WHAT TEA PARTY?:

In Florida, a Candidate Veers From Tea Party’s Script (JEFF ZELENY, 8/22/10, NY Times)

Many of the voters he comes across during his statewide tour were mad, but there was no anger, shouting or a hint of irritation from Mr. Rubio as he fielded questions from a lunchtime crowd in Pensacola about how he would stop what one woman described as a radical Democratic agenda overtaking America.

“This is our country!” the woman declared from her seat at McGuire’s Irish Pub, looking to Mr. Rubio for affirmation. He nodded and paused a moment before answering.

“I am not running for the United States Senate because I want to be the opposition to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid,” he replied in a measured tone. “I’m running for Senate because I want to create an alternative.”

At each stop with voters, Mr. Rubio speaks of the urgency to restore “American exceptionalism,” which he believes is slipping away under Democratic control. He said the private sector has been stymied by uncertainty under the Obama administration and the health care law should be repealed.

Yet an expansive interview with Mr. Rubio, as he rode in the back of a white mini-van along the Gulf Breeze Parkway from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach, found that he did not agree with flashpoints Republican candidates elsewhere have seized on.

Does he support changing the 14th Amendment, as some Republicans have suggested, which grants the right to citizenship to anyone born in the United States?

“You’re taking energy and focus away from that fundamental debate and spending time on something that quite frankly is not the highest and best use of our political attention,” Mr. Rubio said. “I don’t think that’s where the problem is.”

Is the Arizona immigration law a good idea, with the police required to check the documents of anyone they stop or detain whom they suspect of being in the country illegally?

“I don’t want Arizona to serve as a model for other states,” said Mr. Rubio, a first-generation American, whose parents fled Cuba in 1959. “I want Arizona’s law to serve as a wakeup call to the federal government to finally do its jobs with regard to illegal immigration.”