With days remaining before the Iowa caucuses, Marco Rubio is framing the choice before voters as boiling down to one thing: defeating Hillary Clinton.
In a new television ad, shared first with the Guardian, Rubio focuses his closing argument on the need for change in the White House after two terms of Barack Obama.
“America is exceptional. Every generation before us met the great challenges of their time. But after seven long years of this president, we feel our country slipping away,” Rubio says, speaking straight to the camera.
“This election is about defeating Hillary Clinton and about saving what makes America unique. I’m Marco Rubio. I approved this message and I am asking for your vote so we can leave our children what our parents left us: the single greatest nation in all mankind.”
The ad will begin airing across Iowa on Thursday, five days before the state holds the first nominating contest in the 2016 presidential primaries.
Rubio is currently polling in third in Iowa behind Donald Trump and Texas senator Ted Cruz, and is widely regarded as the most likely candidate to break through as an alternative who would be palatable to both conservatives and the establishment.
The Florida senator has been traveling across Iowa since Saturday, honing in on electability as he makes his final pitch to voters. Several polls have shown Rubio as the more formidable Republican opponent to Clinton.
He also earned the endorsement this week from two local newspapers, the Sioux City Journal and the Des Moines Register, the latter the state’s largest. Editorial boards in both papers wrote that a Rubio-Clinton match-up would be best for the country.
“If you nominate me, we won’t just unify the Republican party, we will grow the conservative movement,” Rubio has said at a series of town halls and rallies this week. “I’m taking the conservative message to people that haven’t voted for us before.”
“We cannot lose this election,” he has added. “If Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States, the consequences will be extraordinary.”
Rallying supporters at a pub in West Des Moines on Wednesday, on the eve of the next Republican debate, Rubio also took aim at Trump and Cruz for engaging in “theatrics”.
“Interesting sideshow,” Rubio said before a crowd of roughly 300. “But this is not a sideshow. This is serious.
“All that makes for good television. But that’s not going to solve our problems.”
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