Bobby Jindal drops out. Which 14 Republicans are left for 2016?

The GOP has a history of nominating people who have run before, which could give heart to some familiar faces. But there’s also a crop of first-timers who could steal the show.

3. Marco Rubio

David Goldman/AP
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, (R) of Florida, leaves after speaking at the Georgia Republican Convention, May 15, 2015, in Athens, Ga.

The freshman senator officially launched his presidential campaign on April 13, 2015.

Young and charismatic, Marco Rubio burst onto the national scene in 2010 when he defeated then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist to become the junior senator from Florida. Dubbed by some the GOP’s Barack Obama, Senator Rubio has managed his image carefully, delivering serious policy addresses and initially playing down any designs on higher office.

In another echo of Mr. Obama, he delivered perhaps the best-received speech of the 2012 Republican National Convention

Rubio was a leader in the Senate in passing comprehensive immigration reform. Latinos welcomed his calls for compassion, but Rubio’s standing among conservatives fell. In late October 2013, Rubio backed away from comprehensive immigration reform and recommended that Congress make piecemeal changes. He also joined tea partyers in the Senate in supporting a government shutdown as a way to force defunding of Obamacare. 

Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants, and could help the GOP recover from Mitt Romney’s poor showing among Latinos (though not all Latinos feel warmly toward Cuban-Americans, who have special immigration status). Still, pride among Latinos that one of their own could become president might override reservations.

As a Floridian, Rubio would be positioned to do well in his state’s primary, though the expected entry of former Gov. Jeb Bush complicates the battle for Florida. If Rubio or Bush won the nomination, either would have an excellent shot at winning the nation’s biggest battleground state.

3 of 14

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.