Poor Marco Rubio. His role in developing a Senate immigration reform bill has hurt him with the Tea Party – but it doesn’t seem to be doing much to help him with Latinos. A poll by Latino Decisions released Tuesday found that in a 2016 presidential run, Rubio would lose badly among Latinos to both Hillary Clinton (66 to 28 percent) and Vice President Joe Biden (60 to 28 percent). The two Democrats are also viewed far more favorably than is Rubio by Latino voters, though Rubio is their top choice among the likely 2016 GOP contenders.
Rubio’s membership in the “Gang of Eight” will likely help him with one powerful GOP constituency: big business. But the toll it has taken on the right, without providing gains among Latinos, could be deadly to his national ambitions. Ann Coulter has called Rubio “the Dr. Kevorkian of the Republican Party,” while Glenn Beck says he’s “a piece of garbage,” and at a Tea Party anti-immigration rally last month, people carried signs calling him “Obama’s idiot.”
