THE episode that encapsulated the Republican establishment’s capitulation to Donald Trump had been planned as a repudiation of him. It was when Senator Marco Rubio, in a bid to salvage his sinking candidacy in the 2016 Republican primaries, suggested that Mr Trump had a small penis. Formerly known as a high-minded conservative, Mr Rubio also mocked the Republican front-runner’s hair and “orange” skin. “Donald Trump likes to sue people,” he told a crowd in Virginia, ahead of the round of primaries that more or less sealed Mr Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination. “He should sue whoever did that to his face.”

Two years on, Mr Rubio is plotting a more elevated response to the earthquake Mr Trump has triggered on the right. In an hour-long interview he describes his plan for a new “reform conservative movement” devoted to addressing the economic disruption and social disaffection that the president vigorously described. In offering himself as an optimistic Reaganite, Mr Rubio acknowledges that he missed the “anxiety and anger” Mr Trump tapped into. “I spent a tremendous amount of time focused on the opportunities I had as the son of a bartender and a maid in the past century,” he says. “I didn’t spend nearly enough time talking about what the bartender and the maid face today.”

The details of Mr Rubio’s new programme are unclear, but he suggests they will involve more interventions such as the increased child tax credit he inserted into the tax reform passed last year, and a provision for paid family leave he is working on now. He mulls the need for more public spending on technological research and for education reform, to prioritise vocational skills. He advocates a more flexible benefit system, to help the retraining of disrupted workers. Against the magnitude of America’s income inequality, such measures might seem modest. Yet from the lips of an orthodox Republican leader, they imply a serious reconsideration of the pre-eminent conservative ideals: a minimal government role in the economy and a related view of liberty as “freedom from” government interference. “Government has an essential role to play in buffering this transition,” he says. “If we basically say everyone is on their own and the market’s going to take care of it, we will rip the country apart, because millions of good hardworking people lack the means to adapt.” Economic liberty, in this retelling, becomes something the government is required to guarantee. It is the freedom to enjoy “the dignity of work”, says Mr Rubio. “There needs to be a conservative movement that addresses these realities.”

His implication that Republicans have found no good answer to the problems Mr Trump described is irrefutable. The president’s scheme to revive the 1970s economy through protectionism and deregulation is unrealistic, as Mr Rubio—who these days dares not criticise Mr Trump—cannot help but acknowledge. “The future is going to happen,” he says. “I have no problem with bringing back American car-manufacturing facilities, but, whether they’re American robots or Mexican robots, they’re going to be highly automated.” Most Republican congressmen meanwhile remain entranced by the limited-government shibboleths he has shaken off, as his fight over the tax bill revealed. Mr Rubio’s proposal, to double the tax credit to $2,000 per child and pay for it by making a small increase to the corporate rate his party wanted, was decried by some Republicans as socialism. The watered-down version they accepted, as the price of Mr Rubio’s support for the bill, excluded the poorest families. “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” he says. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

That shows how resistant Mr Rubio’s party will be to the changes he wants. “I’m a minority within a minority,” he says. Yet he is well-able to argue for them. Though not as astute as Ben Sasse or articulate as Ted Cruz, he is an engaging communicator with broad appeal. Social conservatives adore him; pro-life and spikily partisan, he is no mushy centrist. Yet he retains a boyish earnestness that even Democrats find endearing. His golden back-story, as a son of poor immigrants, helps with that—and looks more relevant now than ever. “My relatives are firefighters and nurses and teachers and electricians,” he says. “These are people who are not all that excited about the new economy.”

A big moment for Little Marco

The question, as always with Mr Rubio, is: how serious is he? He has a record of taking enlightened positions—in backing intelligent climate-change policy, for example, and in his more recent support for immigration reform—then ditching them when the wind changes. His pitch also carries hints of that flakiness. He claims to have tempered his erstwhile enthusiasm for trade and immigration; in reality, he has little to say about either. That, in turn, raises another familiar question: is Mr Rubio repudiating Mr Trump or capitulating to him? The timing of his pitch is suspicious. He says his rethink reflects the truths he learned on the trail. But that was over two years ago. It might also be seen as a belated realisation, by a bruised but still-ambitious Republican, that the party of Trump will not return to conservative verities soon.

Even so, that underlines how important it is that Mr Rubio sees this through. He is not the only Republican taking a leaf from the president’s playbook. Yet in contrast to Trump acolytes such as Senator Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo, the incoming secretary of state, he is unlikely to trace the president’s steps from economic populism to ethno-nationalism. That is not only good in itself. It is also why, having no divisive rhetoric to fall back on, he might try hardest to find solutions to the problems Mr Trump highlighted. It is a lot to expect from a gifted politician with a history of disappointing. But he might be the best hope his party has.