Rubio most likely GOP nominee

By Jonathan Bernstein

Bloomberg View

Marco Rubio is the most likely candidate to win the Republican 2016 presidential nomination.

I said early on that Rubio was in a first tier of contenders with Jeb Bush and, before he dropped out, Scott Walker. There was a solid case for and against each of them. Well, the case against Walker turned out to be correct, while the one for Rubio has looked stronger and stronger.

Ross Douthat of The New York Times recently described Rubio’s oddly intangible front-runner status. After good reviews for his debate performance (and terrible ones for Bush), that has changed. Rubio has picked up his first two endorsements from his fellow U.S. senators – Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Montana’s Steve Daines. After getting off to a slow start in high-visibility endorsements, Rubio has been on a roll for a while now. He has nailed down seven members of the House since Sept. 21. Over the same period, the other 14 GOP candidates had 10 new House endorsements combined.

This shift to Rubio is happening at other levels, too. Recently, I counted 67 state legislators in Rubio’s column; a short week later that number was reported to be up to 80.

He still trails Bush in total endorsements. But remember the 2008 Democratic contest. Hillary Clinton’s strong party connections allowed her to take an early but not decisive lead among party actors, and then Barack Obama spent the fall of 2007 beginning to catch up. And Bush’s early lead has been far less impressive than Clinton’s was then. A lot more free-agent party actors remain available and could wind up with Rubio.

Not that he has it wrapped up. Other candidates have had good stretches but eventually faded. Nor has he faced the pressures of being a front-runner, scrutiny that has taken down plenty of previous candidates. There’s no evidence – yet – that he’s won over the bulk of the party, just increasingly strong hints that it’s happening. And of course even if the party falls in line for him, that will have to translate into votes in party primaries and caucuses, Donald Trump and Ben Carson notwithstanding.

I don’t think his record on immigration will derail his chances, just as I never thought Mitt Romney’s health care record would keep him from getting the Republican nomination in 2012. Rubio has already repudiated his Senate bill that offered a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. He’ll most likely say whatever anti-immigration Republicans want to hear, and that should be enough. We still have a long way to go until the caucuses in Iowa on Feb. 1, let alone to the Republican nomination. The first tier is still Rubio and Bush. But they’re no longer on equal footing. Rubio leads.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.