Marco Rubio has exited the national stage for the time being. The U.S. senator from Florida suspended his presidential campaign Tuesday night after a crushing loss in the GOP primary in his home state.
For a man Time magazine once hailed as "The Republican Savior," Rubio fell well short of expectations. Out of 32 contests held thus far, he won only three: Minnesota, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. He ended his run with only 172 delegates, whereas front-runner Donald Trump currently has 691.
Rubio came close to winning the Virginia primary, capturing 31.9 percent of the vote to Trump's 34.7 percent.
But the bulk of Rubio's support in Virginia came from the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the northern part of the state; he won the counties of Fairfax, Arlington, Loudon and Prince William, all of which contain large populations of federal government employees. Trump won almost all other Virginia counties, apart from the Richmond area.
The fact that Rubio carried northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., can mean only one thing, according to award-winning journalist Cheryl Chumley.
"That just proves that Rubio was definitely the Republican establishment candidate," Chumley told WND. "He's got the government crowd."
Chumley, author of the new book "The Devil in DC: Winning Back the Country from the Beast in Washington," lives in northern Virginia and has seen the area turn decidedly Democrat in recent years. She noted that as the federal government has grown during the Obama years, more and more Americans have flocked to the D.C. suburbs hoping to find a job, especially as private-sector jobs have become scarcer across the rest of the country. Even federal workers who lean Republican depend on the government for their livelihood, so they are less likely to support a candidate who is serious about reducing the size and power of government.
"And so Rubio winning these areas just underscores the fact that he was so establishment, despite his repeated attempts to show himself as a staunch conservative," said Chumley, a WND staff writer.
She mentioned Rubio was a leading proponent of the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Rubio tried to back away from the bill on the campaign trail, but most blue-collar Americans apparently weren't fooled; they cast their votes elsewhere. Even Rubio's own constituents in Florida voted overwhelmingly for Trump, 45.8 percent to Rubio's 27 percent.
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Republican voters just aren't in the mood to blindly follow the party elites' preferred candidate, according to Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review.
"I think the first thing that's very important is what people are not voting for," Horowitz told WND. "And what's very clear they're not voting for is Republicanism."
Horowitz, author of the forthcoming book "Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America," pointed out Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have combined to capture more than 60 percent of the vote in most primaries and more than 70 percent in several states. Both candidates have positioned themselves as enemies of the GOP establishment.
"They are definitely perceived by anyone voting for them as outsiders and people who will burn down the status quo of the Republican elites," Horowitz said of Trump and Cruz. "So that's abundantly clear what [voters] want."
But leaders of the GOP establishment refuse to learn their lesson from the success of Trump and Cruz, according to Horowitz.
"They take a look at this and then say not, 'How can we change and make ourselves more viable to the voter?' It's, 'How can we make an end run around the wishes of the voters?'"
Horowitz contends it speaks to a fundamental difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.
"The Democratic Party looks at their base and they say, 'How can we harness the power and energy of our base to go and defeat the other side, to defeat conservatives and implement our agenda?'" Horowitz said. "Republicans don't do the same. They look at their base and say, 'How can we make an end run around them and how can we undermine them? How can we slip under their legs so they don't see what we're doing so we can continue to pursue power?'"
Republican elites may seek power, but they don't necessarily do all they can to win, according to veteran journalist Jerome Corsi, a WND senior staff writer.
"The GOP establishment does not mind a Democrat winning the White House," said Corsi. "They voted for Rubio in Washington, D.C., and the others not because they really wanted Rubio to be president, but because it was a vote for an establishment GOP choice."
Corsi, a New York Times best-selling author of many books, said he agrees with Phyllis Schlafly's assessment that the GOP is not a conservative party and never has been. In modern times, he said, the party has been dominated by multinational corporations that want corporate governance. Meanwhile, GOP elites have lost touch with the base of their party – and they can't stop spending, either.
"Truly, the GOP establishment in D.C. is a branch of the Democratic Party, and it's become a centrist branch of what is now the far-left Democratic Party," Corsi said.
Horowitz agreed with Corsi, saying the Republican establishment is basically going through the motions of opposition at this point.
"Democrats seek fundamental transformation through their agenda; Republicans don't try to counter that agenda and push their own," Horowitz explained. "It's a matter of, in their mind, just treading water in the Washington swamp as an end in itself.
"So they have not shown any signs of changing."