Evan Morris-Santoro reports that Marco Rubio will be a keynote speaker at CPAC 2010.
It's hard to overstate the importance of a CPAC appearance for a conservative politician.
.... Just a few months ago, Rubio was way down in the fundraising race and trailing Crist by huge numbers in polls. Back then, conservative groups like the Club For Growth backed away from Rubio, afraid of wasting money on a lost cause. Those days appear to be officially over. With the CPAC announcement, Rubio just became one of the most prominent conservatives in the country.
The news shows just how far Rubio has come since the days he relied on Twitter as his primary means of communicating with fans.
On July 10, Adam Smith looked at the Rubio's fundraising numbers, the polls, and the ubiquity of Rubio's tweets, and concluded:
As much as we love the idea of covering this whole battle-for-heart-and-soul of the GOP stuff, the reality is you can't tweet your way out of 30-point poll deficit and eight-to-one financial disadvantage.
And in fact, Smith was right: it wasn't twitter that made Rubio competitive.
It was the left-of-center press converging with the right-of-center press to squeeze out the decidedly centrist Crist.
So here's a prophecy. At some point during CPAC 2010, Rubio will tweet something like this:
Just about to hit stage 4 keynote speech. Exciting! Go Hurricanes!
[Hat tip: Hill Blog Briefing Room]
