Ivanka's plan to run against Marco Rubio is doomed from the start: columnist

In a column for The Week, analyst Eric Garcia made the claim that, should Ivanka Trump decide to primary Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2022, her chances of winning are slim for a multitude of reasons.

Now that the first daughter and her husband Jared Kushner have moved to Florida since Manhattan -- where they are deeply unpopular -- is out of the question, rumors have swirled that Ivanka has her eye on Rubio's Senate seat as a launching pad for her own run for president one day.

However, as Garcia wrote, she faces multiple obstacles including polling that shows she's not as popular as she thinks she is.

"Ivanka's public persona and track record as both a campaign surrogate and White House official mean she may not be a guaranteed heir to her father's #MAGA crown," he wrote before explaining, "The biggest and most obvious part of Trump's appeal that Ivanka lacks is his inherently masculine showboating. Trump's macho act is a facade but much of it is predicated on the Republican idea of an alpha male."

After noting that the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th by far-right extremists on Jan. 6th at her father's urging will likely haunt her, Garcia suggested she has also not been wholly embraced by Donald Trump's most ardent fans -- as the polling shows.

"But she also likely doesn't have enough immediate credibility with the faithful to be seen as a worthy vessel for the movement. An Axios and SurveyMonkey poll from Axios showed her brother Don Jr. polling far ahead of his sister among Republican voters, which is consistent with other polls," he wrote before adding that, she has recently pivoted more to the right which may be too late in her case.

More importantly, her prospects look bleak because Rubio still enjoys popular support among Florida Republicans and the power of incumbency is a formidable force to overcome for a first-time candidate.

"Challenging an incumbent is incredibly difficult. Beyond that, a Quinnipiac poll from last year showed, while he is polling at 40 percent statewide, 73 percent of Republicans approve of Rubio. And he has also shown himself to be a team player for Trump, cheering Trump supporters who harassed a Biden campaign bus in Texas. Rubio is also based in Miami-Dade, the state's most populous county that also has more registered Republicans than anywhere else in the state," he wrote before concluding, "That combined with his Cuban-American heritage and foreign policy credentials gives him a strong base of support, to the extent Trump largely tailored his Latin America policy to appease Rubio."

You can read the whole piece here.