The Marco Mistake

The Republican's supposed "establishment" made a decision eight years ago that maybe it regrets today- they completely threw George W. Bush under the bus. They went ahead and said he wasn't a "true conservative" in office, and allowed the Tea Party to create separation with the 43rd President of the United States. It set the "movement conservative" crowd off of a pathway that eventually lead to a Trump candidacy. It also basically disqualified Jeb Bush from the outset when he decided to run in 2016. He had a last name that the conservative activists would not accept. Sure, he was a bad candidate, but so was Mitt Romney, and the establishment's embrace made him the nominee. With Jeb, that was impossible at the outset.

So instead, establishment Washington Republicans threw their lot in with Marco Rubio. They made him their candidate of choice sometime back in the Fall, and they road this horse to ruin. Marco Rubio has been a terrible candidate, his victory in Puerto Rico yesterday notwithstanding, and at this point he's fading to the back of the pack fast. On Saturday he basically finished third, and he did the same on Super Tuesday. It's likely that tomorrow he will crash and burn in Mississippi and Michigan, and next week Trump will finish him off in his home state of Florida, relegating "Little Marco" to the history books as a failure.

The "establishment," which is really just political professionals who live and work in Washington, picked the wrong horse. They didn't want to pick Trump or Cruz, I understand that, but they would have been better off with Bush or Kasich from the start. Was either even a halfway decent candidate? Not really. Were they meeting a minimum bar of competency in a debate, or a minimum bar of competency on policy? Yes. Has either ever debated the size of one's hands against Donald Trump? No.

Basically, the professional-class Republicans thought that a Florida Senator of Cuban heritage was so attractive as a candidate that they were blinded to the fact that Rubio is an imbecile. They thought they finally had a way to change the general election math that beat them the last two times out, and so they put their lot in with a man so incapable that he's went to depths that even Donald Trump hadn't gone to yet. Rubio has made them look even more ridiculous, and now they will be forced into trying to revive Kasich or crawl pathetically to Cruz.

You get what you ask for.