There comes a time when you have to stop calling something “new.” New College, Oxford, is an exception — it was founded in 1379. It will be “New” forever, presumably.

In 2018, for The Weekly Standard, John McCormack wrote a piece about Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican. Its subheading was “Meet the new Marco.” But that was a long while ago, by now.

(I cannot find John’s piece online at the moment. Perhaps better Googlers than I can. I have referred to the piece, and linked to it, before.)

Here is an article from this past Monday: “Marco Rubio spreads debunked election claims about 2020 ballots.” That story is dog-bites-man — but not entirely so, for some of us. We remember Rubio from the “Before Times” — the years before Trump. So, the “new,” or Trump-era, Marco can still jar, just a little bit.

I myself published an article on Monday, a column. Here is an excerpt from it:

[Rubio] had a reaction to the Trump trial in Manhattan: “This is exactly the kind of sham trial used against political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union.” If you wish to know what it was like in the Soviet Union, consult Robert Conquest (The Great Terror) or Anne Applebaum (Gulag: A History).

I quoted another Rubio statement, another tweet: “Our current President is a demented man propped up by wicked & deranged people willing to destroy our country to remain in power. It’s time to fight fire with fire.” (The senator did not use the word “fire,” but rather a fire emoji.)

“Since 2016,” I wrote,

many Republicans have Trumpified themselves — Republicans in politics and Republicans in the media. (Often, there is little difference.) No transformation — no self-Trumpification — is more dramatic than Marco Rubio’s.

I’ll have more on this subject in due course.

All right, a little more. I would like to recall one incident, from the 2020 presidential campaign — the last days of it. It is a smallish incident, maybe, but it is revealing. It stands for the entire Trump phenomenon, and the Trumpification of many a figure.

A headline from November 2, 2020, reads, “Trump cheers supporters who swarmed a Biden bus in Texas: ‘These patriots did nothing wrong.’” (President Trump would call the January 6 rioters “patriots” too.) The article, the news report, begins as follows:

After a caravan of President Trump’s supporters surrounded and delayed a Joe Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway on Friday, the Democrats on board canceled the rest of that day’s events, citing safety concerns, and federal and local law enforcement opened investigations into the incident.

Let me jump ahead to October 2023. (I will circle back later.) A news report begins,

A Texas city on Wednesday agreed to a $175,000 settlement with passengers on one of President Joe Biden’s campaign buses in 2020, including Democrat Wendy Davis, who accused police of ignoring their calls for help after a caravan of Donald Trump supporters surrounded them on a highway.

The episode took place days before the November election as the bus approached Austin. Video that circulated widely on social media at the time showed trucks with large Trump flags driving close to the bus, which had campaign surrogates and staffers on board but not the candidates.

Another report, this one from April 2023, is headed “Two Texas ‘Trump Train’ participants settle lawsuit claiming they harassed 2020 Biden campaign bus.” These two wrote apologies (to a degree). One of the participants said,

Looking back, I would have done things differently. I do not feel that I was thinking things through at the time, and I apologize to the occupants of the bus for my part in actions that day that frightened or intimidated them.

How about the other participant? He provided a definition of “sorry, not sorry,” writing,

I knew that my driving was risky, but I wanted to express my opposition to their campaign and send them a message to leave my community. While I regret now participating in such risky activity, and apologize to the occupants of the bus for my part in the actions that day, at the time I and other Trump Train participants were happy that, after our actions, the Biden campaign canceled the rest of the bus tour.

This is not how it’s supposed to go in a democracy: You have your campaign, the other guy has his. You both have opportunities to appeal to the voters. You don’t keep the other guy from campaigning by physical intimidation.

Isn’t that elementary? Isn’t that what we were taught in civics, all those years ago, when civics was taught?

Back to late October, and early November, in 2020. A report dated November 3 says,

President Donald Trump is defending supporters who were seen surrounding a Biden campaign bus in Texas, which led Democrats to cancel an event there, and suggested the FBI should stop investigating the incident. . . .

On Sunday night, Trump retweeted a screenshot of the FBI statement, adding: “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”

Another excerpt from the same report:

In videos posted on Twitter, a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — can be seen riding alongside the campaign bus on Friday, and at times boxing it in, as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. At one point, one of the pickup trucks can be seen colliding with an SUV that was driving behind the bus. . . .

On Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of his supporters following the Biden campaign bus, adding, “I LOVE TEXAS!”

Long ago, there was this idea that, when a man was elected president, he became president of all the people — not just his partisans. That idea is almost bitterly quaint now.

Speaking to a rally in Michigan, Trump — the president of the United States, mind you — said, “Did you see the way our people . . .? They were, ya know, ‘protecting’ this bus. Because they’re nice. They had hundreds of cars. ‘Trump’! ‘Trump’! ‘Trump’ and the American flag.”

You would expect this kind of thing from Hugo Chávez. And this caudillo style (to put it politely) is ensconced in the United States.

So that’s Donald Trump. But what about Senator Marco Rubio? Speaking to a Florida rally, he said, “I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas. Did you see it? All the cars on the road. We love what they did.”

I thought, “Here is where he departs from democratic politics.” The Trumpified Rubio bears little resemblance to the original Rubio, who was something like a conservative paragon (or so it seemed to many of us). He is a politician who goes from event to event, right? Perhaps in a bus sometimes. And to be menaced by a “caravan” of your opponent’s supporters on the road? “We love what they did”?

It’s one thing to become a protectionist or oppose aid to Ukraine or what have you. It’s one thing to denounce “the radical you’re-on-your-own individualism promoted by our government and by our society in the last 30 years.” (I have quoted Rubio, not Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders.) But this other stuff . . .

The Texas-caravan action was relatively piddly. Nothing compared with the violence unleashed on January 6 — that assault on the U.S. Congress, for the purpose of stopping a constitutional process. But the smaller incidents, from whatever side they come, are significant, too.

Frequently, I have occasion to quote a lyric by Lyle Lovett, that great Texan: “It may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me.” The “caravan” incident and Rubio’s reaction to it, particularly — that was a big deal, to me.

I know what the standard MAGA response is, to critiques and lamentations such as mine: “Cry more, lib.” That should be more like “decry,” actually. But I do think we have lost something — we conservatives, we Americans. Vance and Gaetz and MTG and them — sure. But Marco Rubio? Yes. He will not be out-MAGA’d. (And he will probably be reelected forever.)

Of all the transformations we have seen — and there have been a great many, both in politics and in the media — I believe that Senator Rubio’s has been the starkest, the most spectacular.