Tag: Marco Rubio

Carson May Be Leading Among Actual Voters

Buck Banks

27%

Ben Carson’s lead, followed by Marco Rubio at 17% and Donald Trump at 15%, in a new Monkey Cage poll in Iowa that finds that non-voters may be driving Donald Trump’s popularity. “To build a sample, we began with the list of registered voters in Iowa and stratified our sample by factors like age and sex. Other pollsters have done something similar. However, what we did — but other have not — is stratify the sample based on another factor: Whether or not people had voted in at least one primary election since 2006.”

If Rubio is the Establishment Candidate, the Establishment has Turned Right

Buck Banks

If Marco Rubio is the establishment candidate, look at how far we’ve come. This is someone who ran as an outsider, who ran as a conservative, someone who was a Jim DeMint–endorsed, Club for Growth–endorsed candidate who forced a sitting governor to switch parties.

— Wesley Goodman, former head of the Conservative Action Project, quoted by National Review.

Rubio’s Tax Plan Does Not Compute

Buck Banks

$11.8 trillion

Amount that Marco Rubio’s tax plan would reduce federal revenue over the next decade, notes Jonathan Chait. “The entire Bush tax cuts cost about $3.4 trillion over a decade, making the Rubio tax cuts more than three times as costly. … Among the Republican presidential candidates, Rubio is widely considered to be a moderate on fiscal issues. The clarity with which we can now examine Rubio’s plan, juxtaposed against recent events, provides a sense of the ongoing relationship between the Republican Party and economic reality. It remains deeply hostile.”

Cruz Brands Rubio a Moderate

Buck Banks

As I look at the race, historically, there have been two major lanes in the Republican primary. There’s been a moderate lane and a conservative lane. Marco is certainly formidable in that lane. I think the Jeb [Bush] campaign seems to view Marco as his biggest threat in the moderate lane.

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), distinguishing himself from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) by painting him with the moderate brush, Bloomberg reports.