Walker presents new test for Rubio

Scott Walker’s formal launch of his White House bid on Monday will open a new challenge for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Early polling results and fundraising figures suggest the Wisconsin governor is in the huge GOP field’s top tier for 2016, along with Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the closest thing the Republican race currently has to a front-runner.

{mosads}Bush is a strong favorite among the GOP establishment, and his deep pockets should enable him to survive an early shock or two. That leaves Walker and Rubio vying against each other.

“I think there is tremendous overlap between Walker and Rubio in terms of who they want to appeal to,” said Jamie Burnett, a longtime GOP strategist in New Hampshire who is personally supporting Bush but does not work for his campaign. 

“Walker and Rubio haven’t exactly figured out who their voters are. They have a foot in the Tea Party world and a foot in the establishment world.”

The rivalry between the two politicians has sometimes bubbled to the surface. Walker has, on a number of occasions, suggested Rubio could serve as his vice president. As The Washington Post noted on Wednesday, Rubio has shot back on at least one occasion, telling a crowd in New Hampshire, “A Walker-Rubio ticket may be fine, but it’s got to be in alphabetical order.”

The VP jabs are not all that lighthearted. For each man, suggesting the other could serve as his deputy is a not-so-subtle way of suggesting his opponent is not as seasoned as he needs to be. Walker partisans can emphasize Rubio is a first-term senator; their counterparts imply the Wisconsin governor is dangerously unfamiliar with foreign policy.

The jockeying for position is expected to be particularly intense, according to GOP insiders, because they hold some appeal to many different strands of Republican opinion.

“We know where [Sen. Ted] Cruz gets his vote: It’s narrow and it’s deep and it’s unlikely to change,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak, alluding to the Texas Republican’s appeal to the right flank of the party. “With Walker, he gets some from the Tea Party, some from mainstream Republicans, some from evangelicals. With Rubio, I don’t think his base is ideologically narrow — it’s pretty broad. They compete with each other in that respect.”

Rubio has one important vulnerability unshared with Walker: While the Wisconsin governor is the favorite to win Iowa’s caucuses, Rubio is not the clear favorite there nor in the next three contests, in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

The RealClearPolitics polling averages in Iowa and New Hampshire have Rubio tied for fourth and fifth, respectively. In South Carolina, he does worse, though a paucity of recent polls makes the average there a less useful guide.

“He is a candidate that doesn’t have a firm foundation,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “Where is he going to compete? What issues is he going to hash out as the things he is going to run on?”

“He could go through the first four states and win none of them,” agreed Mackowiak. “He needs at least one second place. Money and potential is not enough. This field is too large and too strong.”

The huge field, which will include 15 candidates with Walker’s entry, complicates matters for everyone, experts say, because it makes the process of patching together a winning coalition more difficult. That task could become easier after the first few contests, as lagging contenders abandon their bids. But that only makes a strong performance in those early states even more important.

This, in turn, raises the chances of the Republican candidates going negative against one another as the first battles draw near — something the contenders, with the exception of Donald Trump, have largely avoided doing so far.

There can be risks to such a strategy, principally that voters are put off by all the negativity and instead coalesce behind someone else entirely. This phenomenon was seen on the Democratic side back in 2004, when former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and then-Rep. Richard Gephardt (Mo.) attacked each other vigorously in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, only for then-Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) to come through the center and win.

Both Walker and Rubio have soft spots that the other might prod, beyond lack of experience in certain areas. Wisconsin’s indifferent economic performance does not help Walker’s case, nor does Rubio’s previous support for immigration reform assist him with the GOP primary electorate.

Given the stakes, many observers believe attacks are only a matter of time.

“I don’t know who the front-runners will be in October, November, December,” said Burnett, the New Hampshire strategist. “But if Walker or Rubio here or in Iowa or South Carolina want to be seen as a ‘finalist,’ there is not room enough for two of them. They’re going to go at each other.

“Right now, Rubio and Walker seem to me like they’re on a collision course.”