Marco Rubio subtly highlights Clinton's age with a '90s throwback cake

Marco Rubio

In 1996, Bill Clinton turned 50 while running against 73-year-old Bob Dole. Clinton's camp took the opportunity to emphasize his comparative youth with a giant, custom birthday cake:

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In 2015, Marco Rubio turned 44, and his campaign released a birthday cake graphic that looks very familiar:

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(Image credit: Illustrated | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images, H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images)

Rubio is 23 years younger than Hillary Clinton, who is 67 — just as Bill Clinton was 23 years younger than Dole. It's a clever knock at Clinton's age, though ironically a reference that will only be understood by people who are old enough to remember mid-1990s politics.

Rubio is not the first GOP candidate to address Clinton's age in light of a comparatively young Republican field — though others, like 52-year-old Rand Paul, have been a little more indirect. And speaking of Paul and Rubio, a poll released today finds that these two poll strongest against Clinton in a national matchup.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.