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"Some observers, including both liberals and conservatives, have sometimes referred to Rubio as the “Republican Obama,” but Lewis goes beyond this and essentially argues that Rubio should run for President fresh off of a Senate election victory he has not yet won because this is what Obama did after he was elected to the Senate. By promoting Rubio as a desirable presidential candidate this early, Lewis would evidently like to see an even less experienced state legislator seek his party’s presidential nomination. Obama causes a very strange reaction in Republicans. On the one hand, they want to regard him as a joke and an incompetent, but they also desperately want to find someone who can imitate his appeal and success, and so it is almost as if they go out of their way to anoint whatever young politician they come across as their new hero and then disregard all of the person’s liabilities by saying, “Well, he’s no more inexperienced than Obama was” or “She’s still better than Obama!” It is an odd mix of contempt for Obama mixed with admiration for Obama’s success and an even stranger need to outdo him in the categories that originally caused them to view Obama so poorly. So Rubio is touted because he is even more inexperienced, Palin is held up because she knows even less about policy, and so on."

-Daniel Larison, Eunomia
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