Marco Rubio bites the dust, deservedly

The freshman senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, had a patter during his presidential nomination bid that he had won every election in which he had entered.  Well, he will have to amend that now for all future stump speeches as he announced his departure from the 2016 Republican nomination contest after being humiliated in his own state of Florida.  He may have triumphed in winning a plurality in Minnesota, like his hero Ronald Reagan but Reagan won a majority in Minnesota and right across the country when he took part in the 1980 nominating process.  By contrast, in Florida Rubio lost every single county, bar Miami-Dade, his home town, to arch-rival Donald 'Drumpf' Trump.
But no tears should be issued.  He had been the standard-bearer of the Republican establishment, a role which now falls to John Kasich, who could win his own state (of Ohio).  But as venal as the establishment is viewed, Rubio's policies were not far away from being batshit crazy as Trump's or the odious Ted Cruz's.  Like Cruz, Rubio wanted to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran 'on day one' in the White House and set warming relations with Cuba into reverse.  Like Cruz and Kasich, he wanted to limit abortion rights (in Rubio's case, not even a raped woman could claim an abortion) - an issue which haunts the GOP like 'Europe' does with the British Conservatives.  All three pledged to unscramble the omelette that is Obamacare.
Despite all this, Rubio may have had great appeal to the wider country had he secured the nomination and would have been a very dangerous president.  So even though Trump goes marching on, the businessman can say 'You're fired' to another failed Apprentice candidate who falls before the master showman.  Plus he may tack back to the centre once he no longer has to throw red meat to the baying Republican base.
Since 2008, the field of contenders has got steadily more right-wing.  In 2008, John McCain was no hand-wringer but he was moderate by GOP standards, then we had the more right-wing Mitt Romney and finally it seems to have reached its apotheosis in Trump (perhaps), Cruz and Rubio.  Like with British Labour in the opposite direction, the Republicans react to presidential failure by thinking if only were they more right-wing would they succeed.  Rubio liked citing Abraham Lincoln too but he would not have recognised this Republican party as his own - rather they represent the Democrats of the reactionary, secessionist South that he fought against.
It was a good night for Hillary Clinton too, exploding the jibe of the Bernie Sanders' camp that she was a regional candidate by winning Ohio, Illinois and Missouri as well as completing her sweep of the 'South' (the civil war secessionist states).  Sanders is not the sweetness and light his Millenial supporters see him as, peddling fantasy rhetoric that resonates in their starry-eyed naivety - bash the banks, bash Wall Street, rip up trade deals; it all sounds wonderful to hitherto jaded ears but is it electable on a wider level, let alone achievable if in power.  It's something when people trust Sanders' gut instinct on foreign policy rather then the vast experience of Clinton - isn't going on gut part of the reason why the Iraq War II was such a failure?  But then Sanders' supporters also buy into anti-American conspiracy theories.  He's big on gun ownership too, dodging questions on his backing - the National Rifle Association would not be displeased to see him in the Oval Office.
Sanders also seems to have an antipathy towards Britain giving his association with IRA apologists and campaigns for IRA prisoners in the 1980s.  With Sanders, Gerry Adams would have had no trouble entering the White House for pre-St Patrick Day celebrations (his Sinn Fein colleagues were waved through).  Typically, Adams indulged in a classless act - while conflating himself and 'Sinn Fein' as one and the same, he used a racially insensitive phrase given the current occupant of the White House: "Sinn Fein will not sit at the back of the bus for anyone."  Just as well for Adams that this is the last St Patrick's Day that Barack Obama hosts in the White House given that the Sinn Fein leader appropriated the reasons for the Montgomery Bus Boycott to mollify his own pathetic self-pity.