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Late to the party but holy what a reaming, you could write a paper on how Rubio sweated himself out of the race in 3 minutes. That was a good move by cristie.
Really changed the race. Trump and Cruz should send Christie flowers.Gotta give the fat man props for killing the neo-cohens/war machine plan b
Late to the party but holy what a reaming, you could write a paper on how Rubio sweated himself out of the race in 3 minutes. That was a good move by cristie.
Team Rubio has a plan: lose primaries, win nomination
As results from the New Hampshire primary were still being tallied, Marco Rubio’s communications director urged Jeb Bush to drop out of the race in order to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination. As Team Rubio sees it, the Republican “establishment” should simply rally behind the Florida senator, and Jeb stubbornly stands in the way.
It’s a common refrain from Rubio, but it’s also kind of hilarious – because in this week’s high-profile primary, Bush beat Rubio. Though polls showed the senator finishing second, he actually came in fifth. The former governor narrowly edged past him for a fourth-place finish.
In other words, Team Rubio’s pitch is, “That guy who just beat us should quit, so it’ll be easier for us to do better.”
Wouldn’t it be just as easy for Team Jeb to say the same thing about Rubio? Maybe the guy who finished fifth and made himself a national punch-line should get out of the way so that the establishment can consolidate around the candidate who finished ahead of him?
New York’s Jon Chait noted yesterday,
“Before New Hampshire, National Review’s Tim Alberta reported that, if Bush finished ahead of Rubio, it might ‘prove crippling’ to the younger Floridian. That proved prophetic. After Rubio’s debate choke, Bush can claim vindication that Rubio is not up to the challenge of a presidential campaign, let alone the presidency.”
The senator, obviously, doesn’t quite see the race this way. But how does Rubio intend to succeed? The Associated Press published a piece this morning that I had to triple check to make sure it wasn’t intended as satire.
The best hope of the Republican establishment just a week ago, Marco Rubio suddenly faces a path to his party’s presidential nomination that could require a brokered national convention.
That’s according to Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, who told The Associated Press that this week’s disappointing performance in New Hampshire will extend the Republican nomination fight for another three months, if not longer. It’s a worst-case scenario for Rubio and many Republican officials alike who hoped to avoid a prolonged and painful nomination fight in 2016.
On a flight from New Hampshire to South Carolina yesterday, Rubio’s campaign manager sincerely argued, “We very easily could be looking at May – or the convention. I would be surprised if it’s not May or the convention.”
Oh my.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Even Romney sees key Rubio idea as ‘a tax cut for fat cats’
One of the important things to understand about Marco Rubio is that he takes contemporary Republican thought to levels much of the American mainstream would find ridiculous. Most of the GOP, for example, opposes abortion rights, but Rubio goes further, saying even women impregnated by rapists can be forced by the government to take the pregnancy to term – a position no Republican nominee, including Reagan, has ever endorsed.
Most Republicans are hostile towards cap-and-trade, but Rubio opposes any and all efforts to address the climate crisis, dismissing the very idea as attempts to “control the weather.” Nearly every Republican is opposed to President Obama, but Rubio is basing much of his campaign on the assertion that the president is an anti-American traitor -bent on national sabotage.
And just about every Republican supports tax cuts of one form or another, but Rubio’s plan to cut capital gains taxes to literally zero is so extreme, even Mitt Romney has condemned the idea. The New York Times’ Josh Barro explained the other day:
When Steve Forbes ran for president in 1996 on a plan that called for no taxes on dividends and capital gains, Mitt Romney, then a private citizen, took out a full-page ad in The Boston Globe attacking his proposal as plutocratic.
“The Forbes tax isn’t a flat tax at all – it’s a tax cut for fat cats!” Mr. Romney’s ad declared, noting that “Kennedys, Rockefellers and Forbes” could end up with a tax rate of zero, while ordinary people would be left paying 17 percent on their wage and salary income under Mr. Forbes’s plan.
Barro added that the “mainstream Republican position on capital gains has long been that they should be taxed at a low rate, but not zero.” But then along came Rubio, embracing the “once-fringe idea” as a key part of his platform, despite the policy’s “extreme generosity to taxpayers who derive their income from investments rather than work.”
Paul Krugman added that there’s literally no evidence that such a policy would produce large economic benefits. All it would do is deliver more wealth to “the very, very rich, with essentially nothing for the vast majority of Americans.”
And making matters a little worse, just yesterday we received word from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center on what Rubio’s plan would cost. Vox’s Dylan Matthews reported:
Let’s not forget that Rubio not only proposes tax cuts for the very wealthy that the nation obviously can’t afford, he intends to do this while increasing military spending (which would increase the deficit) and destroying the Affordable Care Act (which would also increase the deficit).
Rubio’s plan would cost the government $6.8 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years, TPC concludes, and would increase the deficit by $8.2 trillion once interest payments are taken into account. […]
The analysis finds that the poorest fifth of taxpayers would get $232 back, a 1.3 percent boost in after-tax income. By contrast, the top 1 percent would get $204,995 (8.9 percent of income) back, and the top 0.1 percent would get $1,122,110 (11.5 percent). The overwhelming majority of the plan’s cost (71.1 percent) goes to helping the richest fifth of taxpayers; 40.3 percent goes to the top 1 percent alone.
All the while, the Florida senator, who’s never been especially good at math, says he can do all of this while balancing the budget, which suggests he’s either lying to himself or lying to voters.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but in light of the Tax Policy Center’s analysis, it’s probably fair to say Rubio’s plan is not something we’d expect from a responsible adult. His tax-cut blueprint is less a policy proposal and more a punch-line to a bad joke.
The senator’s rivals have spent the last few months making the case that Rubio just isn’t ready for the presidency, and there’s growing evidence that he’s proving his critics right.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
ANY Repug, they are all extremist, getting into the WH would be a disaster, with Repug extremist controlling all 3 branches of govt.
They should make a robot Rubio toy.
Rubio backers still struggling to find his accomplishments
The story was quickly overshadowed by Marco Rubio’s debate breakdown in New Hampshire, but just a few days prior, Rick Santorum, a prominent Rubio supporter, was asked on MSNBC to name even one accomplishment from the senator’s record. Santorum made a valiant effort, but he couldn’t think of anything.
On Friday, The Hill asked Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has also endorsed Rubio, to name something noteworthy that Rubio has actually done. “Well, he has, he has, brought issues out in the public so that the public is aware of the problems that exist,” Inhofe said in response.
Realizing that this wasn’t much of an answer, the Oklahoma Republican tried to elaborate.
“Now, specific, what has he done? He voted for, as I did, the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, and he did it because, and there were several other senators who didn’t, two other senators who didn’t do it.”
It’s hard to blame Senator Snowball for trying, but there are a couple of problems with this. The first is that voting for a spending bill isn’t an “accomplishment,” per se. It’s not the sort of thing that requires a great deal of effort.
The second problem, as the Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins explained, is that Rubio didn’t actually vote for the NDAA. The one thing Inhofe could come up with wasn’t even true – the Florida senator didn’t show up for work when it came time to approve the NDAA and send it to the White House for a signature.
In other words, asked to name a Rubio accomplishment, one of his high-profile Senate supporters came up with something Rubio didn’t actually do.
On “Fox News Sunday” yesterday, Chris Wallace asked Rubio about Jeb Bush’s argument that he “ran a big state eight years,” while senator “attends hearings.”
Rubio noted in response, “Foreign policy experience is doing as I did, leading the effort to impose additional sanctions on Hezbollah.”
That at least sounds like an accomplishment, except (1) the Hezbollah sanctions bill passed without opposition, so this was hardly a heavy lift; and (2) when it came time for the Senate to vote on the Hezbollah sanctions bill, Rubio again didn’t show up for work.
The senator and his allies will have to keep trying to think of something notable Rubio’s done after spending most of his adult life in public office.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Rubio claims he bet his political career on an immigration bill he 'never' intended to become
law
Marco Rubio on Monday insisted the immigration reform bill he helped spearhead through the Senate was never intended to become law and that the authors of the bill expected conservatives in the House to make it "even better."
"The Senate immigration law was not headed towards becoming law," he told a questioner at a town hall in Rock Hill, S.C. "Ideally it was headed towards the House, where conservative members of the House were going to make it even better." [...] "But it was never going to go from there to the president's desk."
So you mean, Senator, you staked your entire future on a bill that you hoped would never actually become law in the form you wrote it? Wow, that's a claim we admittedly didn't see coming. Brilliant.
So when you made that Sunday morning sweep of seven Sunday TV shows back in April 2013 touting the bill, you thought it was just a bunch of rubbish?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
These Repugs assholes make up , just like Christian Taliban pastors, as they go along, and forget about the they made up years ago. Do they think nobody keeps records?
Also Rubio's I-squared bill which triples the number of H-1B visas.
When Jindal and Brownback agree, be forewarned
As things stand, there are 31 Republican governors currently in office. One of them, Ohio’s John Kasich, is running for president. Another, Alabama’s Robert Bentley, has endorsed Kasich.
Other than these two, before this week, the remaining 29 GOP governors were officially neutral – some backed presidential candidates who are no longer in the race, some have remained on the sidelines*.That changed this week, however, when Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) got off the fence and threw his support to Marco Rubio.
The senator welcomed the support, but maybe he shouldn’t have. By most fair measures, Brownback is one of the nation’s least successful governors: his radical economic experiment has failed miserably, and recent polling found Brownback less popular than President Obama in of the nation’s most ruby-red states.
Perhaps the only thing scarier than a national candidate supported by Brownback would be a national candidate backed by former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). Oh wait.
It’s been almost a week since Marco Rubio called Bobby Jindal “one of the best governors in America,” so you should have stopped laughing by now.
Rubio could not possibly have been serious, could he? If a potential leader of the Western world thinks the Jindal administration provided an example worth emulating, then we had better stock up with survival rations and hole up in the wilds.
In the wake of Jindal’s epic, cringe-worthy failures in Louisiana, the state is struggling through fiscal and budget crises that appear almost beyond repair.
Maybe Rubio was just trying to be polite when he described Jindal, without a hint of irony, as “one of the best governors in America.” But if the praise was sincere, this, coupled with Rubio’s new alliance with Kansas’ Brownback, may tell us something important.
Indeed, part of the point of a presidential campaign is to get a sense of how candidates would govern if given the opportunity. If Rubio, with no previous executive experience, sees failed governors as success stories, it’s not unreasonable to fear that he’d follow a governing model that obviously doesn’t work.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Cautious Marco Rubio avoids another disaster by refusing questions at 'town halls'
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Florida senator's campaign held four events — all dubbed ahead of time as "town halls" — but the candidate didn't take questions from voters at any of them.
He did stick around each time to mingle and take selfies with audience members after delivering his roughly 40-minute stump speech. He also took questions from reporters after an event Wednesday.
A campaign spokesman said the events were changed from town halls to rallies. That more controlled setting allows Rubio to limit the possibility of a bad moment in the home stretch to Saturday's primary.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Too chicken to trust himself not to put his foot in his mouth
Rubotio so damn serious about actually do the hard work of governing...
New revelations pose a problem for ‘No-Show Rubio’
For pundits, Marco Rubio’s record of not showing up for work has already been dismissed as campaign trivia. For months, the senator’s critics have highlighted Rubio’s history of skipping key votes, important briefings, and committee hearings, and for months, much of the political establishment has been inclined to blow off the issue.
But the Washington Post published a report yesterday that should encourage pundits to take a fresh look at the controversy.
In the anxious weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Florida House hurriedly assembled an elite group of lawmakers to develop plans to keep the state safe.
A spot on the Select Committee on Security was a mark of prominence in Tallahassee. Some of the airplane hijackers had acquired Florida driver’s licenses and trained at flight schools in the state, and legislators lobbied furiously behind the scenes in hopes of being named to the 12-member panel tasked with addressing the state’s newly exposed vulnerabilities.
Among them was a young Republican by the name of Marco Rubio, seen as a rising star in Florida GOP circles at the time, who sought and received one of the coveted slots. It was a rare opportunity for the GOP lawmaker to not only tackle the substance of a major issue, but also earn some credibility.
It really didn’t go well. The Washington Post reported that Rubio “skipped nearly half of the meetings over the first five months of the panel’s existence, more than any of his colleagues.” He also “missed hours of expert testimony and was absent for more than 20 votes.”
In one notable incident, Rubio arrived late for a debate, missed some expert testimony, made a passionate argument against the proposal under consideration, quickly realized his points lacked merit, and then voted for the measure he’d just criticized.
At another point, the article added, Rubio’s indifference to his duties prompted then-State House Speaker Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who agreed to reward Rubio with the sought after assignment, to “express concern.”
Lately, when asked about his poor attendance habits, Rubio routinely points to the busy schedule of a presidential candidate. But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Rubio was just a regular ol’ state lawmaker, who had far fewer pressures on his schedule. He nevertheless regularly failed to show up for work.
Making matters slightly worse, this article coincides with a new report from the Tampa Bay Times, which noted that Rubio points to his tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as evidence of his White House qualifications, but a closer look suggests that’s probably not a good idea, given that the evidence ”paints a bleak picture of participation in the day-to-day responsibilities of the job.”
Rubio is on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Commerce and Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees. The Florida Republican has missed 68 percent of hearings, or 407 of 598 for which records were available.
His skipped 80 percent of Commerce hearings and 85 percent of those held by Small Business, records show.
He has missed 60 percent of Foreign Relations hearings since joining the Senate despite making his committee experience a centerpiece of his qualifications for president.
He attended 68 percent of Intelligence Committee meetings, though he has drawn criticism for missing high-profile ones, such as a briefing on the Paris terror attacks.
The argument from Rubio and his supporters is that he’s a presidential candidate, and it’s expected that senators on the national campaign trail are going to have a much lower profile on Capitol Hill. Maybe so. But the Tampa Bay Times’ analysis started with Rubio’s arrival in the Senate five years ago and ends in November 2015 – months before the official launch of his presidential bid.
The picture that emerges is that of a young man in a hurry, who’s eager for a promotion without having done much to deserve one.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
No Show Rubotio is one diseased mofo.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 02-19-2016 at 01:43 PM.
Bush trained him
Bush loser
Bush loser? You're like a caveman. Can you string together a complete sentence?
Rubotio is ing stupid
After Publishing On Breitbart News, Rubio Dismisses It As Not Credible
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) claimed that pro-Trump Breitbart News is "not a credible source" during a Fox News interview about a story published to the website that was critical of his previous immigration policies. However, Rubio wrote a post that was published by Breitbart News just days before he dismissed the website.
Rubio Dismisses Breitbart News As"Not A Credible Source" For Story About His Immigration Stance
Rubio: Breitbart News Is "Not A Credible Source" And Its Stories Are "Basically Conspiracy Theories."
In a February 20 interview on Fox News, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) claimed that a report from Breitbart News should be dismissed because Breitbart is "not a credible source." Rubio went on to criticize the conservative news site by saying its articles are "basically conspiracy theories and often times manipulated":
NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): You have former ICE officials now, who are saying that your push for enforcement along the border hasn't been consistent. That when you were a part of that Gang of Eight, that you were not making it a priority. When they questioned this Chris Crane, who ran this council group of officers, said that"not one of the changes we suggested was made to the bill before Senator Rubio introducedit,"that he tried and failed with you repeatedly, that your heart wasn't in it.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Yeah, number one, that's not true and he's not an ICE official. He's the head of a union. And it's being reported on a website that's not a credible source. It's the same website that said, Neil, that you guys gave me the questions to the debate because one of the members of my staff has a family member that runs --
CAVUTO: So this was at Breitbart, so you don't give it any credence,or his remarks any credence?
RUBIO: We don't even credential them for our events. This is the same website that reported that Fox News -- and that you,and youguys,inyour debate -- gave me the questions to the debate so I could prepare. You know that that's not true. So, I literally don't even talk about the things they report because they're basically conspiracy theories and often times manipulated. [Fox News, The Cost of Freedom, 2/20/16
http://mediamatters.org/research/201...-dismis/208718
do you think breitbart is a credible source?
It has become a laughingstock. What is ironic is that Andrew Breitbart was really against Trump, but he's dead now and his site can't stop sucking Trump's .
He showed sooooo much integrity when James O Keefe was defaming Acorn with edited videos.....what an asssssshooolllleeee...
Marco Rubio’s latest loss hard to overlook
Despite excessive media buzz, Rubio came in third in Iowa, and soon after, polls showed him on track to finish second in New Hampshire. The senator’s support quickly dried up, however, following a cringe-worthy debate performance, and Rubio finished an embarrassing fifth in the Granite State.
And in South Carolina, we now know Rubio finished second, barely escaping third, losing to Donald Trump by double digits. In terms of the broader race for the Republican nomination, the frontrunner picked up 50 delegates in the Palmetto State. Rubio earned none.
This, of course, is being characterized as yet another triumph for the young senator.
Rubio eked out a second-place finish, which looks more impressive when compared to his New Hampshire results.
As the field narrows, and the GOP establishment and donor class gets more hysterical in demanding that Republicans get in line behind the senator, Rubio is positioned to consolidate more support, picking up voters and contributors who were on board with candidates like Jeb Bush.
But the conventional wisdom surrounding his latest loss overlooks something important: Rubio lost a primary he should have won.
Consider:
* Rubio enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of nearly the entire South Carolina GOP establishment which endorsed him, cut ads for him, and aggressively hit the campaign trail on his behalf.
* One of his high-profile supports in the state, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), boasted last week that Rubio had a credible shot at winning the primary.
* Team Rubio itself, a month earlier, said it expected a victory in South Carolina.
* Rubio and his super PAC invested heavily in the state – outspending every other Republican except Team Jeb.
* Rubio paid “more than $1.1 million to South Carolina operatives and political consultants, more than triple the amount of all his opponents combined.”
And despite all of this, Rubio nevertheless lost by double digits – to a first-time candidate who spent the week leading up to the primary saying bizarre things, and who has nothing in common with the state’s Southern, evangelical population.
A variety of adjectives come to mind. “Triumphant” and “impressive” aren’t among them.
Sooner or later, to sustain the perception of viability, Rubio will need to win somewhere.
And it’s not unreasonable to ask … if Rubio can’t win here, with most of the state’s Republican apparatus supporting him, where can he?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
A generation later, Rubio flubs ‘Morning in America’
Marco Rubio’s new television ad is generating a fair amount of attention, but not for reasons his campaign will like. In the opening moments of the minute-long “morning in America” spot, viewers see a boat crossing a harbor – which wouldn’t be especially interesting except for the fact that it’s a Canadian harbor.
And while that’s obviously amusing, it’s not the only reason to pay attention to the ad.
The “morning in America” reference, of course, is not accidental. It’s a phrase many Americans, especially Republicans, will probably recognize as a signature theme of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign. Remember this ad from 32 years ago? For those who can’t watch clips online,here’s the script:
“It’s morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country’s history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?”
And now, consider the message of Rubio’s version of the same ad. Note it’s mirror-image parallels.
“It’s morning again in America. Today, more men and women are out of work than ever before in our nation’s history. People pay more in taxes than they will for food, housing, and clothing combined. Nearly 20 trillion in debt for the next generation, double what it was just eight years ago. This afternoon, almost 6,000 men and women will be married, and with growing threats and growing government, they’ll look forward with worry to the future. It’s morning again in America and under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton our country is more vulnerable, divided, and diminished than ever before. Why would we ever want for more years, again, of that?”
Maybe the whole “morning” metaphor was a little too subtle for Marco Rubio.
The point of Reagan’s “morning in America” was optimism. “Mornings,” as a metaphor, are about new beginnings, fresh starts, and the hopes that come with a new day and new possibilities. It’s why the Republican icon made it the theme of his re-election campaign – he wanted people to feel good about the country.
Our dreams aren’t dying; they’re just getting started. It’s not the end of an American promise; it’s the beginning.
Rubio’s ad keeps saying “it’s morning again in America,” except the Florida senator doesn’t seem to understand that he’s using “morning” incorrectly.
To hear Rubio tell it, the United States is on the verge of a dystopian nightmare as our country descends into a hole.
Rubio’s “morning” isn’t about new beginnings and new possibilities; it’s about waking up, opening the window shade, and feeling as miserable and pessimistic as possible.
It’s as if the senator got confused, and thought “morning” and “twilight” were effectively the same thing.
This is, however, part of a pattern. For months, Rubio’s polls were stagnant when he tried to run a positive, optimistic campaign, so he decided to scrap his message and adopt Trump’s script as his own. As of a couple of months ago, Rubio began telling the public the United States is “in decline” the American dream is “dying.”
This new commercial is a continuation of the theme. Rubio is selling crushing pessimism with a smile, assuming people won’t pay attention to the fact that he’s not pitching Reagan’s message; he’s offering the literal opposite.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/generation-later-rubio-flubs-morning-america?cid=sm_fb_maddow
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Rubio turns energy policy over to oilman donor, doesn’t even blush
http://grist.org/climate-energy/rubi...aign=feedgrist
Rubotio is such cheap little puta, turning tricks for anybody's dinero.
Kasich and Carson need to drop out ASAP.
It's hurting Rubio big time. They're costing him votes.
12% would be on the table tonight if not for them.
Rubio needs to get out
He keeps lossing
Kasich is taking votes from Rubio, Carson is taking votes from Trump because they both fall under the bull "outsider" category
Last edited by spurraider21; 02-24-2016 at 12:44 AM.
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