Marco Rubio: Poster Boy For The GOP Identity Crisis
The Republican Party seems like two parties these days. In the Senate, Republicans joined a two-thirds majority to pass an immigration bill. But in the House, Republicans are balking.
Strategist Alex Lundry says it's hard to figure out the way forward when your party's base of power is the House of Representatives.
"One problem we have in the wilderness is that there are a thousand chiefs," he says. "And it is hard to get a party moving when you don't have somebody at the top who is a core leader who can be directive."
One such leader was supposed to be Marco Rubio, the charismatic, young Hispanic senator from Florida. Of all the prospects for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, Rubio has been the most visible. He took a leadership role on immigration, and he's been taking it on the chin from his party's anti-amnesty base.
Pete Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush, says conservatives gave Rubio the benefit of the doubt at first. But within the past month or so, he says, "Rubio has absorbed a lot of blows, and the criticisms against him have really amped up," Wehner says. "And he's going to emerge from this immigration debate in some respects a weakened and wounded figure."
If Rubio does run for president, he will have to compete in early states like Iowa. Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative activist and talk show host, says Rubio's support of a path to citizenship for immigrants in the United States illegally has hurt him.
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