http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... arco-rubio
yrs,The Plot to Destroy Marco Rubio
By Ryan Lizza
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Meanwhile, as conservatives shift between the stages, there’s an effort to figure out how things could have gone so wrong. This usually takes the form of blaming Trump’s rise on someone else. For a while, the main villain on the right was Barack Obama, whose failures, it has been argued, gave Trump his opening. You can read pundit versions of this case here, here, here, here, here, and here. But the most prominent member of the blame-Trump-on-Obama faction is undoubtedly Jeb Bush, who made the case recently in an interview with NPR:
I would argue that Donald Trump is in fact a creature of Barack Obama. … But for Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s effect would not be nearly as strong as it is. We’re living in a divided country right now, and we need political leaders, rather than continuing to divide as both President Obama and Donald Trump [do], to unite us.
It may be confusing to hear George W. Bush’s younger brother place the blame for political polarization entirely on Obama. In any event, a new argument explaining Trump’s rise and persistence atop the polls has been gaining currency in conservative circles this week: it’s Jeb’s fault. Stephen Hayes has the best articulation of the case in a piece in The Weekly Standard, where he writes that Jeb Bush’s Super PAC, Right to Rise, which raised more than a hundred million dollars last year, has spent most of its time nuking Marco Rubio while barely saying a word about Trump. This has had the perverse effect of knocking out—or at least knocking down—the person who may be most able to defeat Trump. As Hayes points out, Mike Murphy, Bush’s longtime adviser, who runs Right to Rise, explained the strategy in interviews last year with the Washington Post (“Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem”) and Bloomberg (“I’d love a two-way race with Trump at the end”).
As Bush sank and Rubio rose in the polls last fall, Bush’s theory of the race was that Rubio, the candidate many mainstream conservatives have championed as their best chance to defeat Trump and Ted Cruz, was his immediate obstacle. The Bush onslaught against Rubio may end up being the most expensive and sustained negative attack of 2016.
The Bush campaign rejects the theory. “Jeb has spent more money criticizing Trump than anyone, and he has laid out repeatedly the case that Trump is neither conservative nor fit to be Commander-in-Chief,” Tim Miller, Bush’s spokesman, said. “Every candidate has had the opportunity to take him on, and Jeb has chosen to do so in the most aggressive manner.”
Bush has indeed been more outspoken about Trump, while Rubio has generally avoided attacking the front-runner. But Bush’s Super PAC has been focussed on Rubio. In early December, Right to Rise ran an ad that targeted Cruz, Trump, and Rubio. The ad showed a picture of the President’s desk in the Oval Office. “When the attacks come here, the person behind this desk will have to protect your family,” a male announcer said. Behind the desk, slightly silly pictures of Bush’s three opponents were cropped into the picture, one after the other. “Will he be impulsive and reckless, like Donald Trump? Will he have voted to dramatically weaken counterterrorism surveillance, like Ted Cruz? Will he have skipped crucial national-security hearings and votes just to campaign, like Marco Rubio?” ... "
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