If presidential politics were some half-bad movie you'd find while flipping through cable on a sleepless night, you might see this one:
"Jeb! Wandering Pilgrim in
And there's
With his upper lip trembling, he sings along to an Eagles song on a dusty radio.
"You're walking away and they're talking behind you/ They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along/ Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town."
So just who is that new establishment kid in Republican town?
It's
Rubio, the senator from
He's now the heir to the Bush family establishment legacy whether the Bushes like it or not.
And Jeb didn't even get a bowl of lentils, did he?
So now Rubio is poised to formally accept the establishment
"They told me that we have no chance because my hair wasn't gray enough and my boots were too high," Rubio told his crowd in
It was a great speech actually. It wasn't shrill and angry like
And it wasn't shrill and boring like Sen.
So at the risk of sounding like some establishment meat puppet made tame by Karl Rovian experiments involving bells, steak powder and saliva, I'd say the Rubio speech as he left
It was delivered without a teleprompter and was virtually perfect in tone and theme, demonstrating Rubio's talents in this area and contrasting well with Hillary's desperate truth-bending and that thin ghost of Bill standing behind her.
Instead, Rubio was optimistic and inclusive. As a son of immigrants myself, his immigrant story is uplifting, extremely American and inviting to Democrats as well.
Rubio also hit Clinton and Sanders hard on the most important theme of the 2016 campaign: that a Clinton restoration or a Sanders revolution will mean a
And he demonstrated how he'll zero in on
"
The first part is, for Clinton, devastating, given the ongoing FBI investigation of how classified emails ended up on her private email server and made ripe for picking by Russian and Chinese intelligence. She did so, Mrs. Clinton said, for the sake of "convenience."
But I don't know about that last one referencing Benghazi. Did former President
Ask the parents of the American dead.
But rhetoric is only one aspect of presidential politics.
And if you're drawn to rhetoric and style alone, you're apt to fall into group or tribal think. But that's meat puppetry, and if you're reading this, I figure you've decided not to be a meat puppet.
Politics is about balancing interests and building coalitions, which is why Rubio is in an excellent position now.
Cruz, the true conservative in the top three, won
The Republican establishment loathes the conservative Cruz. They can't control him. And they fear Trump, because a Trump presidency would mean they would each have to fall on their knees before the barbarian so they could maintain some level of influence with their
So Rubio is the establishment
These aren't conservative in the least. But with the nation in an insurgent mood, Rubio gives the establishment the best chance to hold on to power.
Rubio is fresh-faced. He's young. He sounds like what liberal media calls conservative.
Though he might be a Marco-come-lately, he is the establishment
Comment by clicking here.
John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.