Campaign Strategy of Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio is a young, energetic Republican candidate whose strategy seems to include appealing to a fairly wide range of constituents. Rubio’s conservative views on abortion, gun laws, and the scope of government make him popular with Tea-Partiers. He is also very open and verbal about his faith, frequently posting on his website and his Twitter snippets or videos of him discussing and defending his faith, as well as stating that his faith is the greatest influence on his life, which appeals to Christian voters. Rubio’s campaign website stresses his focus on the importance of the family in America, serving both to humanize him as well as appeal to the voter who is also concerned with the importance of family. Rubio’s strategies fairly successfully appeal to these three fairly similar constituent groups; however, what is interesting are Rubio’s strategies to attract the attention and favor of other constituent groups to whom his policies do not particularly appeal.

One strategy, which seems fairly simplistic and truly somewhat lazy, is simply asserting that he appeals to a constituent group. This strategy has been employed in regards to Millennials.  On Rubio’s campaign website are links to articles, both written by his own team and by others, with headlines such as “Check It Out: Millenials For Marco,” as well as re-Tweets on his Twitter of pictures from Rubio support rallies on college campuses and one or two Tweets from Millennials stating support for Rubio. This strategy is interesting to me because it seems so obvious. Exaggerating and heavily publicizing the relatively small (small in relation to Millennial support for other candidates such as Bernie Sanders) amount of support from Millennials, in conjunction with asserting that Rubio appeals to Millennials seems like such an obvious and simplistic strategy that it could not possibly be effective. I shutter at the idea that the American public is so impressionable that such a truly obvious scheme would successfully gain a significant amount of support. However, much to my disappointment, it seems that this strategy is somewhat effective for Rubio. Should one visit Rubio’s website, look at his Twitter feed, or listen to him speak, without prior research, one would likely believe that he truly does appeal to Millennials.

Rubio has also recently attempted to appeal to Trump supporters by commending Trump’s ability to “tap into some of the anger that’s out there” regarding Muslims entering America. Rubio’s policy on immigration is not nearly as strict as Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from America, however, when asked about Trump’s plan, Rubio made it sound as if he supported it. Again, an example of the type of political communication which takes advantage of the ignorance of voters. Is this 100% honest? No; but is it the kind of blurring of lines that gets people elected? Yes.