Republican candidate Marco Rubio has dropped out of the race for the presidency following his loss in the Florida (his home state) primary.
He delivered a speech in Miami after the announcement. He spoke of his loss to Trump and of the current turmoil of the Republican Party:
“We live in a republic and our voters make these decisions. … America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami, and we should have seen this coming.”
Nonetheless, he continues to assert his superiority:
“While we are on the right side, this year, we will not be on the winning side.”
Watch the entire speech:
Rubio’s primary strategy had been to appeal to the young and minority voters. However, the latter parts of his campaign were mired in relative embarrassment and controversy. He spoke of a conversation with his daughters about his juvenile insults directed toward Trump, referencing the mud-slinging that has enveloped the Republican Party’s candidates:
“I kind of said, ‘Gosh, you know what? It even got to me.’ And I’m someone who’s run this whole campaign trying to be above all that stuff. For a brief moment, it even got to me.”
Throughout his campaign, his slogan was “A New American Century.” This was, in a sense, a way of referencing that he was a relatively young candidate. Rubio began turning heads in 2010, when he was elected a senator of Florida after supporting the Tea Party movement. More recently, however, he lost the support of many Republicans when he failed to effectively alter immigration policy in 2013 as part of the “Gang of Eight.”
Rubio and his campaign had planned victories in the early primaries, and to use this influence to overtake other Republican front-runners. However, he only succeeded in gaining Minnesota during this year’s Super Tuesday. Notably, he also predicted that Trump’s campaign would lose momentum. Trump now stands along with Ted Cruz as a Republican front-runner.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
