Rubio’s Failure: How Our Broken Economy Fuels Voter Rage

The Mises Institute reports:

None of the post-mortems of Rubio’s campaign I have seen mention the real reason why the young senator, so articulate, so successful, recently touted as the future of his party, never got launch speed in his campaign for the presidency. It is actually Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)’s handiwork, aided and abetted by Rubio’s misjudgment.

Shortly after the 2012 election, the GOP was worrying about Romney’s poor showing among Hispanics. At the same time, Senator Schumer and other Democrats were thinking that Rubio, himself Hispanic, was by far the most electable Republican candidate in 2016. How to bring him down?

Schumer’s plan was simple: lure Rubio into the gang of eight immigration bill promising eventual citizenship to all illegal immigrants. Success in this would effectively kill Rubio’s chances in 2016 with GOP primary voters. Rubio would not only have gotten out of step with those primary voters; he would also have reversed the position he took in his Senate race and thus appear to be dishonest.

Would Rubio walk into this trap? That it was a carefully plotted trap was clear enough to me and others at the time. But he did. Once he did, the odds of his gaining the GOP nomination were always poor. They became even poorer as President Obama increasingly refused to enforce border protection laws, thereby stirring up GOP voters on the issue.

An article for all establishment types.