President Trump reportedly likes to go around asking aides about who his successor should be: J. D. Vance or Marco Rubio. If Trump were to ask his own voters the same question, he would, at least based on my recent experience, come away with a pretty clear answer.
I run weekly focus groups, and the moderators regularly ask Trump voters whom they would like to see inherit the party in 2028 and beyond. More and more, what we’re hearing in response is a strange new respect for Rubio. Although Vance might seem like a more natural MAGA heir, many Trump voters see Rubio as a stabilizing force who comes off a lot better than many of his peers inside the administration, including the vice president.
“Marco Rubio, I think, is an amazing dude,” said Ken, a Biden 2020/Trump 2024 voter from Georgia. “If anybody is left that we can see on the TV or C-SPAN that’s just genuine,” he said, “it’s Marco Rubio.” Ken called Rubio “a family man and still a stand-up politician,” and said, “He also is about putting America first, which I agree with.” (To protect participants’ privacy, we disclose only their first name.)
In a recent group of Republican Jewish voters, Boris from Texas called Rubio “a real statesman in my eyes.” Steve from Florida said, “Marco Rubio, my former senator, is doing great as secretary of state. He will be a great president too.” And Andrea from Georgia said, “Marco Rubio’s been, like, killing it from an international-policy perspective.”
[Read: Trump voters are over it]
This is not what I would have expected, based on all my years of listening to Republican voters, who tend to abhor politicians of the pre-Trump vintage. Rubio was the driving Republican force behind the last serious push for comprehensive immigration reform, in 2013. He stood as the avatar for the new wave of moderate, sunny-dispositioned conservatism that was supposed to inherit the party after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss. He was a staunch defender of NATO and of America’s role as a force for global stability. His 2016 campaign slogan was “A New American Century.” (He was, I admit, my preferred candidate for much of the Republican primary that year.)
All of this is repellent to today’s Republican base, and anyone who has observed the past decade of American politics might have assumed that Rubio’s future political aspirations were DOA. Vance, who has spent the past several years reinventing himself as an isolationist, “America First” nationalist, seems more in step with the current iteration of the Republican Party. But that’s not what I’m hearing in the groups.
The first line of thinking among Rubio’s fans goes something like this: Because he has so many different jobs, he must be competent. Rubio currently serves as secretary of state and national security adviser, and until recently he served as acting USAID administrator and acting archivist of the United States. Voters see the memes tweaking Rubio for having such a laughable number of important titles and think he must be doing something right.
“He’s wearing multiple hats right now,” said Dave, a two-time Trump voter from West Virginia. “I think he’s doing a good job in his role. I think he speaks well.” He went on: “I’d prefer to see him continue to stay in one of these State Department roles. Or if Trump makes him the new ayatollah or something, maybe he can do that as well.”
Another reason voters seem to like Rubio: They see him as the “adult in the room.” This is understandable. Looking smart and sober is relatively easy when you’re surrounded by the likes of Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Even Trump himself—with his garbled speech and incoherent ramblings—makes his underlings seem more credible by comparison. All of that accrues to Rubio’s benefit.
“Marco Rubio, when you look at the totality of who surrounds Trump, and particularly as it relates to defense and international policy—he seems the most normal,” said Adam, a two-time Trump voter from California.
“He seems more human than a lot of the other characters,” Lateefah, a Biden 2020/Trump 2024 voter from Texas said. “Like Hegseth—I am not a fan of him, as well as Kennedy.”
Vance, by contrast, is getting more and more criticism from the voters who elected him. They’ve picked up on the fact that the vice president has had a bad month: squabbling with the pope, getting heckled at a Turning Point USA event, campaigning with Viktor Orbán just days before his historic defeat.
And then there’s the war in Iran. On the campaign trail, Vance positioned himself as the high priest of “America First” isolationism. But he has tied himself in knots to avoid criticizing the conflict. Not only that, Trump designated him to lead the peace talks, which collapsed in less than a full day, while the president attended a UFC fight with Rubio.
Inauthenticity is a kiss of death with today’s voters, and Vance’s future prospects appear to be dimming as Americans watch him shape-shift in real time.
“I loved his backstory. I read and liked Hillbilly Elegy,” Andrew, a Biden 2020/Trump 2024 voter from Pennsylvania, said in an April 8 focus group. “Since he’s entered politics, I don’t have a clear sense of what he personally stands for.”
Adam, the two-time Trump voter from California, told us in an April 2 group that Vance, in his Hillbilly Elegy days, “seemed like an interesting figure.” But, Adam said, “I think the well is poisoned. I think that he sold his soul in a way, and he’s adopting the divisive, dismissive stance that his boss does, to curry favor, secure his position. So unfortunately, he revealed a part of himself that there’s no returning from.” (Adam likewise has lost faith in the president.)
When we asked Ken, the Georgia voter who supported Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, about his preferred candidate for 2028, he said, “If you’re giving me a choice outside of Rubio, I would’ve said Vance, until it just seems like he lost his backbone.”
Rubio, too, has compromised his principles and remade himself as a Trump acolyte. But while Vance flails, Rubio is presenting himself as a ruthless executor of Trump’s will—most notably through his involvement with the successful capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It also helps Rubio that voters’ memories just aren’t that long. Many young voters in our groups don’t remember Rubio from the Before Times. They see only the Rubio of today, and view him as a staunch and unapologetic Trump ally.
Sam from Minnesota, a Gen Z Trump 2024 voter, captured a common feeling that I hear among this cohort: “ I just don’t like Vance a lot. I think he has flip-flopped on issues. If you look at what he was about in 2018, 2019, or 2020, and you look at what he’s about now, it’s very, very different.” Asked who he’d like to see run in 2028, Sam said, “I’d love to see Marco Rubio.”
What I’m hearing in these groups, it’s worth noting, reflects the views of people inside Trump’s coalition who are mostly still riding with him. The hardcore “America First” crowd—followers of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes—are in a different place entirely. They are in open rebellion against Trump for the Iran war and its economic consequences, and they regard Rubio as complicit in those sins.
[Sarah Longwell: The disappointment of young Trump voters]
It’s way too soon to say whether Rubio is going to be the Republican heir apparent, but he might be the candidate who has leveraged the second Trump administration to his advantage the most. He has juggled his multiple high-level posts, and presented himself to the party faithful as a competent operator who is seen as, if not entirely honest and upright, then less of a disappointment than Vance. And he appears to enjoy Trump’s confidence, at least for now.
It can be tempting to read all of this and think that, in 2028, the GOP might be due for a reset—that maybe Rubio’s ascension will get the party back to its pre-Trump norm. Certainly a lot of the president’s defenders in the anti-anti-Trump camp would like to believe so.
They’re wrong. The party isn’t reverting back to Rubio; it’s Rubio who’s changed to meet the party. All it took for Rubio to get into the position he’s in was to sell out his principles, betray America’s leadership role in the world, and deliver on his boss’s authoritarian demands. He even reportedly put on oversize shoes to please Trump.
In 2016, Rubio called Trump a “con artist” and a “third-world strongman” who is running the “biggest scam in American political history.” He was right. He also said Trump “will never get control of this party.” He was wrong.
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