Category Archives: Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio’s Epic Fail as the Aspiring Hero of 2016

PoliticusUSA

“What the GOP will never learn – Tea Party to establishment – is that smiling while giving the finger to the American [people] doesn’t change the message and I think we all get the GOP’s message in giving us Marco Rubio.”

It hasn’t been a good week for Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). First, Ann Coulter called him the Doctor Kervorkian of the Republican Party for supporting immigration reform.

Then, on Sunday, Rubio embarrassed himself – badly – by suggesting a Bushian Syria policy that depends on finding the good guys and working with them.

That wasn’t all, for another hammer was about to fall, this wielded by fellow Republican, California’s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who said, “Rubio is so mixed up and so confused. I think he has given up his rightful place to advise any of us in Washington what to do, and he’s given up any right to be trusted by the American people.”

That’s language usually reserved by Republicans for President Obama.

Seriously, criticism by a Republican doesn’t get any worse than that.

Rubio’s mistake was saying,

Let’s be clear. Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence.

Rohrabacher did a Coulter in response to this:

This is just a lot of weasel words that Rubio and these people are throwing in. They’re going to legalize the status of people here illegally. Once they do that, that is an amnesty. And once they do that, there will be no border security improvements. It’ll all be a facade.

Let’s not forget that in May, Rubio, apparently channeling Sarah Palin, demanded that the non-existent IRS Commissioner resign. Or that in April he was forced to admit he opposed a gun control bill that he hadn’t even bothered to read.

It wasn’t long ago that Marco Rubio was the bright young hero of the Republican Party, a young McCarthy in the making (which alone should have endeared him to Ann Coulter) and a potential 2016 candidate and the GOP’s access to the Hispanic vote – even though he was less popular with Hispanics than President George W. Bush (29 to 23 percent).

At this point, any Hispanic votes garnered by Rubio would be offset by the loss of the racist lily-white base.

Let’s face it: these people did not want a black man in the White House. They are not going to stand for a Hispanic.

As Jason Easley wrote here in April, “Only a party that is operating from a completely race based mindset would think that the elevation of Marco Rubio to Hispanic show pony/gimmick is a good idea.”

Clearly, making Rubio the face of immigration reform has backfired and he has become a target of ridicule instead, not all of it related to immigration but all of it due to any discernible ability to articulate his politics and beliefs.

The GOP hasn’t clued in to a glaring defect in their thinking: that it is difficult to position yourself as a champion of minorities while fielding dullards as your point-men or women and while being pushed into the KKK section of the political landscape by Tea Party racists and moralizing religious fanatics.

To be fair, Marco Rubio never stood a chance of succeeding in his appointed role as Hispanic Messiah. Even in March, the bigoted Rand Paul was leading Rubio in polls, showing the base really doesn’t care when establishment Republicans think. And that fact might itself be irrelevant as neither man stands a chance against Hilary Clinton.

A worse harbinger yet, Nate Silver, who predicted the outcome of the 2012 election, pointed to Rubio as being as unelectable as Mitt Romney.

At this point, Rubio seems more a sacrificial lamb than the eternal hero, that security guy on Star Trek away teams whose sole job it is to be killed. Using Rubio in that way would at least have shown some method to the GOP’s madness but that sort of credit is undeserved.

They seem really to have genuinely thought their initial impressions after catastrophic defeat in 2012 that some charisma would make their stupidity look good, was a workable strategy. The GOP seems to abound with charismatic young men saying truly reprehensible things.

What the GOP will never learn – Tea Party to establishment – is that smiling while giving the finger to the American [people] doesn’t change the message and I think we all get the GOP’s message in giving us Marco Rubio.

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8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Is Not ‘The Republican Savior’

I completely agree with Think Progress…

Think Progress

Since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) abandoned his opposition to providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and embraced a bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration, political pundits and Republican leaders have anointed the Florida Congressman the future of the GOP.

Consequently, the likely 2016 presidential candidate has become a media darling, appearing on conservative talk shows and mainstream outlets to tout his reform principles and convince skeptics of the wisdom of reforming the nation’s broken immigration system. The media idolization reached its zenith on the cover of this week’s issue of TIME magazine. The publication prominently features a picture of a defiant Rubio under the headline, “The Republican Savior: How Marco Rubio became the new voice of the GOP.”

But dig beyond Rubio’s newfound embrace of immigration reform, and you’ll find that the GOP’s future appears stuck in the past, as the great hope of the party still espouses many of the extreme policies voters rejected in November:

1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio voted against the GOP’s compromise measure to temporarily suspend the debt limit through May 19 in order avoid defaulting on the national debt. In a statement posted on his website, Rubio insisted that he would hold the debt ceiling increase hostage “unless it is tied with measures to actually solve our debt problem through spending reforms.”

2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment. “Now more than ever, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Rubio proclaimed in 2011. A Balanced Budget Amendment would force the government to slash spending during an economic downturn, driving up unemployment and making the downturn worse, in a vicious cycle. If the amendment were in place during the last financial crisis, unemployment would have doubled.

3. Signed the Norquist pledge. Rubio pledged to never raise taxes under any circumstances and even voted against the last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff, since the deal included $600 billion in revenue. “Thousands of small businesses, not just the wealthy, will now be forced to decide how they’ll pay this new tax,” Rubio noted in a statement.

4. Backed Florida’s voter purge. Rubio defended Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) attempted purge Democratic voters from the rolls, brushing off its disproportionate targeting of Latino voters. He also defended Florida’s decision to shorten its early voting period from two weeks to eight days by pointing to “the cost-benefit analysis.” After Election Day, several prominent Florida Republicans admitted that the election law changes were geared toward suppressing minority and Democratic votes and researchers found that long voting lines drove away at least 201,000 Florida voters.

5. Doesn’t believe in climate change. During a recent BuzzFeed interview, Rubio claimed has “seen reasonable debate” over whether humans are causing climate change. Scientists have long agreed that the debate is now over.

6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women. Rubio voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, noting that he disagrees with portions of the bill. Rubio claims he supports a scaled-back version of the legislation.

7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. Rubio co-sponsored a bill — along with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — that sought to nullify Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide contraception to their employees without additional co-pays by permitting businesses to voluntarily opt out of offering birth control.

8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group. Rubio has previously boasted the endorsement of anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and during the election recorded robocalls for the National Organization of Marriage urging Americans to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He recently wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.”

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John Avlon says Romney lying about vetting Rubio for VP

John Avlon and Rubio screenshot

The Raw Story

CNN contributor and Newsweek columnist John Avlon on Tuesday accused Mitt Romney of lying about vetting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to be his running mate.

Sources close to the Romney campaign told ABC News on Monday that Rubio was not being vetted, suggesting Romney had no interested in picking him as his vice presidential candidate. But on Tuesday, Romney declared that Rubio was “being thoroughly vetted as part of our process.”

“He was trying to clean up a political mess,” Avlon said. “Because someone told the truth and it was an unnecessary insult and it was causing real problems for the campaign. This is political.”

“So you think he really isn’t vetting Rubio?” CNN’s Erin Burnett asked.

“Rule number one: Everybody lies,” Avlon responded. “This is that going down.”

He noted the news was leaked on the day Rubio’s book was released, calling it “an intentional shot” at the Florida senator.

Watch video, courtesy of CNN, below:

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Marco Rubio Stands His Ground for Deadly ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws

Marco Rubio is the GOP favorite for the Vice Presidential slot.  They really want him to run along side Romney, hoping that his being on the ticket will magically bring them the Hispanic vote.  Rubio’s position on the Stand Your Ground law may not win Romney and Rubio  many votes outside of  their base…

The Nation

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was not the only prominent Florida official to back Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, despite repeated warnings that it would be seen as a “license to kill” by gunmen like the Sanford, Florida, neighborhood watchman who stands accused of slaying teenager Trayvon Martin.

The rising Republican star of Florida legislature at the time, a young state representative from West Miami who in the next session would become the speaker of the state House, actively supported the “Stand Your Ground” proposal.

That legislator, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, is now being boomed by Jeb Bush for a place on the Republican ticket as the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee.

Rubio served in the legislature as an ally of the National Rifle Association and a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the shadowy group funded by the Koch brothers to craft and promote passage of measures such as the “Stand Your Ground” law. In reviewing Rubio’s tenure, the Miami Herald noted: “Rubio had an ‘A’ rating by the National Rifle Association. Rubio voted for major NRA priorities such as a 2005 ‘castle doctrine’ law allowing people to use deadly force if attacked in their home or any place a person ‘has a right to be.’ Rubio also supported a 2008 law allowing most employees to bring guns to work, as long as they held a concealed weapons license and kept the gun in their cars.”

Two other ALEC members, state Representative Dennis Baxley and state Senator Durell Peadon were the primary sponsors of the “Stand Your Ground” law. Now—as African-American legislators are calling for the repeal of the measure—Florida media outlets report that “Baxley says it is worth revisiting to determine whether the law should be amended.” And Florida Governor Rick Scott, Jeb Bush’s Republican successor, has appointed a task force to consider changes to the “Stand Your Ground” law.

Scott says that, in light of the Trayvon Martin killing, it is necessary to “thoroughly review Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and any other laws, rules, regulations or programs that relate to public safety and citizen protection.”

But Rubio—who has felt pressure from the NRA in the past, at rare points where he has tried to balance public safety and gun rights concerns—knows he can’t disappoint the gun lobby if he wants a place on the GOP ticket.

Continue reading here…

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Birther Civil War Breaks Out Over Marco Rubio

Photo of Marco Rubio taken on April 14, 2008 i...

Image via Wikipedia

I love it when birthers throw each other under the bus…

The Huffington Post

It’s a given that at some point in the future, Barack Obama will not be the president of the United States. That time may come sooner than Democrats want, or later than Republicans fear, but it will come all the same, and there will be a new president. Perhaps even a Republican president! And so like many of you, I’ve been wondering about what happens to the Birther movement in a post-Obama era. (If you’ve not been wondering about this, feel free to click here to learn more about cooking with bourbon, America’s most important foodstuff.)

In my mind, I’ve always imagined that the chances of Birtherism continuing much beyond Obama’s presidency were small. And I never thought for one minute that the Birthers would demand similar scrutiny of a Republican candidate for president. But it turns out I may have been wrong about this, because as Wonkette reports, there’s some sort of Birther schism emerging over the Oval Office prospects of Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

In one corner, we have Lawrence Sellin, a former Army reserve officer who seems to have parlayed getting dismissed from his position as a staffer to General David Petraeus in Afghanistan (for criticizing his superiors and making fun of their PowerPoint presentations) into a career of writing Birther tracts for something called the Canada Free Press. He’s been something of a fixture in the movement ever since, and is undeterred in his dementia despite this year’s release of Obama’s long sought-after “long form birth certificate.” Now, he’s targeting Rubio:

Continue reading FULL article HERE

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GOP Senate Candidate Fundraises Off War Of Words With Rachel Maddow

Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio continued his war of words with Rachel Maddow this week with a new web video tweaking the MSNBC host.

Here’s the backstory: Last week, Rubio’s camp rolled out a one-minute ad making the case that his economic plan “is right” as evidenced by the fact that “Maddow thinks it’s wrong.” After the release of the spot, it didn’t take long for Maddow to fire back.

“Mr. Rubio’s new commercial is all about the economy, which makes sense, because he is running in Florida where the economy is really very, very bad,” Maddow said on her show. “Unemployment in Florida stands at 11.4 percent, higher than the national average. Foreclosures up nearly 10 percent in the first half of this year in Florida, higher than the national average. And Florida’s most recent state budget needed a rescue from federal stimulus funds, which, of course, Marco Rubio opposes. These are troubled times, time to call for big ideas, detail arguments, facts.”

In his new ad Rubio fired back: “And now, Rachel Maddow responds by discussing the Obama-Crist economic record for Florida…” text reads on top of footage of the news program. “But if you are ready for some real change … Send Marco to Washington and he’ll be a check-and-balance against Obama and his policies.”

Before soliciting campaign donations at the end of the spot, Rubio’s camp takes one last parting shot at the MSNBC personality: “Again. Maddow. 9pm. (We hear she has a blog too. Knock yourself out.)”

WATCH: Rubio Aims To Fundraise Off War Of Words With Maddow

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