Marco Rubio has experienced the vile hatred from former and perhaps future allies this week, ranging from the likes of Ann Coulter to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) who could play kingmaker in the 2016 Iowa Caucus with true believers.

Conservative activists are an interesting bunch. You can have the single most conservative voting record in the US Senate and be the toast of the national media who so many Republicans are convinced are out to get them, yet still be poured with scorn. But being the darling of the national media may just be what gets SenatorRubio through this.

Rubio’s delicate and politically skillful balancing act on immigration has blown up leading to open warfare with conservative activists egged on now for a month by publications such as the National Review. Rubio’s outreach to the elites of the GOP by taking on immigration reform could cost him with the conservative activists who were in love with him just a few short months ago.

In March, I wrote that the challenge for Rubio was to somehow keep the Republican Party establishment desperate for him while continuing to play his cards correctly with BOTH national Republican power brokers/media elites AND the fundamentalist Iowa caucus goers. Rubio had the conservative activists where he wanted but now his immigration reform proposals have caused a backlash with those who appeared to be his base for a potential Presidential campaign.

The first stage of winning a nomination is to be able to raise money but the second stage is to do well in the Iowa Caucus where power brokers like Steve King hold sway and get a ticket to New Hampshire. Previous Iowa Caucus winners on the GOP side include the televangelist Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. To say Iowa, a largely Democratic state at the Presidential level has a religious dominated Republican caucus would be an understatement and Rubio knows this. Thus Rubio has tried to show he can connect with this important base of Iowa voters by giving fundamentalist speeches and deliberately pushing conservative buttons with his rhetorical barbs on issues besides immigration reform. Rubio  has proven to have  a certain degree of staying power as a national force but perhaps the deeper he gets into the “Rubio is the GOP savior” era, the more gloss comes off his profile. Still, his political skills have proven to be formidable and he is far from finished despite the prognostications of some on the right.

But Rubio has another option. As a budding member of the Republican Party’s Washington establishment, he could get a ticket out of Iowa to New Hampshire just by being a media sensation, whose former critics have lauded his pragmatism. Pat Buchanan of course won the New Hampshire Primary in 1996 but that was only because Lamar Alexander, then a moderate by GOP standards carved substantially into Bob Dole’s establishment vote. John McCain and Mitt Romney both perceived as the most established candidates in  early primaries carried the state in 2008 and 2012 respectively. Rubio’s standing among establishment Republicans is growing and should Paul Ryan not rehabilitate himself completely (I believe he will be a factor in 2016 but many Republicans I speak to are writing him off) he could be the establishment choice early on.

Rubio seems to have survived  previous mini-crises  better than other Republicans. His “sip watched around the globe” could have been fatal if he was as unnatural as Jindal, Christie or Mark Sanford but he survived it. He has also seen other Republicans implode on the national stage saying more or less the same things as Rubio has said.

My thinking is if Rubio is permanently damaged among conservative activists and hurt in Iowa he will execute a plan B based around party insiders and winning New Hampshire. The Rubio story is far from written, and he is far from dead.