrats, both negatives in GOP primaries.
In his breakout debate performance last week, Rubio managed to take a harder line on immigration than Trump. Despite his Gang of Eight advocacy, he’s actually been fluid on the issue dating back to his Senate campaign. But if Rubio’s poll numbers rise, Trump won’t hesitate to engage him.
Until then, Rubio is an insider with an outside chance.
