Rubio's path

Marco Rubio's remarkable fundraising haul — $3.6 million this quarter, he just announced — is a reminder of the scale of his stardom inside the Republican Party, all of whose core constituencies seem to like the guy.

He's already hearing every day (and brushing it off) that he should run for president in 2012, and at the inevitable moment in the cycle (as in every party, every cycle) when Republicans panic about their field of nominees, he's likely to be uniquely attractive: young, conservative, Hispanic and from a swing state besides.

The buzz for a Rubio candidacy is broad, and deep. Observers like Matt Lewis have made the case publicly, and my impression is that if a swath of conservative leaders haven't talked up his candidacy, it's only because they haven't been asked. I was talking to the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land earlier this year for another story when he brought Rubio up, unasked.

"The longer nobody catches fire, the more space there is for Marco," he said. "It wouldn’t be unheard of for a freshman senator from Florida to be the nominee — particularly one who was speaker of the [Florida Assembly].

"He's got more experience than Obama had," Land continued. "There are a lot of Hispanics in this country who would find someone with Marco’s ethnic background very appealing. Although I like Sarah [Palin], I think Sarah’s got a lot more impediments to a nomination than Marco Rubio does."

I was surprised to hear it from Land, a leading figure on the Christian right, with which Rubio hasn't been particularly associated. Rubio is more generally seen as the darling of the Wall Street-financed Club for Growth and of the fiscally oriented tea party movement. But Land said he'd heard a great deal about Rubio from Baptist ministers in Florida, who said "he walks the walk."

The echoes of Obama are unmistakable, and the context of Obama both removes Rubio's youth and inexperience as issues and intensifies the Republican need for a new face. Now, though, what Rubio needs is an easy race. We're two years out from the presidential campaign, not — as Obama was — four, and Rubio would need the luxury (which Obama had, and John Thune has) of a campaign so easy that he can spend parts of this fall in other states, doing favors and testing waters. He'll also, of course, need to get past Gov. Charlie Crist, who has already begun to bloody up the former speaker.

The speed of Rubio's rise, if he wins the primary, will depend largely on Democrats and on Rep. Kendrick Meek. Meek is often seen as a relatively week nominee and hasn't gotten much attention amid the hard fought Republican primary. But Democratic strategists say that Rubio is so conservative that any general election will be a challenge for him, and they're already laying the groundwork for attacking him in a state full of retirees for his interest in private-sector involvement in Social Security. A presidential bid would depend, I think, on flukish, Obama-style luck that lets him glide into the Senate.