Marco Rubio - U.S. Senate - 2010

A Ripe Time For Florida’s Marco Rubio
By George F. Will
Sunday, September 27, 2009

MIAMI — Florida, a geological afterthought, was the last portion of what are now the lower 48 states to emerge from the ocean, and it emerged halfheartedly: Its highest point is just 345 feet above sea level. But the fourth-most-populous state will loom over American politics next summer when Republicans select a Senate nominee. Their primary will test whether the party has become so risk-averse that it flinches from interesting choices.

The nominee almost certainly will be either Gov. Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio, former speaker of the Florida House (term limits, which he supports, retired him). Leading national Republicans rushed to endorse Crist. In tennis, such decisions are called unforced errors.

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As is Rubio, which is why National Review, the bimonthly encyclical of the church of conservatism, had him on a recent cover and why the Club for Growth, a group that contributes to Republicans friendly to free markets, should support him. Crist has a large lead in name recognition, and hence in polls. But where Rubio and he are both known, they are neck and neck.

A Catholic and father of four, Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba in 1959, says, “It is hard to be apolitical when you are raised by exiles.” He worries that his children’s generation “will be the first to inherit a diminished country.” His preventive medicine includes limited government, tax reform, spending restraint and removal of all impediments to the entrepreneurship that makes America a place “where poor people can put billionaires out of business.”

Florida will not soon be pushed back under the ocean by the weight of its expanding population. For the first time since the Second World War, the state lost population — 58,000 people — in a 12-month period (April 2008 to April 2009). In January 2011, one Floridian will leave for the U.S. Senate. He is unlikely to be a former governor at odds with his party’s nominating electorate, or the probable Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek, a hyper-liberal congressman. Rubio intends to prove that “in the most important swing state, you can run successfully as a principled conservative.” He probably will.

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