Sorry, Marco Rubio. Youre no Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee.
Bloomberg had a story on Tuesday on Rubio meeting with supporters as he talked about presidential possibilities andhe cited both Santorum and Huckabee as models if he runs for president in 2016.
According to Bloomberg, Rubio is thinking of having nimble, efficient operation in states with early presidential nominating contests and listed the relatively low-budget operations run by the last two Republicans to win Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest (Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee) and John McCain's successful, small-staff effort in New Hampshire in 2008 as models.
But Rubio is in a far different position than either Huckabee or Santorum in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire.
In 2008, Huckabee won over evangelicals and social conservatives with his folksy persona. Talking about his faith and his values, Huckabee was authentic and appealed to Heartland America, an act his opponents like Mitt Romney, McCain and Rudy Giuliani simply never could compete with. It got Huckabee out of the middle of the field and gave him enough strength to place a surprising second behind McCain when it was all done.
Santorum had been a favorite of religious conservatives for years, even after he lost his Senate seat back in 2006. Benefiting from the collapse of other conservative candidates and lingering distrust of Romney, Santorum scored the narrowest of wins in Iowa in 2012.
By appealing to religious conservatives, Huckabee and Santorum had a natural base in Iowa, something that Rubio cant say at this point. Citing McCains efforts in New Hampshire in 2008 is even more of a stretch. After all, McCain defeated George W. Bush in New Hampshire back in 2000 and remained popular there even though Romney was from neighboring Massachusetts.
If Rubio runs -- and thats a big if with Jeb Bush looming over the race -- hes right in thinking he needs to do well in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. But he does not have the support that Huckabee and Santorum did with evangelical voters in Iowa. Complicating the matter, those two past winners of the Iowa caucus are looking hard at running again in 2016 and there are other dark horses making their moves. Scott Walker, for example, is already working Iowa and getting rave reviews, especially after his well-received speech there this weekend.
Theres certainly room for Rubio in the field, especially on foreign policy. But even there the likes of John Bolton, Lindsey Graham and Peter King are trying to claim the same space. Nor are there enough Republican primary voters whose chief issue is a muscular foreign policy to really give Rubio or anyone else much of a base.
If he runs, Rubio would be wise to imitate Huckabees and Santorums hard work and grassroots campaigns in Iowa. But Rubios task is far tougher in Iowa than Huckabees and Santorums were. He will have a much harder time finding his base than either of those two winners of the Iowa caucus.
Tallahassee political writer Jeff Henderson wrote this analysis exclusively for Sunshine State News.
