Marco Rubio lost by stooping to Donald Trump's level

Marco Rubio was meant to be the great hope of the Republican party — handsome, young, fiercely conservative and on his way to the White House.

Instead he has been forced to suspend his campaign after being handed a humiliating loss in his home state to none other than Donald Trump.

A few months ago, such a defeat to Rubio would have been totally unthinkable, and even in recent weeks, he was still in a strong position in the state he represents in the US Senate.

But a few weeks ago, facing some unsettling losses and desperate to maintain relevance in the race, Rubio started to stoop to Trump's level.

First the Florida senator took a shot at Trump's "horrible fake tan", then he took an even more juvenile jab.

"He's like 6'2'' which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5'2". Have you seen his hands?" Rubio told a rally in Virginia on February 28.

"You know what they say about men with small hands?

"You can't trust them. You can't trust them," he added after a pause.

Trump had been mocking Rubio for weeks beforehand, branding him "Little Marco" and pointing out his frequent absence from Senate votes.

But the bottom dropped out of Rubio's campaign after he started making fun of Trump for one simple reason — people expected Trump to be childish, but not Rubio.

It's why despite making viewers cringe the world over, nobody's vote changed when Trump made a veiled remark about his penis size.

"(Rubio) referred to my hands - 'if they're small, something else must be small," Trump told a televised debate.

"I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee."

Trump has always been the brash one, the immature one. Once Rubio gave up on taking the high road, he lost the one remaining advantage he had.

In the following days, Rubio failed to get more than 10 percent of the vote in Michigan and Maine, and got barely a quarter of Trump's numbers in Louisiana.

Today, after falling way behind Trump in his firewall home state of Florida, Rubio has now suspended his campaign.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has won a bigger victory than expected over rival Bernie Sanders in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.

And despite hopes on Sanders' side to cause an upset in Illinois and Missouri, it appears she has eked out victories in both states.