I have a piece up on the home-page on how Marco Rubio may be too polished and sunny for the current Republican mood:

Asked about Obama said by Megyn Kelly after the State of the Union, Cruz responded (emphasis added): “Well, listen, I will apologize to no one for my willingness and commitment to killing terrorists. . . . If I’m elected president, we will defeat radical Islamic terrorism and we will utterly destroy ISIS, and yes, that means carpet-bombing them into oblivion, it means arming the Kurds, it means using our military force so that any jihadist who declares war and tries to murder Americans will be defeated.”
This is a classic bit of Cruz rhetoric, with adverbial punch (utterly), robust verbs (kill, destroy), and strong nouns (oblivion). It is a small masterpiece in taking an unremarkable policy and dialing it to 11 and making it sound like the invasion of Normandy — and Cruz can do this on almost any topic.
Rubio was also on with Megyn Kelly after the State of the Union and said all the right things about ISIS and terrorism, without uttering anything that was nearly as hard-hitting as the Cruz lines. A sample from Rubio on ISIS: “This is a sophisticated group now who is figuring out how to use our immigration system to get fighters in here, not to mention growing their affiliate branches across multiple countries around the world, and they pose a very significant threat.”