Elections Aren't Everything: Rubio Tells Conservative Lawyers the Long Fight Is for America's Institutions

Ten days after what Newsweek called the GOP's worst midterm since 1958, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before the conservative legal movement's biggest annual gathering and told it not to despair. "Politics requires more than simply winning elections," Rubio said in his keynote to the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention in Washington on Friday, NBC News reported.

It was his first major address since the Nov. 3 elections, and he used it to reframe the loss. There will be more victories and more defeats, more triumphs and more disappointments, Rubio told the crowd, according to NBC. The institutions that shape American life, he argued, include universities, corporate boardrooms, influential nonprofits and the media, and elections alone do not decide what those institutions teach or what the nation's lawyers believe.

Rubio also acknowledged that people are struggling economically, Yahoo News reported, a recognition that the midterm message from voters was about more than ideas.

The most pointed part of the speech was aimed abroad. Rubio criticized what he called the weaponization of international law and the rise of activist courts. Taking aim at what The Tribune described as the global elite, he called international law "an instrument to advance their interest under the pretense of universal principles". Turkish outlet Yeni Safak said he sharply criticized both the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.

The timing was notable. This week the ICC ordered the formal closure of its original Afghanistan investigation, Anadolu Agency reported, a case that had once threatened to put American troops under the scrutiny of a court the United States never joined.

Rubio did not take the bait on his own future. Asked about 2028, he said he would not discuss it in any form, the Washington Examiner reported. That did not stop the speculation. Attendees leaving the convention told the Examiner they had heard something more than a pep talk, and one predicted that if Rubio runs, he will be formidable. Fox News had reported before the speech that lawyers at the convention were watching for clues about a possible campaign, and RealClearPolitics highlighted the 2028 buzz that followed.

Rubio's argument has real force. Conservatives have won elections for decades and still watched universities, major corporations and much of the press move steadily away from them. The Federalist Society itself is proof that patient institution-building works: a generation of lawyers trained in the original meaning of the Constitution helped reshape the federal courts.

But the speech also raises questions the party has to answer.

First, can a message about long-term institutional strategy reach families who just voted on grocery bills and mortgage rates? Rubio's acknowledgment that people are struggling is a start. The next Republican majority will be won by people who can explain, in plain terms, how conservative ideas lower costs and raise wages.

Second, how much of the conservative legal movement's progress survives a Democratic Senate? Democrats will control the chamber in January, and the president is already rushing to fill judicial vacancies before then, MS NOW reported. The courts Rubio's audience spent decades building will face their first real test of durability in the confirmation fights ahead.

Third, how does the party settle its own internal debates, including over the Iran war, before they harden into a lasting split? A movement that wants to win back institutions needs to hold together first.

Newsweek described this year's results, a net loss of 41 House seats and eight Senate seats, as the GOP's worst midterm in both chambers since 1958. Republicans have recovered from defeats like that before. The question is whether they do it by changing nothing, or by doing the slow work Rubio described while answering the voters' immediate concerns.

Rubio returns to his day job, with the president's Shenzhen talks with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin set for next week and the Iran war still unresolved. For the conservative lawyers who heard him on Friday, the message was clear: lose an election, keep building. For the rest of the party, the harder task is turning that long view into a short-term plan voters can feel in their wallets.