Marco Rubio may resign for presidential run, report says

The Independent reports that Marco Rubio "is on resignation watch from both sides of the Atlantic in the expectation he will quit to lauch a bid to be the next US President".

The article cites "senior party sources in the US and senior figures in the UK government" and says Rubio was planning his exit even before the disastrous midterm elections.

Rival JD Vance has already separated himself from Trump by adopting an anti-war stance and blaming the Iran war for the Republicans' losses. However, both Vance and Rubio defended the war during its first nine months, making it difficult for them to now present themselves as war opponents.

According to The Independent, as many as five members of Trump's cabinet are considering presidential runs. As for Rubio, a source said he needs to "distance himself from the Iran war and pin that one on Trump."

I had expected Rubio to remain as Secretary of State longer because Cuba has been a longtime focus for him and the US appears to be planning regime change there. Rubio's family emigrated from Cuba before Fidel Castro's revolution.

In betting markets, Ron DeSantis's odds have improved sharply this week as he offers critiques of the administration from an outsider perspective.

This is the nature of politics: now that the Iran war is seen as a failure, no one will want to take responsibility for it. Meanwhile, none of them resigned when the war began in February, so Vance and Rubio will be vulnerable to attacks from candidates who say they were never the "America First" politicians they claimed to be.

At the same time, if any of them distances too much from Trump, he will become thin-skinned and sabotage their campaigns. That dynamic may make it easier for outsiders to take over the party leadership.

However, given the primary results, the real battle for a Republican president in the next election may depend on policymaking over the next two years. If tariffs, inflation and the Iran war persist into 2028, it is hard to imagine any of them having a real chance given Tuesday's results.