The Florida senator's risible answer on evolution, and his claim to be BFFs with Jim DeMint, show a man with 2016 on his mind

Marco Rubio's transition from Tea Party upstart to Reaganesque presidential heavyweight is still a work in progress, judging by the Florida senator's otherworldly responses to an interview published in GQ.

Aside from the rituals of politics that are dispensed with in the interview, Rubio has unusually strong views on the history and nature of hip-hop for a Republican senator. One can't imagine his caucus colleague Chuck Grassley, the 79-year-old senator from Iowa, responding as Rubio did:

GQ: Did you have a favourite Afrika Bambaataa song?

Rubio: All the normal ones. People forget how dominant Public Enemy became in the mid '80s. No one talks about how transformative they were.

Then again, Rubio isn't likely to have tweeted, as Grassley did: "Assume deer dead," after reporting a collision on the back roads of Iowa.

But having paid homage to his family, his upbringing and the need for the Republican party to make a better connection with voters – "We have not done a good enough job of communicating to people what conservatism is," Rubio says, blandly, to GQ's Michael Hainey – Rubio then inadvertently offered a preview of the harsh realities of winning a presidential primary campaign among Republican grassroots.

The first hint that Rubio has his eyes on the 2016 prize comes in his answer to an innocuous question: "How old do you think the earth is?" And here, in full, is Rubio's answer:

I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the earth was created in seven days, or seven actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Rubio's first response, "I'm not a scientist, man," threatens to become a career-defining meme, if such a thing still exists in the millisecond-attention span of the internet. But his second take – "I think that's a dispute among theologians" – raises questions about his comprehension.

For all the hilarity over Rubio's risible remarks, there are one thing to be borne in mind: Rubio is answering with a wink towards the Christian conservative bloc that remains a formidable bedrock of the modern Republican party – and whose members vote in significant numbers in GOP primaries as well as believing that the earth is about 6,000 years old, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The "I'm not a scientist, man," response is not even the most nakedly political answer that Rubio gives here. After throwing up his hands at any dispute that the earth might not have been created as the Bible lays out, Rubio fails to cope with an even more innocent question: "Who's your best friend?" Rubio's first answer is a politician's equivalent of a bunt: "My wife," he says, adding somewhat mechanically: "We talk every day," as if that needed saying – although perhaps it does in the post-Petraeus era.

But when pressed for a best friend besides his wife, Rubio can't keep 2016 out of his thoughts:

[South Carolina Senator] Jim DeMint. He's a great source of wisdom as a person who's had to make decisions that have made him unpopular in his own party. Jeb Bush is another guy I admire for his ability to analyze issues and call them for what they are.

So there we are: Marco Rubio's best friends are his wife and the hard-nosed conservative folk hero Jim DeMint, grand-daddy of the Tea Party and senator from the great state of South Carolina, which, coincidentally, holds the first big Republican party primary, followed by a popular former governor of Florida and possible 2016 rival. At this rate, Jeanette Rubio will be lucky to make her husband's "BFF" list in a year's time.

And as for Marco Rubio's presidential ambitions – as a transformative hip-hop group once said: "Don't believe the hype."