Could Marco Rubio Solve Mitt Romney's Hispanic Problem? A lot has changed since I interviewed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on the morning of Jan. 17. That evening Newt Gingrich unleashed theatrical opprobrium upon John King, and Mitt Romney went from presumed nominee to bloodied establishment candidate. Rubio's home state of Florida, which votes Jan. 31, has become, pick your metaphor - ground zero, Armageddon, The Last Exit To Somewheresville - for both candidates. The young, dreamy-for-a-pol senator long vowed to withhold his endorsement. But Rubio has tipped his hand a few degrees. Earlier this week, he trumpeted Romney's conservative bona fides and blasted the Gingrich campaign. So even though Rubio continues to blow off speculation he'll be in the V.P. slot, he seems to be cementing a special friendship with Romney, who, as you'll see in the following outtakes from my Talk column, will undoubtedly encounter some issues with Hispanic voters that Rubio could help sort out. Below, more from our original interview. In debates, Mitt Romney tacked so hard to the right on immigration that some have said he cost himself the Hispanic vote - which he will need to take Florida in the general election. Can Romney win it back? I'm not going to do the political analysis on immigration. I think ultimately whoever the Republican nominee is will become president and confront the reality that the status quo in our immigration system is not sustainable. We need a functional guest-worker program so that when there is the need for seasonal labor, that there's a way for people to enter this country legally for a defined period of time. But we cannot just give citizenship to 9 million to 11 million human beings in this country without the proper documentation. It rewards people who have not done it the right way and serves as a magnet for people in the future to do the same thing. On the other hand it's not reasonable to ask the United States government to help round up and deport nine million people. During the last presidential election, Mitt Romney offended the Cuban-American community in Miami by saying onstage, "Patria o muerte, venceremos," which was Fidel Castro's signoff for many years. Obviously someone helped prepare that speech and gave him bad advice. I don't think anyone walked out of there thinking that somehow Mitt Romney was a supporter of Fidel Castro. I don't think that's going to be an issue for him. In the same speech, he also referred to you as "Mario Rubio." I think Mario is much more common than Marco. He's not the first or the last one to do that. There has been a great deal of consternation among Hispanics that you don't support the Dream Act, which provides a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The conservative columnist Ruben Navarette wrote: "Marco Rubio is the Republican Party's Superman. And the immigration issue, if not handled correctly, is his kryptonite. The Dream Act is the wrong way to do the right thing. There is support helping out these kids in this country who were brought here at a very young age illegally through no fault of their own, who have something to contribute to our country. But the Dream Act is not the right way to do it, because it leads to issues of chain migration and other things like that. Sure, 85 percent of the Hispanic/Latino voters support the Dream Act because to them the Dream Act is symbolic of an effort to help these kids who find themselves in this predicament. But the specific bill, the Dream Act, has things in it I don't think can gain majority support. On "Face the Nation" last July you said that unemployment has risen significantly under Obama, and the only way we could solve our budget crisis was by getting people back to work and contributing taxes. In December, unemployment was down to a two-year low of 8.5 percent. By the election, how low would that number have to be to demonstrate that Obama has actually succeeded by your measure? I think what you're looking for is long-term trends that show that there's growing confidence and permanency in the economy. I'm not going to root against the economy. I'd much rather have unemployment go down than win elections. I think the fact that we've gone two years without a new stimulus package, without a new health care bill has been helpful to some extent in helping this happen, but part of it is just the resiliency of the American economy. But you very clearly blamed the president for the poor shape of the economy. You seem unwilling to give him any credit at all if there's an upswing. Hold on a second. What I said is everyone needs to be judged by their record, and the record is clear. When his party controlled the Senate and the House, he could have passed any public policy he wanted, and what he asked for was the health care law and the stimulus package, and both of those have failed to turn our economy around. The public-policy decisions that president has made have actually slowed down this recovery. If you look at similar downturns in the American economy, the steeper the decline, the steeper the recovery. That has not been the case here, and in many ways the recovery has been stagnated by uncertainty in the tax code, by the rhetoric out of Washington, by the nastiness and the back and forth of the entire political culture. Considering you once vowed to end partisan squabbling in the Florida House and recently said you're not interested in playing the role of attack dog, I was surprised to see you on TV refer to the "Democrat Party." You know Democrats consider it an epithet, right? Why is it an epithet? I didn't even know that. It's actually been considered derisive since at least 1940. I looked it up. You really had no idea it drives them crazy? No, that's silly. I don't believe in partisanship for the sake of partisanship, but I think there are dramatic differences between the parties on key issues including the role of government. There's nothing wrong with having an energetic debate about those issues.