Marco Rubio - U.S. Senate - 2010

American Spectator
GOP Soul Check
By Larry Thornberry
9/30/09

TAMPA — Conservative Marco Rubio enjoyed a good September in his race against popular, liberal Florida Governor Charlie Crist for the 2010 Republican nomination for the Florida U.S. Senate recently vacated by Mel Martinez.

Though he’s trailed Crist by double figures in polls of Florida Republicans, when it comes to the people active in the Florida Party, Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida House, has wowed them with speeches full of values such as fiscal restraint, social conservatism, strength abroad, and opposition to massive government intrusions into the economy such as cap and trade, which Crist fancies. In straw votes among eight county Republican executive committees, Rubio has swamped Crist 358 to 32. In Hernando County, just one county away from Crist’s home county of Pinellas, Rubio pitched a 46-0 shutout.

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Rubio has been getting some help from the national conservative press, where he’s seen as the great right hope in this race. John J. Miller did a profile of Rubio in National Review, calling him a rising star in the Florida GOP with an unambiguously conservative voting record. Rubio’s gotten positive mentions in Human Events, as well as in the Weekly Standard blog. Regular TAS readers know of Rubio and how he stacks up against the pretend conservative Crist. Many Florida newspapers last weekend carried a column by George Will in which Will not only whooped up Rubio’s conservative virtues, and chastised national Republicans for supporting Crist, but flatly predicted a Rubio victory in the primary next August.

One group Rubio continues to do poorly with is D.C. insiders. At a Sarasota event last week, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush praised Rubio’s biography and platforms and criticized the National Republican Senatorial Committee, headed by Texas Senator John Cornyn, for endorsing Crist just hours after Crist announced his candidacy last spring. Rubio had already announced his candidacy.

“I think he (Rubio) should be given a chance,” Bush said. “I think the idea that the national party should pick a winner a year and a half before an election is the wrong way to go.”

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The race between Crist and Rubio has been described as a battle for the soul of the Republican Party in Florida. Rarely do primaries present so clear a choice between two candidates with different views on the proper role of government and how a good and just society can be achieved. But if the Machiavellian approach of the NRSC is to prevail (I don’t believe it will), perhaps it should be described as a battle to determine if the Republican Party has a soul.

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