These Three Politicians Once Looked Like the Future of the GOP. 72 Hours Later the Dream Was Dead.

They mounted the stage in the dying of the light.

In the small town of Chapin, South Carolina, on the evening of Feb. 17, 2016, Nikki Haley, the nation’s youngest governor, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the youngest presidential candidate, had arrived in a bus emblazoned on its sides with “A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY.” “I wanted somebody that had conviction to do the right thing, but I wanted somebody humble enough that remembers that you work for all the people, and I wanted somebody that was going to go and show my parents that the best decision they ever made for their children was coming to America,” the 44-year-old Indian American Haley told the crowd, formally endorsing the 44-year-old Cuban American Rubio. “She embodies for me,” Rubio said when he took the mic, “everything that I want the Republican Party and the conservative movement to be.”