Sen. Marco Rubio ran for president in 2016. In the first Republican contest on Feb. 6, the Iowa caucuses, he finished third behind Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. A few days later, he finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary. On March 1, “Super Tuesday,” Rubio won just one of the 11 Republican contests — Minnesota. Then he won — wait for it — Puerto Rico.
But by March 15th, Rubio had suspended his campaign. That same day, he pulled in 27% of the vote in Florida, his home state — getting crushed by Trump, who won 45.7% and all of Florida’s delegates.
Rubio, of course, wants to run again, but he can’t go this time around. So now he’s laying the groundwork for the post-Trump world — whether that begins in 2021 or 2025.
In a Nov. 5 speech at Catholic University in Washington, he “sketched the outlines of what he called a ‘common-good capitalism,’ ” Bloomberg News wrote.
The 48-year-old Florida Republican claimed that his goal was not “to define a post-Trump conservatism.” But regardless of his objective, his speech will be part of the effort to do exactly that, and conservatives would be wise to pay attention.
The specifics of Rubio’s economic-policy agenda need work. (More on that in a moment.) But what made his speech stand out was his broader goal of refocusing the Republican Party on workers and “the opportunity to attain the dignity that comes from hard work.”
The writer, Michael R. Strain, says Rubio needs to move away from populism.
“The senator, who well before Trump had already been a leader in the effort to update the GOP’s policy platform from its Reagan-era vintage, is clearly trying to work out the specifics of his new agenda. He should stick closer to the right’s longstanding commitments to markets, advancing opportunity and insistence on individual responsibility, and further away from populism,” he writes.
Doing so would not need to divert him from his worthy focus on workers. Much the opposite. For example, Rubio could push to break down barriers in the labor market, help ex-offenders get jobs by regulating how employers ask job-seekers about criminal records, back an agenda to increase the skills of workers so that they can command higher wages in competitive markets, and expand federal earnings subsidies to low-income households, both to draw them into the workforce and to help lift them out of poverty.
The political right should have been more focused on workers long ago. Rubio is right to move in that direction. His challenge will be to keep that focus while retaining the essential parts of the right’s traditional approach to economic policy, and discarding the economically damaging and socially corrosive elements of Trumpism.
Strain also said Trump has led the GOP astray.
“The right-wing populism of President Donald Trump has led the Republican Party away from its traditional commitments to free markets, advancing economic opportunity, openness and personal responsibility, and towards an embrace of racial grievance, hostility to immigrants and protectionism. But Trump’s time in the White House will end soon enough, either in one year or in five, and GOP leaders need to define the future of the political right,” he writes.
