Marco Rubio is the only candidate who understands America’s global role

Last week, I was in the United States, where the media are even more subject to groupthink than their British equivalents. Fox News, supposedly the conservative voice, is really much more conformist than it pretends, and specialises in noisy opinion more than real news.

The only person I met who got the Republican caucuses absolutely right was Chris Ruddy, founder and CEO of Newsmax, the conservative cable channel which claims to be in ‘42 million US homes’. He told me he thought Cruz would beat Trump and the real winner would be Marco Rubio. So it proves.

It is interesting that in a campaign in which all the candidates shout about the glories of America, Rubio is the only one who fastens on its global role: ‘If America declines, there is nothing in the world to take its place.’ He is right: we already see the consequences of that decline.

This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes.