Marco Rubio Gets Party’s Blessing, but Not Voters

He just can’t seem to convince the voters.

His distant second-place finish in Nevada on Tuesday night — 22 points behind Mr. Trump and just 2.5 ahead of Senator Ted Cruz — highlights how precarious his path forward is becoming and the profound difficulty Mr. Rubio faces as the candidate of the party’s pragmatic mainstream in a year of voter anger and rejection.

Mr. Rubio’s time — and opportunities for victory — are quickly running out, according to even his own supporters, who are offering increasingly candid assessments of his chances.

“It’s not going to be easy for Marco Rubio to do it.” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, who endorsed Mr. Rubio on Tuesday. “There is no doubt that right now Trump is the favorite.”

With four states having voted, Mr. Rubio has not won a single contest or managed to commandingly defeat Mr. Cruz, despite his formidable advantages. In South Carolina he campaigned with a popular governor who had endorsed him. In Nevada, he constantly reminded voters of the six years his family had lived in Las Vegas.

Even those who have sketched out possible paths for Mr. Rubio to win the nomination acknowledge that they are quirky and slender, dependent on forces mostly outside of his control.

And it is only going to get trickier. Mr. Rubio faces inhospitable territory next week in the Super Tuesday contests — states like Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma, where Mr. Trump could again eclipse him. What could be worse yet for Mr. Rubio is these are also states where Mr. Cruz is poised to do well.

Mr. Rubio, aides said, needs Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio to quit the campaign — which the Ohio governor has shown little inclination to do. He needs almost all the supporters of both Mr. Kasich and Jeb Bush, who dropped out on Saturday, to switch their allegiance to him.

And Mr. Rubio’s entire strategy could be in mortal danger if he fails to win Florida or Ohio, the two delegate-rich, winner-take-all primaries scheduled for March 15. Mr. Trump’s popularity in Florida and Mr. Kasich’s home-state advantage in Ohio could put both states out of his reach.

With that hazardous map in mind, Mr. Rubio’s campaign is making an increasingly explicit, urgent and desperate case to the party’s electorate that it is time to unite behind his candidacy. The campaign is doing so with public gestures and private pleading. 

In an interview, Mr. Coleman said Mr. Kasich should leave the race for the good of the party, echoing a memo from Mr. Rubio’s campaign manager, who argued a few days ago that Mr. Kasich has no realistic pathway to the Republican nomination.

Mr. Rubio’s backers speak of basing their hopes on a winnowed Republican field that may never exist, at least in time for him to prevail.

“If it were just Trump versus Rubio, Rubio would win that or have a very good shot at winning,” said Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota and a Republican presidential candidate in 2012. “It’s not a question of whether he can win it, it’s whether the field will consolidate and give him that chance.”

Mr. Rubio could still find a way to the nomination. Mr. Cruz’s campaign is struggling with a growing image of deceitfulness and Mr. Trump remains an unpredictable figure.

Advisers to Mr. Rubio are quick to point out that he has placed second in the last two contests, no matter how slim the margin, and that polls show he remains the overwhelming second choice for most Republican voters. Now, after arguing that the results in Iowa and South Carolina effectively narrowed the primary to a three-man race, his team is suggesting that his finish in Nevada has turned it into a two-man contest with Mr. Trump.

That may be wishful thinking, particular given how distant his second-place finish was on Tuesday.

But projecting an aura of victory and confidence, even if the election returns suggest otherwise, is a key part of the Rubio campaign’s strategy. On Saturday night, even before they knew what the results in South Carolina would be — whether Mr. Rubio would finish second or third — campaign officials were acting publicly as if they had already won. They distributed news stories about how Mr. Rubio was surging, and they boldly reminded voters of the state’s track record in predicting winners.

Still, the Rubio campaign risks underestimating the breadth of Mr. Trump’s appeal by dismissing him as the latest incarnation of Pat Buchanan, another conservative populist who made a strong showing with Republican primary voters early on in 1992 but ultimately faltered.

Mr. Bush tried to project a similar air of inevitability to his campaign. Party elders quickly lined up behind him. The biggest Republican donors signed on. And his supporters were making many of the same arguments: In a campaign as unpredictable as this one, we are the safe, sane alternative who will unite the 70 percent of the party that appears to dislike Mr. Trump.

Mr. Rubio himself has been making this argument and boldly claiming the nomination is his to lose. “I am going to be the nominee,” he said aboard his campaign plane on Monday as he crisscrossed Nevada.

“We’ve shown the capability to grow,” he added. “Six months ago we weren’t at 20 or 25 percent. We were at 6 and 7 and 8 and 9.”

In a telling sign, he now entertains detailed questions about his path to the nomination almost every day, something he routinely shied from earlier in the campaign.

Over the past 48 hours, he has rolled out dozens of endorsements from current and former Republican governors, senators and representatives to showcase what his aides describe as a coalescing of responsible and respected party figures around his candidacy.

But it can sometimes feel like Republicans are falling in line, not in love.

Mr. Coleman, for example, had previously endorsed Senator Lindsey Graham and, Mr. Bush before backing Mr. Rubio. And Mr. King held off until Mr. Bush exited the race. Nevada’s governor, Brian Sandoval, a Republican, said Tuesday that he had voted for Mr. Rubio, but cautioned against viewing that as an endorsement.

Republican leaders speak warmly of Mr. Rubio’s gifts as an orator, his knowledge of foreign policy and the diversity that he would bring to a Republican party dominated by white men. “He can communicate the conservative message in a way that is inviting and not scary,” said Mr. Pawlenty. “It draws people in.”

But perhaps his biggest asset is that he is not Mr. Trump.

“If my kids called people fat pigs, stupid moron, I’d chastise them,” said Mr. Coleman. He said he had a hard time imagining that “our standard-bearer articulating that is going to be appealing to a majority of Americans.”

But with each passing contest, these supporters acknowledge, it becomes harder to make the case that Mr. Rubio is capable of winning the general election when he cannot come close to prevailing in a Republican contest.

“Folks recognize that we have time,” said Mr. Coleman, “but not a lot of time to right this course and rally around somebody who can win this.”