The New York Times devoted valuable front-page, over-the-fold space and a banner photo to a story Friday on Sen. Marco Rubio campaigning in Iowa for the Republican nomination. But while Jonathan Martin and Ashley Parker's text was rather positive toward Rubio himself, the report and the surrounding headlines came down hard on the GOP as an old, stodgy, white party: "Rubio's Immigrant Story, and an Aging Party in Search of a Spark."
The caption under the Rubio photo included this mocking summation of his appeal: "That his parents fled Cuba and worked in humble jobs has sent some Republicans swooning." The text box reduced Rubio to the sum of his demographics: "A candidacy viewed as a way to change the character of the G.O.P."
At a recent ice cream social here, Jim Hallihan liked what he heard from Senator Marco Rubio.
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But there was something larger that drew Mr. Hallihan, a former Iowa State basketball coach, to Mr. Rubio, 43, the son of poor Cuban immigrants.
“The day of the older white guy is kind of out,” said Mr. Hallihan, a 70-year-old white guy.
As Mr. Rubio has introduced himself to curious, and overwhelmingly Caucasian, Republican audiences from Iowa to New Hampshire, he has vaulted to the front ranks of the early pack of likely presidential candidates, partly because of his natural political talent. But it may owe just as much to the combination of his personal story and the balm it offers to a party that has been repeatedly scalded by accusations of prejudice.
