The End of Marco-mentum
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/magazine/the-end-of-marco-mentum.html
The last time I saw Marco Rubio in person, he seemed to be on the verge of inheriting the charred Republican earth. It was Feb. 22, the day before the Nevada caucuses. We were aboard Rubio’s campaign plane, flying from Reno, Nev., to Las Vegas. Rubio is 44, but he can sometimes come off like an overgrown and hyperactive boy, jiggling his leg when he is otherwise still. He seemed to be in a sunny mood.
“This was a great day for us,” said Rubio, who had not yet resorted to making pee-pee jokes about the Donald. At the time, consensus was building among the pundit geniuses (whose consensuses are, of course, always correct) that Rubio was now the preferred alternative to Donald J. Trump....
I’ve been thinking about this choppy joy ride over Nevada as the final days of Marco-mentum, such as it ever was, now appear to be at hand. To date, Rubio has won in only Minnesota, Puerto Rico and, on Saturday, the District of Columbia. He sits in a distant third place in the delegate count, and the math is unforgiving: Even if Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out and Rubio won an average of 75 percent of the vote in the remaining states, he would still fall short of securing the nomination. His campaign has been fighting off daily reports that he is about to quit. He still trails Trump in Florida, where Rubio must win in Tuesday’s primary....
“This man has turned the most important election in a generation into a freak show,” Rubio told me a few days ago, referring to Trump. “And I allowed myself to get pulled into a portion of that, even if it was just for one day. And it’s not who I am.”