Then, I’ll be a private citizen in January. “Thanks for coming out”.
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“I’m not going to be anybody’s vice president”, Rubio said.
Rubio’s pledge to leave politics is consistent with statements he made when he first entered the presidential race in April 2015, when he told NPR that he would not be seeking reelection in the Senate because “if you’ve decided that you want to serve this country as its president, that’s what you should be running for”.
The freshman senator dedicated nearly all of his energy and resources during the final week of his campaign to winning Florida. Ted Cruz of Texas was “the only conservative left in the race”. But Rubio, who said in the past he wasn’t interested in a re-election campaign if his presidential bid fizzled, repeated that today.
Perhaps Rubio didn’t endorse Cruz outright because of the bitterness of their rivalry prior to their unwritten alignment to turn their focus on Trump some weeks ago.
Rubio predicted that Donald Trump would not be able to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination, saying “It doesn’t appear to be headed there”.
“I’m not going to be vice president, I’m not running for governor of Florida”.
The last time Rasmussen conducted a national survey, for instance, it found Trump at 36 percent, Rubio at 21 percent, Cruz at 17 percent, Kasich at 12 percent, and Ben Carson at 8 percent, roughly in line with the national average at the time. Still, he took the opportunity to cast himself as the anti-Trump: “American needs a conservative movement, but one that’s based on principles and ideas, not on fear”. Or he could have said, “We have to beat Donald Trump, and only Ted Cruz has a chance to do so”. He said he simply needs more time to know if a contested convention is likely and what it would mean for Rubio.
Trump has accumulated 673 Republican delegates since the primary and caucus process began, more than half the 1,237 required to clinch the GOP nomination. “It’s a very unusual political year”.
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“I chose a different route, and I am proud of that”, he said of the former rival’s campaign tactics”.
