http://www.nationalreview.com/node/427854/print How Rubio Could Foil Cruz’s Plot to Unite Conservatives
By Tim Alberta — December 2, 2015
One summer afternoon in 2013, Marco Rubio arrived at Mike Lee’s Senate office for a strategy session on derailing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Waiting inside were some of the upper chamber’s most conservative members, along with a group of influential activists. It promised to be an awkward pow-wow for the Florida senator, who had spent the 113th Congress authoring and promoting an immigration bill that turned some of his staunchest supporters — including some of those gathered in Lee’s office — into disgruntled opponents. Unperturbed, Rubio flashed a boyish grin and, according to multiple people present, greeted the group with a declaration: “The prodigal son is here.”
He knew he had sinned in their eyes, and that he needed the leaders of the increasingly powerful conservative movement that had championed his insurgent Senate bid to forgive him if he hoped to win their support for an eventual White House run. Yet one person in the room was already working overtime to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Ted Cruz, having copied Rubio’s anti-establishment blueprint to win his own Senate seat in 2012, had since usurped Rubio’s standing as the Tea Party’s favorite senator — in no small part by becoming the most vocal antagonist of the immigration-reform package that had blown up in the Floridian’s face earlier that summer. Both young senators harbored presidential ambitions, and if they ran against each other, Cruz wanted a clear contrast drawn between his brand of uncompromising ideological warfare and Rubio’s more pragmatic conservatism.
More than two years later, in the midst of a chaotic primary fight, and in spite of stubborn threats from outsiders Donald Trump and Ben Carson, Rubio and Cruz find themselves on rising trajectories that could allow them to consolidate the two traditional wings of the GOP and square off head-to-head for the nomination: Rubio by winning the support of establishment donors like Paul Singer and Frank VanderSloot and portraying himself as the most electable candidate; Cruz by collecting endorsements from prominent conservatives such as Brent Bozell and Ginni Thomas and boasting of his unrivaled ideological purity. As both candidates gain momentum and add to their lists of influential backers — Rubio among establishment figures, Cruz among movement conservatives — a head-on collision appears more likely by the day.
Cruz may soon discover, though, that a binary battle with Rubio is a double-edged sword.
The good news for the Texas senator is that what was once dismissed as a pipe dream — monopolizing the support of the conservative movement’s most prominent leaders in the hopes of consolidating their grassroots followers behind his candidacy — is now more feasible than ever before. The movement’s leaders recognized early that they, too, could benefit from supporting Cruz, and he’s become the clear favorite of a group of conservative luminaries — led by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) — who for two years have plotted to unite early behind a single conservative candidate in 2016, convinced that there’s no other way for them to defeat whoever emerges as the establishment’s standard-bearer.
The bad news? That establishment bogeyman was always expected to be Jeb Bush, a relative moderate in the mold of John McCain and Mitt Romney. He would have been the ideal foil for Cruz and his conservative backers. Instead, it’s Rubio — protégé of Jim DeMint, feller of Charlie Crist — who is gaining a foothold as the establishment’s top contender.
It’s a development neither Cruz nor his allies saw coming, and according to recent interviews with a dozen prominent conservative activists, it has prompted some of those involved to step back and reevaluate their approach to the upcoming primary season. In recent meetings from California to Washington, conservative leaders have acknowledged a new reality: Rubio’s emergence as the establishment favorite lessens the urgency to throw their weight behind Cruz. In fact, they say, it could entirely neutralize the campaign by Cruz supporters to coordinate the sweeping endorsement their activist allies have long planned.
“You know how Obama changed the electorate? Rubio kind of changes the primary electorate,” says Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state and a senior fellow at the FRC, who serves on the boards of directors at the National Rifle Association and the Club for Growth.
“If it’s a Rubio-Cruz battle, there are folks in different parts of the conservative coalition that Rubio energizes,” Blackwell adds. “And that could in fact block efforts to coalesce behind Cruz.”
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