COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Marco Rubio — he of the unlined cheeks and recently paid-off student loans and strongly felt preference for Tupac over Biggie Smalls — might be just the thing to get young people to come out and vote Republican in 2016.
So say old people.

“I hope that the young people won’t keep being bumfuzzled by Democrats,” said Larry Trickle, a 77-year-old who came to see the senator speak at a Holiday Inn in Council Bluffs this week. “Here’s a guy that can speak their language, and maybe teach them a thing about work ethic.”

Sure, there were only a handful of folks younger than 35 at this ballroom rally packed with a couple of hundred Iowa voters. But to Larry’s wife, Sue, 70, it was a youthful crowd compared with other GOP events she had been to recently.

“You should see them,” she said. “The average age of most is like 70s or 80s. Here, it’s got to be all the way down to the 50s!”

Rubio, 44, paints himself as the “generational candidate,” one with fresh ideas who can shake up his party and, ultimately, an election. It’s a savvy tactic for turning one of his potential negatives — his inexperience — into a positive. A similar approach worked for Barack Obama in 2008, when he was also a freshman legislator who hated the Senate; he mobilized massive numbers of young people to cast their ballots for him.

But the Florida Republican’s message of youthfulness has not resulted in many youthful supporters so far. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Rubio received 16 percent support from Republicans 65 and older, compared with 12 percent among those ages 50 to 64 and 7 percent among those younger than 50. He might be, as Michael Kinsley famously said about then-Sen. Al Gore, “an old person’s idea of a young person.”

Indeed, much of what Rubio promotes is traditional conservatism wrapped in a “New American Century” slogan. He has argued for robust military spending, disagreed with the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage and said he does not believe there should be exceptions for rape or incest for abortions. The term New American Century is actually not new: It comes from a neoconservative think tank founded by Bill Kristol in 1997.

If there is a generational appeal for Rubio, it has to do more with how he presents himself than what he presents.

“There’s always the potential that an individual with the right combination of biography, message and behavior can change the behavior of traditional voting groups,” Rubio told students in the political science class he teaches at Florida International University this year. With his youthful smile, American Dream back story and use of millennial jargon, Rubio hopes he can be that potential individual.

He gave a speech last month lauding the innovations of Uber, Airbnb and the “sharing economy,” even though their regulatory issues are less on the presidential level than a matter for state and local governments. He presents himself as an energetic guy, taking time on the campaign trail to toss footballs (famously beaning one kid in the face accidentally).

If there is a generational appeal for Rubio, it has to do more with how he presents himself than what he presents.

“There’s always the potential that an individual with the right combination of biography, message and behavior can change the behavior of traditional voting groups,” Rubio told students in the political science class he teaches at Florida International University this year. With his youthful smile, American Dream back story and use of millennial jargon, Rubio hopes he can be that potential individual.

He gave a speech last month lauding the innovations of Uber, Airbnb and the “sharing economy,” even though their regulatory issues are less on the presidential level than a matter for state and local governments. He presents himself as an energetic guy, taking time on the campaign trail to toss footballs (famously beaning one kid in the face accidentally).