I was at a small dinner last night with Marco Rubio shortly after the Rasmussen numbers came in. The news seemed a light approaching a Washington that has Americans streaming in sounding their code-red sirens — as those joining Laura Ingraham and others at the Capitol yesterday did — about what’s going on here (and in the Senate in a special way).
What’s most striking about Rubio is that when he says “it’s not about me,” he genuinely seems to mean it. He’s got a family he loves and it’s out of his love for them and his country that he’s bothering to do what the Republican party said was a hopeless cause. To the contrary, he’s actually a sign of hope.
It’s a humble, insurgent, tenacious campaign. They’ve gotten more attention than they ever expected. They’re serious about being serious about it — always being about preservation of founding principles and an experiment in good, practical, conservative ideals, getting up to professional par, having a solid ground operation for their late primary in August. He’s still got a lot of money to raise, but he’s earned an impressive bit so far for the guy the GOP said was impossible, causing the likes of the Club for Growth to take notice.
Rubio spent time think-tanking yesterday and was hosted by Jim DeMint at a successful fundraiser earlier in the evening.
It’s encouraging to enter the new year with the possibility that he could be Senator-Elect Rubio by this time next year. He’s a self-possessed man who sees an opportunity to serve. The Senate could use him.