First Senator From the Tea Party?

Is Marco Rubio — the potential “First Senator From the Tea Party” — that fearful and paranoid (way away, pressed to the corner, and protecting his privates like that in his own headquarters)?

If you wade through the almost 8k word article, you see that the single interview Leibovitch held with Rubio was extremely clipped and Marco, the otherwise forceful former high school quarter cornerback (the author says he delivers a speech like a “jackhammer”), was highly cautious with a leg that wouldn’t stop shaking.

In this photo of the guy Huckabee calls “our Barack Obama but with substance,” did the photographer capture the natural paranoia of the radical fringe, a heady guy fearful of an ambush, or maybe something of both?

NYT Mag article preview.

(12:45 pst – Extended)

(photo: Nigel Parry for The New York Times. caption: Marco Rubio at his headquarters in Coral Gables, Fla. Mike Huckabee says he may be the face of the future of the Republican party.)