Marco’s Only Plan Should Be an Exit Strategy

While the Florida senator’s campaign remains committed to going all the way to the convention, Marco Rubio should cut his losses and gracefully bow out: The lack of support for his candidacy stands as a rebuke of the Old Guard of the Republican Party.

In Saturday’s crucial contests, Rubio was only able to garner a pitiful 18 delegates to Sen. Ted Cruz’s 69 delegates and Donald Trump’s 53. Cruz’s stellar performance over the weekend shows that his campaign is gaining momentum at the right time, as he has quickly become the consensus candidate to go head-to-head with Trump.

On Saturday night, Trump even called for Rubio to suspend his campaign to make it a two-man race between him and Cruz, saying: “I want Ted, one-on-one.”

Rubio’s speech after his latest losses went a little differently. “We want to continue to increase our delegate total and the map only gets friendlier for us after tonight and after Super Tuesday,” Rubio said. “We knew this would be the roughest period in the campaign given the makeup of the electoral map.”

Then, in an interview on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rubio adamantly said he would win the state of Florida.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpUN_8tX7sw”]

With the highly anticipated March 15 winner-take-all contests on the horizon it would be wise for Rubio to suspend his campaign before getting slaughtered in the Florida primary. After his disappointing third and fourth place finishes in Saturday’s contests, why would he set himself up for further embarrassment and the potential to lose his home state? That would certainly be a significant blow to his future in American politics.

Rubio, in an act of desperation spurred on by Establishment donors, has been attacking Trump — but the strategy has worked to his disadvantage and he has sunk in the polls. Rubio began his campaign vowing to be positive and not to resort to personal attacks, but he’s throw that all away now in his desperation to win.

The Establishment wing of the Republican Party has hung its hat on Rubio’s candidacy after the abysmal performance by Gov. Jeb Bush prompted him to drop out of the presidential race. But what it failed to realize is that no matter who it supports, the voters will reject its candidate.

[lz_table title=”GOP Delegate Count” source=”RealClearPolitics”]Total Needed
1237
|Donald Trump
382
|Sen. Ted Cruz
300
|Sen Marco Rubio
128
[/lz_table]

The American electorate is angry and frustrated with the status quo and business as usual in Washington. Voters desperately want to see a shake up, and according to exit polling, over 50 percent of the people believe that a Washington outsider is the best chance to do that.

Cruz is brilliantly toeing the line between painting himself as an outsider who has fought against the “Washington cartel” and also unifying a severely fractured party, in a full-on effort to pick off Trump.

After Republican presidential contests in 19 states, Rubio has won just a single state, Minnesota. But his political survival depends on a win in Florida on March 15, something that seems nearly impossible as poll after poll shows him lagging well behind front-runner Trump.

While he vows to go on, Rubio may will have already gone as far as he’s going to go.