Reluctant senator and strikingly ineffective presidential candidate Marco Rubio still has a decision to make. He can hold true to his previous word and not run for re-election because, well, he's vowed up and down that he wouldn't do that—or he can break that previous vow and mount a frantic last-minute bid to keep his day job.
Since nobody truly expects a conservative politician to keep a consistent position, most Marco Rubio fans have been presuming he would flip-flop himself into mounting a re-election bid. Competing Republicans like David Jolly and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera have either stepped out of the way or assured Rubio they would. So why's it taking so long for Rubio to decide?
This right here would be why:
“Rubio is going to have some challenges to overcome. Carlos Beruff, who is a Trump knock-off, is one of them," Mac Stipanovich, a Florida-based Republican strategist told TPM. "Marco will be facing a Mini-me of the guy he lost to badly not too long ago."
You might know Beruff as the Republican candidate who referred to the current American president as an "animal." Calling him a Mini-Trump is perhaps understating the case. The wealthy blowhard Beruff has no intention of stepping aside for the faux-moderate Rubio, not when what America really needs in the Senate is another rich, xenophobic Loud Guy.
If Marco Rubio is going to keep his day job and if he wants to run for president again, he's going to need to keep himself in the public eye in a way that the usual post-Senate lobbying sinecure won't provide—and he has to get past the exact xenophobic policy positions, rhetoric, and blowhardism that so easily crushed him in the Florida presidential primary.
Now that we know that having the fawning admiration of every pundit in Washington doesn't actually count for much come voting day, that looks like a risky proposition. Not only would Rubio have a battle ahead of him if he wanted to keep his seat in the general election, there's a very good possibility that he wouldn't even make it out of the primary.
What should an ambitious would-be president do, then? Bow out of the public eye for four years, then try to mount an "outsider" presidential campaign crafted primarily from old press clippings? Or risk running for his old office even though the odds are good that it would result in yet another episode of Marco Rubio Humiliation Theater?
The filing deadline is this Friday. If Rubio's going to jump in the race, he's got a few more days and that's it. Place your bets.