I actually thought that grassroots conservative leader Erick Erickson was a supporter of Rubio for the longest time, but I guess he did pretty badly in the Super Tuesday primaries, because now Erickson is calling for him to drop out, and accept the Vice Presidency.
Erickson writes:
I have tried very hard to be neutral in the race between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They are both friends. But reality dawns. Rubio has won only a single state (Minnesota), and even then not all the delegates, and tells us we must wait until Florida on March 15th. Cruz is already winning states more solidly and leads in delegates.
In 1980, as the nation was falling apart, Ronald Reagan as the outsider and George H. W. Bush as the insider were willing to set aside personal and policy differences to unite for the good of the country. Reagan had attacked Bush on his illegal immigration position. Bush had coined the term “voodoo economics” to describe Reagan’s economic policies. But they overcame that, they united, and they not only beat Jimmy Carter, but a third party bid by John Anderson.
It is time for Rubio to accept he will not be the nominee. He keeps telling us he will pay the bill tomorrow, but tomorrow has not yet come and he is behind by double digits in his home state.
It is time for Ted Cruz to accept we need a unity ticket and for Rubio to agree to be Cruz’s Vice Presidential pick, uniting the outsider and insider factions of the party and stopping Trump in the process.
Cruz has won three states. Rubio won Minnesota with split delegates. The non-Trump faction has the delegates to stop Trump. But now there must be unity.
It is time to divide the map, combine the campaigns, and fight Trump state by state all the way to the convention as if a single ticket.
True, Rubio will say the map moving forward is more favorable to him. But that excludes voter expectations and perceptions. The reality is that Cruz is winning states, Rubio is not, and together they could dominate. Outside groups should concentrate all fire on Trump while Cruz and Rubio show the country that they can pull America from the brink.
Ted Cruz has stopped Trump in three states. It is time for Team Rubio to acknowledge that.
Actually, Ted Cruz has stopped Trump in FOUR states. Alaska also went for Cruz, but those results came out after Erickson’s post was already posted. That’s 4 states to Rubio’s 1.
I used to blog a lot about Marco Rubio, before he championed the 2013 amnesty. I remember the moment I discovered that he was one of the Gang of Eight like most people remember where they were on 9/11. I remember the story, and the picture of Rubio standing in with radical leftists Republican moderates like John McCain and Lindsay Graham. People who had stabbed us in the back so many times before on important things like Supreme Court judicial nominations. I remember thinking: “what is Marco doing with them?”
That was the end of my interest in Marco Rubio. And he’s not going to win this election, given his record on amnesty and so many other liberal policies and priorities. If Donald Trump stands for anything, he stands for border security. And Marco Rubio is the opposite of that. There is just no way that Marco Rubio would be able to get the support of the Republican electorate. He’s even down 20 points in his home state of Florida. Trump’s popularity is due in large part because of the betrayal of moderate, establishment Republicans like Marco Rubio. The Washington elites need to realize that this time it is their turn to fall in line with Cruz, even if they can’t fall in love with Cruz.
When Rubio was elected to political office, he authored an amnesty bill, he supported the failed Libya invasion, he gave in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, he weakened border security, he authored a bill to remove the due process rights of men falsely accused of rape on campus, he skipped votes to defund Planned Parenthood, he has a billionaire pro-gay-marriage donor, and is very friendly with gay activists who are opposed to religious liberty and conscience protections for Christians, and so on. We can’t have the Republican nominee be a liberal moderate in the mold of Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney. The establishment has had a good long run at ignoring the base and now it’s come to an end. We need a real conservative this time: Ted Cruz.
