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Rubio: Romney 2.0

The Florida senator and 2012 GOP standard-bearer are largely in sync on policy. But Rubio and his backers believe his life story and storytelling talent make all the difference.

By Mike Zapler and Anna Palmer

At every campaign stop, Marco Rubio calls it “the biggest lie in American politics” — the notion that Republicans are the party of the super wealthy, and hopelessly out of touch with the working class and minorities.

The party, in other words, that Democrats eviscerated with Mitt Romney at the helm in 2012.

But strip away Rubio’s rags-to-presidential contender biography, and his candidacy has more than a little in common with Romney’s — from policy platforms that are largely in sync to a brain trust that boasts a number of the same key figures. When it comes to the substance of what he’d try to do in the job, at least, Rubio is not promising a sharp break from the most recent establishment favorite the party put forward.

“I think that they are very much on the same place on most of the issues,” said Vin Weber, a former House member and special adviser to Romney in 2012. On foreign policy, taxes and economic growth, “their positions are very similar, and on most of the other domestic and social issues, they come down the same place as well.”

The main difference between the two is in the messenger — which, of course, is enormous, and represents Rubio’s best hope of emerging from a bruising primary and ultimately winning the presidency. As he barnstormed South Carolina last week with the hopes of breaking away from the other establishment-aligned candidates, Rubio, more than any other candidate, thrust his biography to the forefront when making his case to voters.

From start to finish, every stump speech is laced with anecdotes of his compelling life story: son of a bartender and a maid who came to the country with nothing; the guy who’s lived paycheck to paycheck and carried student loans into his 40s. An unambiguous contrast to your typical Republican politician, much less the son of political royalty and corporate buyout specialist.

The message, capped last week when Rubio appeared onstage at a rally with the state’s Indian-American governor and African-American senator, is straightforward: We can’t afford to keep being your father’s Republican Party. And if you want to stop talking about expanding the GOP tent and actually do it — without compromising on principle — I’m your guy.

“Both John McCain and Mitt Romney ran as conservatives,” Rubio told reporters at one campaign event. So the problem isn’t so much the platform, he went on, it’s that “a lot of working-class Americans have concluded, after years of being told this, that Republicans only care about rich people. And that’s just not true.

“And I think that because of my background and where I come from, it gives me the standing to go to people who are living the way I grew up and say, ‘Look, I’m a conservative. I lived the way you’re living now. And here’s why I’m a conservative and here’s why I think you should be a conservative.”

More than any of his GOP rivals, Rubio’s candidacy is about his own story, much like Barack Obama’s was eight years ago. Rubio is banking on Republican voters concluding that the party’s main problem isn’t the product but the salesman — and that his compelling life tale and formidable talents as a raconteur can compensate for his youthful looks and relatively thin résumé.

So far it hasn’t been enough. Donald Trump and his break-the-china message trounced the field in South Carolina, though Rubio defied polling with his narrow second-place finish over Ted Cruz, the vessel for grass-roots, anti-Washington anger.

The danger of staking his chances so much to biography and speaking skills is that the fallout of any verbal miscue is magnified. Though Rubio promised his deer-in-the-headlights moment in the New Hampshire debate performance would be his last, the pressure will only intensify as the race continues. Some party leaders privately worry that Rubio could commit the same type of verbal gaffes that sank Romney in 2012. The concern is that Rubio could be portrayed as similarly robotic and out of touch as Romney was framed by Democrats — modest upbringing notwithstanding.

Rubio has tracked Romney in calling for changes to entitlements, a beefed-up military and a robust foreign policy. His tax plan has some important differences — like Rubio’s $2,500-per-child tax credit — but predominantly benefits top earners.

Oren Cass, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Romney’s top domestic policy director, said Rubio and Romney have very similar policy prescriptions, though on certain issues, like tax policy, they focus on different things.

“I think on the substance of the agenda that Sen. Rubio is running on is very similar to Gov. Romney’s,” Cass said. “If you go through the details of [Rubio’s] website, how he frames Medicare reforms, labor policy reforms, it echoes very directly how we would talk about those issues and think about those issues.”

The differences are more on emphasis, according to Cass, who pointed to Rubio’s focus on anti-poverty policy, which was not a major issue in 2012.

And while Rubio often talks on the campaign trail about how he wasn’t the establishment pick, a significant number of former Romney advisers and aides now work for Rubio, including his top aide, Terry Sullivan. Sullivan was in charge of running Romney’s South Carolina primary operation for his 2008 presidential bid.

The ties go beyond that. Romney’s former political director Rich Beeson serves as deputy campaign manager for Rubio. Lanhee Chen of the Hoover Institute worked as Romney’s policy director and now serves as a policy adviser to Rubio. And Rubio’s political director, Jessica Ennis, was Romney’s deputy operations director.

On Rubio’s finance team, Annie Baker and Eli Miller also worked for Romney’s 2012 campaign. And Rubio’s outside strategists also have Romney links, including Poolhouse Digital, which is run by two Romney alums: Will Ritter and Tim O’Toole.

From a different vantage point, though, comparing Romney to Rubio is like saying a Mercedes and a Ford are alike because they’re both cars. The amenities matter a lot. So does the candidate.

The belief among Rubio supporters is that his background would provide some cover against the inevitable Democratic attacks that dismantled Romney.

Aside from his $2,500-per-child tax credit — a big part of his pitch to lower- and middle-class families that The Wall Street Journal dubbed “an expensive political pander” — Rubio’s plan differs from Romney’s in other respects. Rubio wouldn’t lower the tax rate for top earners as much as Romney wanted. But the Florida senator would eliminate taxes on investment income for everyone, whereas Romney wanted to do so only for people making under $200,000. In that respect, Rubio’s tax cut proposal is actually more conservative than Romney’s.

“Romney kept those taxes in for the richest because it would look unfair. Clearly it would be [politically] difficult to cut taxes for oneself,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. “Rubio, being from more modest means, maybe doesn’t” have that problem. “He can do more to propose policies he sees as pro-growth because he’s perhaps less worried about that line of attack.”

Put differently, it’s trickier to go after a guy who has experienced financial hardship firsthand than the onetime head of Bain Capital.

Todd Harris, a senior adviser to Rubio’s campaign, said he doesn’t buy the Romney comparison.

“When is the last time you heard a Republican talk about paid family leave?” he said. “When is the last time you heard a Republican candidate talk about the burden of student loans? When is the last time you heard a Republican candidate talk about vocational education?”