Rubio

[boutons_deux]

Marco Rubio is pretty bad at this whole “campaigning” thing

In his latest scrap with Ted Cruz, Rubio has managed to draw even more attention to his biggest political weakness

As we head into the stretch before the first primary elections are held in just a few weeks, a lot of people have been wondering what’s going on with Marco Rubio’s campaign.

He doesn’t seem to be spending his money wisely,

there’s a lack of personal engagement with voters, and

nobody can see what his strategy is if he fails to close the deal in the early states.


Reports have it that his plan is to go on Fox News, which is presumed to be all it will take to cut the voters’ current ties with Trump, Cruz and Carson and make them into Rubio fans. It’s not working all that well so far, but they seem to believe that ads like his latest will start to make some converts.

In it, Rubio declares his solidarity with “the essence of America” which is apparently white people who are sick of being called bigots when they complain about people of color ruining everything. Putin and Iran are bad too. And there should be jobs! He ends it with one of the most awkward lines ever uttered by a candidate:

“I approve this message, because this is about the greatest country in the world and acting like it.”

Yes, it sounds just as weird in the ad as it scans in print.

Bottom line: Rubio is the establishment choice at the moment but he’s getting nowhere fast because he’s running a lethargic campaign that just isn’t very good.

And it’s not getting any better. Apparently he’s decided that the best way to make people forget his immigration apostasy, when he joined with Democrats on the notorious Gang of 8 to hammer out a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, is to draw as much attention to it as possible by picking a losing fight with Ted Cruz. He seems to think that aggressively accusing his rival of abandoning his conservative principles in the same way he did will somehow make his own betrayal go away.

All it’s accomplished is to make every conservative in the land think even less of him than they did before.
Perhaps his strategists believed some moldy old tropes about how Karl Rove and the Bush gang always won elections by going after his opponent’s strengths rather than his weaknesses, but even aside from the fact that putting Rubio’s own weakness center stage was daft,

attacking Ted Cruz for not being conservative enough simply doesn’t track.

You can say a lot of things about him but it’s not believable that he was secretly in favor of “amnesty.”

What is believable is that Ted Cruz was doing exactly what he admits to doing: pulling a legislative maneuver to grandstand and posture, achieving nothing and getting no results. That is where his expertise lies.

The facts of this argument are not in dispute.

Marco Rubio worked with Democrats and Republicans to come up with a comprehensive Immigration reform bill that included a path to citizenship. When it became obvious that the Republican majority in the House would never pass it, he backed away and eventually repudiated his own work. It is widely considered to be his greatest liability with the conservative base of the party, which considers immigration a litmus test issue.

During the debate on the Senate bill, Cruz had offered an amendment to the bill which stripped out a path to citizenship but included “legalization” for undo ented immigrants. Cruz claims his amendment was a poison pill designed to smoke out the Democrats and get them to vote against it, thereby exposing them and proving that they what they really cared about was “amnesty.” There is plenty of evidence for this, including testimony from the Senate’s chief anti-immigration tactician Senator Jeff Sessions, who backed Cruz’s version of events.

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/18/marc...aigning_thing/

Rubio's brains don't come anywhere near to matching his blind ambition.

[boutons_deux]

Marco Rubio's rise may be a little too House of Cards for his colleagues

Has he betrayed too many people to be a true establishment favorite?

Virtually every Democrat I talk to in Washington is equal parts delighted and baffled that Republican Party stakeholders have as of yet done nothing to seriously try to unify the party establishment behind Marco Rubio. The thinking behind the two emotions is identical. Rubio seems as electable (if not more so) than anyone else in the field, and as consistently conservative as anyone this side of Ted Cruz — someone GOP elites despise and who'd be relatively easy for Clinton to beat. Of the establishment-friendly candidates, Rubio seems clearly the strongest and yet is currently weaker than both Cruz and Donald Trump. So why is the establishment so unfriendly to him?

Rubio's record of defiance and disloyalty

Rubio entered the Senate in 2010 by challenging in bent Florida Republican governor Charlie Crist in a primary election. This ultimately worked out for Rubio, but it caused a lot of trouble for the Florida GOP along the way. First Crist was driven out of the primary, leading him to mount an independent bid. This transformed what would have been a gimme victory for Crist over Democrat Kendrick Meek into a tough three-way fight.

Rubio's key ally in all of this, however, was former governor Jeb Bush who threw his endorsement behind Rubio rather than Crist in the 2010 race giving his young acolyte a crucial imprimateur of respectability. Rubio repaid the favor earlier this year by refusing to stand aside in favor of the more senior Floridian, seriously wounding his former patron's campaign.

In the meantime, Rubio established himself in the Senate as an inconvenient rebel reluctant to follow guidance from the party leadership. Like a Tea Party insurgent, he refused to vote for the 2011 debt ceiling deal, the 2013 budget deal between Paul Ryan and Patty Murray, and a range of appropriations deals to avoid government shutdowns. But then having repeatedly rebelled from the right against Mitch McConnell's dealmaking, when the party leadership wanted to side with the right-wing of the party and reject efforts to compromise with Democrats over immigration, Rubio rebelled from the left joining with John McCain and Chuck Schumer to author a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

But then when it became clear that association with the cause of immigration reform was imperiling Rubio's presidential aspirations, Rubio rebelled against the senior members of the rebel pro-reform faction, turning against his own bill and leaving them out to dry.

Politics ain't beanbag, but the fact of the matter is that House of Cards-style chicanery is relatively rare in Washington. Rubio has backstabbed a lot of people over the past five years, none of it in pursuit of any especially clear factional goal. This lack of strong factional identification is part of what makes Rubio look, from a distance, like an ideal consensus candidate. But in combination with the line-jumping, elbow-throwing, and double-reversals it looks a lot like naked opportunism.

Trust matters

Rubio can always make the argument to his fellow elected officials that basically anyone is better than Trump or Cruz. But given his own record of disloyalty, it's easy to understand that many Republican officeholders want to hold out a little longer for a fourth option.

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/18/104610...man-in-a-hurry

[boutons_deux]

Conservative Ire Grows Over Marco Rubio’s Past on Immigration

Senator Marco Rubio made a big bet on an immigration overhaul that failed – and he has been running away from it since. Now his past is catching up with him, stoking old grievances from conservative rivals who are reopening one of the most vulnerable episodes in his past.

The anger toward Mr. Rubio on the right has only grown in recent days as he has taken to aggressively questioning Senator Ted Cruz’s toughness on illegal immigration, a line of attack that some Republicans say they find disingenuous.
On talk radio, on the campaign trail and on television in states like Iowa, Mr. Rubio is suddenly facing a torrent of criticism from within his own party unlike anything he has faced so far in the presidential race.

Mr. Cruz’s campaign, which was initially rattled by Mr. Rubio’s attacks, is retaliating with a new ad that makes the case that the 2013 immigration bill Mr. Rubio helped write would have left the country exposed to attacks from Islamic State infiltrators. It shows Mr. Rubio standing with Democrats and conservative bogeymen like Senator John McCain as Mr. Cruz says: “Their misguided plan would have given Obama the authority to admit Syrian refugees, including ISIS terrorists. That’s just wrong.”

People who saw Mr. Rubio speak near Des Moines the other day found their windshields plastered with black-and-white fliers that mocked the Florida senator as “Chuck Schumer’s amnesty pitchman.” If Mr. Rubio is elected president, warned the fliers, which were noticed by a freelance journalist, he would support liberal immigration policies and “impose them by force on Americans.”

Mr. Rubio’s struggle to mollify Republicans who believe he betrayed conservative principles for political convenience – two years of outreach, apology and labored professions of a lesson learned – has never had higher stakes: He is trying to break out beyond the third- or fourth-place spot he holds in many polls by peeling away support from conservative favorites like Mr. Cruz and Ben Carson.

Yet his recent attacks on Mr. Cruz carry a fair amount of risk, as some influential conservatives are now rallying to Mr. Cruz’s side and denouncing Mr. Rubio.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/19...migration.html

[boutons_deux]

Rubio’s principal talking point starts to crumble

One of the more dramatic flaws in Marco Rubio’s presidential candidacy is a brutal contradiction: he’s a career politician, winning six elections before his 41st birthday, with no real accomplishments to his name.

In the enormous Republican field, voters can choose between established, experienced candidates who’ve done things in public office (Kasich, Bush) or insurgent outsiders with non-governmental records (Trump, Carson), but Rubio is burdened with the worst of both worlds, winning several elections without having done much in the way of meaningful work.

It’s a point about which the Florida senator appears increasingly sensitive. In fact, in October, Rubio tried to take credit for others’ work during his tenure in the state legislature. This week, Rubio’s begun telling voters that he actually has a major federal accomplishment – he helped undermine the American health care system – and his allied super PAC is pushing the line in a commercial:

“On Obamacare, some Republicans gave up. Some talked tough but got nowhere. For all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican hopeful has actually done something.”

For some GOP voters and much of the media, this seems compelling – Rubio hasn’t just spun his wheels for five years on Capitol Hill; when he’s bothered to show up for work, he invested real time and energy into interfering with families’ access to medical care.

There are, however, two important flaws in the pitch.

The first, of course, is the fact that deliberately trying to undermine the American health care system is not an accomplishment upon which to build a presidential campaign.

The second, as the Washington Post explained today, is that Rubio didn’t do what he claims to have done.

Success always has many fathers, but Rubio goes way too far in claiming credit here. He raised initial concerns about the risk-corridor provision, but the winning legislative strategy was executed by other lawmakers.

The irony is, Rubio has recently tried to take credit for others’ work as a way of differentiating himself from President Obama. “I’m not like that other one-term senator who ran for president,” the Florida Republican has effectively argued,

“because I’ve gotten things done in Congress.”

It’s not just a lazy lie; it’s actually the exact opposite of reality.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

[CosmicCowboy]

If Rubio's campaign is "lethargic" what is Hillary's? Comatose?

[boutons_deux]

If Rubio's campaign is "lethargic" what is Hillary's? Comatose?

Hillary is leading on the Dem side, Rubio is down in the noise on the Repug side.

[CosmicCowboy]

Thats like running in the special olympics.

[Winehole23]

how so?

[boutons_deux]

Move by Rubio leaves U.S. without ambassador to Mexico

By most accounts, Roberta Jacobson’s confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Mexico should have been a shoo-in.Fluent in Spanish, expert in Latin American politics and skilled in cross-border trade negotiations, the career diplomat was nominated by President Obama to take over the crucial foreign service post six months ago.

After working on Latin American affairs for both Democratic and Republican administrations for three decades, Jacobson has broad bipartisan support in Congress.

Mexico expressed enthusiastic approval and prepared to welcome her to Mexico City. The Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination and sent it to the full Senate.

But the nomination is in limbo, hostage toGOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s staunch opposition to Obama's diplomatic opening with Cuba, which Jacobson helped negotiate as assistant secretary of State.

Jacobson's sin, in the senator's view, was her role in executing the rapprochement with the island's Communist-led government following Obama's decision last December to renew diplomatic ties after more than half a century of official hostility.

Jacobson subsequently led negotiations with the government of President Raul Castro aimed at opening a U.S. Embassy in Havana last summer, easing restrictions on travel and business for Americans and, most recently, establishing mail service between the two countries.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, accused Jacobson and the White House of failing to ensure that Cuba improve human rights before restoring ties, and of glossing over the Castro government's penchant for stifling dissent.

http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-...223-story.html

Rubio campaign stunt trumps govt operation, normal for Repugs who hate govt for the 99%.

[Winehole23]

stirring resentment of teh gheys:

https://news.vice.com/article/marco-...-illegal-again

[boutons_deux]

stirring resentment of teh gheys:

https://news.vice.com/article/marco-...-illegal-again

If he's not one himself, he's pandering to the Christian Taliban, promising to impose Christian Sharia. Christian Taliban, as big a stain on America as gun fellators.

[boutons_deux]

Rubio flunks key test of self-awareness

The Florida senator wants to focus on “consistency” and the propensity for being “calculating,” especially in the area of immigration? For some GOP presidential candidates, this might seem like a potent line of attack against Cruz – but Rubio isn’t one of them.

We are, after all, talking about a senator who co-authored the Gang of Eight immigration-reform package – which much of the Republican base now condemns as “amnesty” – championed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Rubio not only voted for the bill, he also rejected GOP amendments intended to move the proposal to the right.

Rubio then betrayed his allies and announced he’s abandoned the comprehensive legislation he helped write, shifting with the winds in the hopes of placating the Republican base and helping his 2016 campaign.

The editorial board of the Washington Post recently asked, “Will Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ever stop atoning for his apostasy in having supported an overhaul of America’s broken immigration system? Or is he so politically pliable and ideologically biddable that he will say anything, and take any stance, to shield himself from the ugly nativism Donald Trump has tapped among Republican primary voters?”

This is the guy who wants to talk about “consistency”? After Rubio abandoned his own signature cause to placate his party’s base, he decided to accuse others of shifting with “the political winds”?

Seriously?

Vox recently pondered why Rubio hasn’t received more support from the Republican Party’s establishment. “If you stop looking at him through liberal-tinted lenses,” the piece explained, “you see a politician whose brief but tumultuous record in national politics is marked by fairly erratic behavior…. Rubio has backstabbed a lot of people over the past five years, none of it in pursuit of any especially clear factional goal.”

If Rubio wants to go after Cruz, that’s a perfectly sensible strategy. But for the Floridian to whine about Cruz’s “calculating” history suggests Rubio believes Republican voters – and the rest of the political world – have very short memories.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

[boutons_deux]

‘Watching a computer algorithm designed to cover talking points’

When pundits praise Marco Rubio’s debate performances – and good lord do they gush – the acclaim generally focuses less on what the senator has said and more on how he said it. Multi-candidate debates, after all, have become political theater, and the participants are seen less as would-be presidents and more as performers, evaluated on their ability to hit their marks, remember their script, and deliver their lines.

And no matter what you think of Rubio’s record or vision, the Floridian understands these rules very well. More so than any of his rivals, the first-term senator can hear a question, remember the relevant portion of his stump speech, and regurgitate the pertinent soundbite as if he’d spent a week practicing in front of a mirror.

Are the talking points true? Does his agenda have substantive merit? Rubio knows these are pesky details that are generally overlooked, so he, like the pundits who fawn over him, doesn’t seem to care.

But once in a great while, a reporter notices the senator’s robotic qualities and is less impressed than his media brethren. For example, Erik Eisele, a reporter for the Conway Daily Sun in New Hampshire, spent some time with Rubio last week, and wrote soon after:

We had roughly 20 minutes with him on Monday, and in that time he talked about ISIS, the economy, his political record and his background. But it was like watching a computer algorithm designed to cover talking points. He said a lot, but at the same time said nothing. It was like someone wound him up, pointed him towards the doors and pushed play. If there was a human side to senator, a soul, it didn’t come across through.

That might sound like harsh critique, but in essence that is the point of the New Hampshire primary, to test candidates in a retail politics setting.

Eisele’s broader point, however, seemed to focus on Rubio being overly polished, overly scripted, and overly interested in the “expectation of perfection.”

Vox’s Andrew Prokop added, “This is something national political reporters who’ve followed Rubio have long observed. When you see him deliver a speech, he’s great – charismatic, fluid, winning. But he’s much better at hitting a previously prepared set of points than he is at striking a more conversational, informal tone.”

I think that’s true, but we can also take the next step and think about this in a governing context. Rubio has proven that when his staff hands him a script to memorize, he’ll do it as well as any 2016 candidate, if not better.

But if you watch his debate performances or his town-hall appearances closely, you’ll notice that Rubio often stumbles when he’s asked to think on his feet.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

And of course Rubio is INFAMOUS for not doing his job in the Senate, like showing up, that he was elected to do.

[boutons_deux]

How Rubio used his influence to help his cocaine-dealing, ex-con brother-in-law get a real estate license

Marco Rubio urged state regulators to grant his ex-convict brother-in-law a real estate license when he was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, The Washington Post reported Wednesday afternoon.

Rubio's recommendation was one of three provided by Orlando Cicilia, who is married to Rubio's older sister Barbara, to the Real Estate Division of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation after it came to light during Cicilia's licensing process that he was an ex-convict.

Cicilia was convicted of drug trafficking in 1989. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was paroled in 2000. Rubio's letter of recommendation came two years later. In the letter, Rubio did not mention that his sister was Cicilia's spouse, or that his parents had moved in with his sister and brother-in-law. Rubio's mother still lives with Cicilia.

Ex-convicts are not barred from obtaining real estate licenses in Florida, and, while Rubio's failure to disclose his familial relationship to Cicilia may be construed as a conflict of interest, it is not illegal.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/how-...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Marco Rubio Doesn’t Add Up

MATH was never my strongest subject, so maybe I’m just not crunching the numbers right.

But the more I stare at them, the less sense Marco Rubio makes.

Rubio as the front-runner, I mean. As the probable Republican nominee.

According to odds makers and prediction markets, he’s the best bet. According to many commentators, too.

But Iowa’s less than a month away, and in two recent polls of Republican voters there, he’s a distant third, far behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

So he’s killing it in New Hampshire, right?

Wrong. A survey from two weeks ago had him second to Trump there, but another, just days earlier, put him in third place — after Trump and Cruz, again. Chris Christie’s inching up on him, the reasons for which were abundantly clear in a comparison of Christie’s freewheeling campaign style and Rubio’s hyper-controlled one by The Times’s Michael Barbaro.

And as of Thursday, the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in South Carolina showed Rubio to be more than six points behind Cruz and 21 behind Trump among that state’s Republicans. There’s no inkling of a surge, and it’s not as if pro-Rubio forces have been holding off on advertising that will turn the tide.Plenty of ads have already run.

In fact the rap on Rubio is that he counts too much on them and spends too little time on the trail. The largest newspaper in New Hampshire took aim at the infrequency of his appearances there in an editorial with the headline: “Marco? Marco? Where’s Rubio?”

And when he missed a Senate vote last month, a spokesman for Cruz tweeted that it was because “he had 1 event in a row in Iowa — a record-setting breakneck pace for Marco.”

Rubio can’t claim a singularly formidable campaign organization, with a remarkably robust platoon of ground troops. His fund-raising hasn’t been exceptional.

His promise seems to lie instead in his biography as the son of hard-working Cuban immigrants, in his good looks, in the polish of his oratory, in the nimbleness with which he debates.

And in this: Reasonable people can’t stomach the thought of Trump or Cruz as the nominee.

Because this is his first national campaign, reporters (and opponents) are digging into his past more vigorously than ever, and it’s unclear how much fodder it holds and how much defense he’ll have to play.

over the last three decades, no Republican or Democrat — with the exception of Bill Clinton — lost both Iowa and New Hampshire and survived that crisis in momentum to win the nomination. If that’s Rubio’s path, it’s an unusual one.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/03...nt-add-up.html

[boutons_deux]

Meet Marco Rubio's 'Religious Liberty Advisory Board'

Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign has announced its creation of a Religious Liberty Advisory Board that includes Religious Right legal and political activists, including academics and some big names, like Rick Warren of Saddleback Church.

The list could be seen as a response by Rubio’s campaign to last month’s closed-door meeting at which “dozens” of Religious Right leaders voted to rally behind his rival, Sen. Ted Cruz. But Rubio’s director of Faith Outreach, former Manhattan Declaration Executive Director Eric Teetsel, told World Magazine that “membership on the board doesn’t equal an endorsement of the GOP candidate, and the members could advise other campaigns if they wanted.”

Among the members of Rubio’s advisory board are two Latinos who have urged conservatives to adopt a more welcoming approach to immigration: Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and Carlos Campo, president of Ashland University and former president of Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

Also on Rubio’s advisory board are people affiliated with legal groups promoting Religious Right efforts to portray LGBT equality and religious liberty as incompatible, including Doug Napier and Kellie Fiedorek of Alliance Defending Freedom and Kyle Duncan, lead counsel for the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby, and former general counsel of the Becket Fund, which was once described in Politico as “God’s Rottweilers.”

Formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund, ADF is a heavyweight among Religious Right legal groups, and is spreading its anti-gay, anti-choice advocacy worldwide. Fiedorek argues that the “agenda to expand sexual liberty and redefine marriage” puts religious liberty in “great peril.” She has compared business owners who refuse to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples to Rosa Parks.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/meet-marco-rubio-s-religious-liberty-advisory-board

Empty Suit Rubio pandering to the Christian Taliban.

"Religious Liberty" meaning the "right" to infringe the liberty of everybody, and impose Christian Sharia, laws, ethics, morals on unwilling, non-Christians.

[boutons_deux]

Marco Rubio’s Shiny Boots Stir Up the Presidential Race




This week “boots on the ground” took on a whole new meaning in politics.

A surprising focus on Senator Marco Rubio’s shiny, stack-heeled ankle boots, first noted in a desultory Twitter post on Monday by a New York Times reporter, has grown over the last few days into one of the weirder firestorms of the presidential campaign, with rival candidates and the news media all adding tinder to the flames.

Senator Ted Cruz’s communications director, Rick Tyler, wrote on Twitter: “A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Men’s High-Heeled Booties.”

“Rubio has those cute new boots and I don’t want to be outdone,” Senator Rand Paul said before an appearance on “The View.”

Carly Fiorina posted a Twitter message with a picture of her own pair of high-heeled boots, with the message “Yeah, Marcorubio, but can you rock these?”

In the end, Mr. Rubio’s campaign told Politico that the boots actually came from Florsheim. Judging by the shoemaker’swebsite, they look a lot like the Duke style (cost $135).

As sartorial politics go, bootgate has eclipsed any other fashion story of the election thus far, including any fashion story related to the two female candidates, Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/us...er=rss&emc=rss

[boutons_deux]

Rubio takes a turn, follows Trump’s lead on 2016 tone

Over the summer, Donald Trump soared to the top of Republican presidential polls, vowing to “make America great again.” At the time, Marco Rubio made a conscious, deliberate effort to reject his rival’s pitch.

Trump’s wrong, Rubio said in August, because America is already great. “I know what [Trump] is trying to say,” the senator added in September, “but my problem is that America is a great country.”

That was four months ago. Last night, at a campaign event in Iowa, Rubio told his audience, “We are going to be a great country again … if you give me the chance to be your president.”

The difference isn’t subtle. All of that stuff Rubio said over the summer, rejecting the idea that America is somehow falling short of greatness, no longer applies. The Florida senator has stopped rejecting Trump’s line and started echoing it.

And this is hardly the only example. Bloomberg Politics reported this morning that Rubio’s “tone has darkened as he chases rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for his party’s nomination.”

Marco Rubio has adopted a darker tone in the first week of 2016, deploying increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric and fiercer attacks on Republican rivals that provide a stark contrast with the relatively non-confrontational brand of sunny optimism that had characterized his presidential campaign through 2015.

The Bloomberg article lists some striking examples of Rubio changing his posture dramatically, pushing fear-based messages that are as hysterical as they are dumb. “Barack Obama released terrorists from Guantanamo, and now they are plotting to attack us,” Rubio foolishly claimed in a new TV ad. “His plan after the attack in San Bernardino: take away our guns,” the senator added, repeating an obvious, demagogic lie.

“If we get this election wrong, there may be no turning around for America,” Rubio told voters this week, the same day he blamed the United States for North Korea’s provocative weapons tests.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

Rubio going mainstream, conventional Repug/Fox: slander, hate, paranoia

[boutons_deux]

Marco Rubio dials the God gab up to 11 in a new TV ad targeted to Iowa evangelicals.

“Our goal is eternity,” Rubio begins, apparently ignorant of the two-term limit of the office he seeks.

Safety, prosperity, and the right to live and worship (or not) in peace — that is not what Americans want.

Rubio informs the American electorate that what they really desire is “the ability to live alongside our Creator and for all time, to accept the free gift of salvation offered to us by Jesus Christ.”

Can I get an “Amen”? Or can I at least get someone to bludgeon a disabled man to a pulp because he doesn’t believe in God?

There’s some kowtowing to the Christian persecution complex, in references to Christians’ “struggle on a daily basis.” He notes

his intention to “cooperate with God’s plan” —

not necessarily to, you know, cooperate with the federal, state, and local laws of a country that has enshrined separation between church and state as one of its core values.(Kim Davis for Attorney General — praise be!)

Oddly for a candidate who has made keeping Americans safe through hawkish military action abroad a cornerstone of his campaign, Rubio seems eerily chill with the notion of sending everyone to the afterlife for their eternal reward. Invoking the Gospel of Matthew, he asks voters, “Were your treasures stored up on earth or in Heaven?” In light of his notorious money management problems, the senator had better hope his treasure in Heaven is better maintained than his treasure on Earth.

It all begs the question, as Mediaite succinctly put it: Does Rubio want to run the country or a mega-church?

http://www.nationalmemo.com/this-wee...he-nuthouse/5/

[boutons_deux]

Rubio tries his hand at mind-reading

Marco Rubio recently launched a television ad in which he insists President Obama is trying to take away Americans’ guns. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked the senator the other day to defend the claim, which appears to be completely at odds with reality.

“Well,” Rubio replied, “if he could he would.”

In other words, the Republican presidential candidate lied in his campaign commercial, but he feels justified in doing so because of what he imagines the president might be secretly thinking.

In last night’s GOP debate, Fox’s Neil Cavuto pressed Rubio on the same point, noting that the White House hasn’t actually taken anyone’s guns. The senator responded:

“I am convinced that if this president could confiscate every gun in America, he would. I am convinced that this president, if he could get rid of the Second Amendment, he would.”

Oh. So as long as a candidate has “convinced” himself that his fantasy is real, it doesn’t matter if he makes stuff up.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

And Rubio is the Repug establishment BoyToy?

[Nbadan]

Apparently, Rubio thinks ISIS could attack anytime...anywhere....

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in an interview aired Sunday that he purchased a gun on Christmas Eve to defend his family if ISIS -- or any other attackers -- were to visit his home.

Rubio told CBS "Face the Nation" host John erson that he purchased the firearm on Christmas Eve because he's not in town often, but was home that day. He added that he was already a firearm holder.

"I'm a strong supporter of the second amendment. I have a right to protect my family if someone were to come after us," Rubio said. "In fact, if ISIS were to visit us, or our communities, at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability that I have to protect my family from them, or from a criminal, or anyone else who seeks to do us harm. Millions of Americans feel that way."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...e-gun-purchase

[boutons_deux]

Rubio's religious ideas are also ing weird Christian Sharia, wants to be theocratic President only of Christians

Exposing Marco Rubio's Bizarre Religious Faith -- and His Plan to Use It as a Guide in the White House

Rubio is trying to save his campaign by talking about God. We ought to be terrified if he means what he says.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/exposing-marco-rubios-bizarre-religious-faith-and-his-plan-use-it-guide-white

The sooner America can put the slave, red state white Christian Taliban and other Christian freak cults out of national politics, the better.

Cruz and Rubio seem to be infected with the same Cuban religious freakishness.

[boutons_deux]

On Iran, Reagan is the wrong example to follow


MARCO RUBIO: When I become President of the United States, our adversaries around the world will know that America is no longer under the command of someone weak like Barack Obama. And it will be like Ronald Reagan where as soon as he took office, the hostages were released from Iran.

That was, to be sure, an unusually foolish thing for a grown-up to say on national television, but the Florida senator isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate using rhetoric like this.

In recent months, Chris Christie has said Obama should follow Reagan’s example in dealing with Iran, and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have made similar comments.

It’s hard not to get the sense sometimes that Republicans have lionized Reagan without any meaningful understanding of his presidency.

The Washington Post did a nice job setting the record straight, describing Rubio’s rhetoric as “specious,” which seems like an exceedingly polite way of saying “ignorant.”

It wasn’t the case, [Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corp. expert who has written about how governments handled prisoner exchanges and hostage crises] said, that the release was simply prompted by a tough-talking Reagan’s inauguration – rather, diplomats under President Jimmy Carter negotiated a resolution finalized on Carter’s last full day as president.

Carter secured the 52 hostages’ release in exchange for the unfreezing of Iranian assets, an American pledge not to meddle in internal Iranian affairs and the creation of a framework for resolving post-revolution financial claims.

“There were concessions in return for getting them back,” Jenkins said.

And while Reagan’s pledge not to “pay ransom” to the Iranians, coupled with Carter’s determination to secure a deal while president, clearly forced the crisis’s resolution, Reagan’s tough talk didn’t continue to guide his administration’s actions.

Senior Reagan administration officials later went on to engage in secret talks with Iran to gain the release of hostages held by Iranian client groups in Lebanon.

The deal negotiated by the Reagan officials included the sale of arms to Iran, the proceeds of which were funneled to right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, later exploding into the Iran-Contra affair.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

[boutons_deux]

Rubio sees ISIS as a convenient partisan tool

“I went to go purchase a handgun on the 24, on Christmas Eve,” the senator said.

And why, pray tell, did Rubio do this? As it turns out, he wasn’t looking for a last-minute gift.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in an interview aired Sunday that he purchased a gun on Christmas Eve to defend his family if ISIS – or any other attackers – were to visit his home.

Rubio told CBS “Face the Nation” host John erson that he purchased the firearm on Christmas Eve because he’s not in town often, but was home that day.

According to the transcript, the Florida senator said, “[I]f ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability that I have to protect my family from them.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

Holy , you rightwingnuts got some real Presidential talent in your lineup.

[DMX7]

Higher profile people generally need more security to begin with so it's not completely unreasonable to want to purchase a gun for self defense.