According to MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews, Marco Rubio has no real base of political support except for some center-right newspaper columnists and well-heeled "neo-con" donors, the latter group seeing the Florida senator as the loyal "soldier boy" who's "pushing for war all the time."
Matthews made these comments to Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker on the March 9 edition of Hardball.
Here's a short video clip with that exchange and the relevant transcript:
MSNBC
Hardball
March 9, 2016; 7:10 p.m. Eastern
Onscreen graphic: Trump Leads Rubio In FloridaCHRIS MATTHEWS, anchor: OK, can I say something?
KATHLEEN PARKER, Washington Post columnist: Yeah, say something.
MATTHEWS Where you do well, the op-ed pages of the newspaper, where you write that great column in the op-ed pages. That’s where Rubio exists. He doesn't exist among the American people.
The neo-cons who love him because they think he’s their little soldier boy have been putting him out there over and over, [hedge fund manager Paul] Singer, [Miami businessman Norman] Braman, all those guys love him ‘cause he’s pushing for war all the time. The average person has no interest in Marco Rubio.
PARKER: I think that's probably right. And, you know, many people on, in the establishment, who want him to go ahead and drop out –
MATTHEWS: You call it the Establishment, I call it the hawks.
PARKER: – he probably should have done it before Florida. Because if he loses, his political career is pretty much over.
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Matthews, you may recall, has repeatedly stated that Rubio is the "sock puppet" of Jewish GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, a casino owner.
