As the sun starts setting on a crisp fall evening, Marco Rubio takes the stage in the backyard of a former editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader for a classic New Hampshire campaign event, a house party. “I love this weather,” Rubio says. “It doesn’t make you sweat.” Rubio flashes a smile, and the crowd laughs. For a couple weeks now, Donald Trump has been mocking Rubio for, of all things, perspiring during the last GOP presidential debate. Trump had just sent a 24-pack of “Trump Ice” bottled water to Rubio’s campaign with a note that read: “Since you’re always sweating, we thought you could use some water. Enjoy!”

Rubio has risen only to third place in the national polls—significantly behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson and just a bit ahead of Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush. But since the second GOP debate, Rubio has been taking heat from rivals as if he were the frontrunner. And in a sense he is a frontrunner, running first among candidates who have ever held elective office and first among candidates who might stop Trump. Rubio’s position has been strengthened not only by a pair of strong debate performances but also by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s decision to drop out of the race and narrow the choice for mainstream conservatives.

That’s why Jeb Bush, a onetime establishment favorite and Rubio’s former mentor, has deployed a potentially more effective attack on Rubio — that the Florida senator is simply the Republican Obama. “Look, we had a president who came in and said the same kind of things [as Rubio],” Bush told CNN on September 30. “ ‘New and improved,’ ‘hope and change,’ and he didn’t have the leadership skills to fix things.” When asked on MSNBC the next day if Rubio had the leadership skills to be president, Bush replied: “It’s not known. Barack Obama didn’t end up having them, and he won an election on the belief that he could.”

Read the article “Why His Rivals Fear Marco Rubio” on weeklystandard.com.