Mother Jones
Here’s the latest from Florida wunderkind Marco Rubio:
Marco Rubio Struggles With Question on Iraq War
Under a barrage of questions from Chris Wallace of Fox News, Mr. Rubio repeatedly said “it was not a mistake” for President George W. Bush to order the invasion based on the intelligence he had at the time. But Mr. Rubio grew defensive as Mr. Wallace pressed him to say flatly whether he now believed the war was a mistake. Mr. Rubio chose instead to criticize the questions themselves, saying that in “the real world” presidents have to make decisions based on evidence presented to them at the time.
“It’s not a mistake — I still say it was not a mistake because the president was presented with intelligence that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was governed by a man who had committed atrocities in the past with weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Rubio said on “Fox News Sunday.”
A moment later, as Mr. Wallace tried to pin him down on his view, Mr. Rubio began to reply, “Based on what we know now, I think everyone agrees — ” but Mr. Wallace cut him off before he finished the thought.
“So was it a mistake now?” Mr. Wallace asked.
“I don’t understand the question you’re asking,” Mr. Rubio said.
The truth is that I don’t care about Rubio’s actual position on the Iraq War. The guy’s trying to run on a platform of more-hawkish-than-thou, and that’s pretty much all I need to know. Most of the time he sounds like a ten-year-old trying to sound tough in front of the older kids.
But I’m seriously beginning to wonder if he has a 3-digit IQ. After Jeb Bush’s weeklong debacle trying to answer this question, every Republican candidate ought to have their own answer figured out. And not just figured out: by now their answers ought to poll-tested, cut down into nice little soundbites, and so smoothly delivered you’d never even know this was a tricky issue in the first place.
But no. Rubio sounded like this question came as a total surprise. Seriously, Marco? This guy does not sound like he’s ready for prime time.
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