Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would be a "credible candidate" if he decides to enter the Republican primary and run for president in 2016, said Sen. Marco Rubio, but it won't prevent Rubio from entering the race if he feels called to do it.
"I think he'll be a very strong and credible candidate. But, if I decide that the best place for me to serve this country, that has given us so much, is by being its president, I'm going to run for that, no matter who else is in the race," the Florida Republican told "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday.
Rubio said he would be making the decision "sooner rather than later," and would be thinking about it "very carefully over the next few weeks."
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He predicted that Bush's fundraising apparatus could bring in as much as "$100 million in the first three months of the year."
Rubio said a presidency of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democrat front-runner for the White House, wouldn't be able to address economic concerns that have placed hardships on Americans during the past several years.
"We face 21st-century challenges, and her ideas are all ideas that are from the 1990s and the early part of the century. We need to realize that our struggles economically are not part of a cyclical downturn. It is an economic restructuring. And, ideas from 20 years ago, 15 years ago, will not fix the problems of today," he said.
Rubio's new book,
"The American Dream: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone," outlines the tools Americans need to prosper. He said the book highlights a "success sequence" that includes a "stable family life," skills for 21st-century jobs, and "a vibrant and growing economy that creates those jobs at a time when we have more global competition than we've ever had."
"I think that one of the things that made America a special country is that we were one of few places on Earth where, no matter where you started out in life, if you're willing to work hard, you could achieve what we've come to call the American dream, which is happiness.
"Today, there are millions of people that are starting to find out that doesn't work anymore, because our economy has structurally been transformed and our policies have not changed with it," he said.
If people were not fortunate enough to have a stable family life, he said, there needed to be programs to "do something to help them break that cycle." That could include school choice and helping parents "acquire education so they can get a better job."
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