Politico: “Now, Republicans smell blood in the water, and they’re looking to damage Murphy so badly that Democrats are forced to spend heavily on his behalf ahead of the state’s Aug. 30 primary — or abandon the race altogether. The GOP is adopting a strategy that’s been used against it repeatedly in recent election cycles: Propping up a politically toxic, outside-the-mainstream candidate in the other party’s primary, in this case firebrand liberal Rep. Alan Grayson.”

“The reversal of fortunes in Florida could hardly have come at a better time for Republicans, after weeks of negative headlines about their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and increasing concerns about a down-ballot disaster for the party.”

Harry Enten: “Marco Rubio’s decision to run for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat, which he announced Wednesday morning, gives Republicans a boost in their bid to retain control of the Senate. But it also sheds light on how Rubio views his political future and how Republican Senate candidates in swing states might act toward Donald Trump.”

Washington Post: Inside the Republican courtship of Marco Rubio

Interestingly, Smart Politics notes that since 1972, “all seven sitting U.S. Senators who ran for reelection in the cycle of their failed presidential bid won another term – each by double digits.”

“In a major reversal highlighting Republican fear over losing the Senate majority and his own ambition, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will break a longstanding promise not to seek re-election, becoming an instant favorite but facing the challenge of running in a presidential year featuring Donald Trump,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Miami Herald: “National Republicans fearful of losing Senate control to Democrats mounted a campaign to keep Rubio on the ballot for Florida’s swing seat. He consented just two days before Friday’s state candidate-qualifying deadline.”

New York Times: “The senator has told colleagues and advisers that he would like to run for president again, either in 2020 or 2024. But he increasingly came to believe that doing so from the private sector would be difficult.”

For members: Rubio Not Favored In Florida’s Senate Race

Washington Post: “An online ad released Friday by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee previews the sort of campaign Rubio can expect to endure should he decide to reverse the decision, made when he entered the presidential race last year, to forego re-election to run for president.”

“The ad highlights the scores of votes and committee hearings Rubio missed while pursuing the presidency, the repeated pledges he made during that campaign not to return to the Senate and his vote in December against a Democratic proposal to bar suspected terrorists from purchasing guns.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Florida finds that Sen. Marco Rubio remains quite unpopular in the state in the wake of his failed Presidential bid, and that voters aren’t interested in seeing him run for the Senate this year.

Key finding: “Only 32% of voters in the state approve of the job Rubio is doing as Senator, to 54% who disapprove. Those numbers make him one of the least popular Senators in the country.”

Josh Kraushaar: “A use­ful rule of thumb: Politi­cians usu­ally act in their own self-in­terest. And that’s why Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida is open­ing the door to run­ning again for his Sen­ate seat.”

“If Ru­bio wants to run for pres­id­ent in 2020, it would be very dif­fi­cult for him to do so without hold­ing any prom­in­ent statewide elec­ted of­fice. Hav­ing only one term on the Sen­ate un­der his belt and four years out­side of of­fice is an aw­fully thin start­ing point to mount a second pres­id­en­tial bid. There will be oth­er newly-elec­ted gov­ernors and sen­at­ors who will emerge on the na­tion­al radar. And with the Flor­ida gov­ernor race un­likely to be an op­tion—Ag­ri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Adam Put­nam is pop­u­lar and the odds-on GOP fa­vor­ite—the only op­tion for him to re­main polit­ic­ally rel­ev­ant is to pur­sue a second Sen­ate term.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, quoted by the Washington Times: “We’re all lobbying hard for him to run again. He’s been back in the Senate for six weeks. He’s, I believe, enjoying it, and being effective.”