Tag Archives: rubio

Why Do So Many Obvious Losers Think They Can Be President?

by Ngan6856mpkysje Posted on June 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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My body is continuing its revolt against all things good and true, so my mental acuity is scattered at best. But here’s something I’ve wanted to get out of my brain and onto pixels for a while. It’s based on nothing at all except my personal opinion. It’s not based on polls, nor anything the candidates have said, nor any detailed analysis of which blocs of voters each one will appeal to. It’s just my gut feeling. So here it is: my ranking of the 2016 Republican presidential field:

Vanity candidates: 0 percent chance of winning

Rand Paul
Ben Carson
Carly Fiorina
Mike Huckabee
Rick Santorum
George Pataki
Lindsey Graham
John Kasich

Not quite 0 percent, could maybe catch on if something really lucky happens

Bobby Jindal
Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Chris Christie
Rick Perry

Legitimate candidates with a real shot at the nomination

Jeb Bush
Scott Walker

Right off the bat, I know there are at least two people on my list who will generate some dissent: Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. But Rand Paul has no chance. Sorry. He has nearly Sarah Palin’s instincts at working the press and getting his base excited, but his views are just flatly too far out of the tea party mainstream to win the Republican nomination. As for Rubio, I just don’t see it. I know most people would put him down with Bush and Walker as having a legitimate shot, but…..really? The guy kinda reminds me of Pete Campbell on Mad Men. He’s got some talent, but no one really likes him that much. And he’s kind of an idiot, really. Still, he’s young, good looking, and appeals to older tea party types. To me, that means he’s an ideal running mate, but has no chance at the brass ring.

The thing that strikes me whenever I actually type up this list is how few legitimate contenders I find. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. In 2012, I thought from the very start that Romney was the only legitimate contender, and there are twice as many in 2016. Maybe that’s fairly normal, actually.

So here’s my question. You might disagree with my ranking, but probably not by a whole lot. There just aren’t very many candidates who have a serious chance at winning the nomination. So why are so many running? When guys like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul ran, I understood why. They just wanted a chance to present their views to a national audience. But that can’t be what’s motivating everyone on this list. So what is it? What is it that’s somehow convinced so many obvious losers that they actually have a shot at becoming the next president of the United States?

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Why Do So Many Obvious Losers Think They Can Be President?

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Is Marco Rubio This Eccentric Billionaire’s New Pet Project?

by ChristiNTA Posted on May 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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An eccentric billionaire with a sculpted goatee and a penchant for daredevil feats, Larry Ellison isn’t quite Tony Stark, but he’s close. The founder of software giant Oracle partly inspired Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man character. And like Stark, he’s made a hobby of championing fanciful ventures. According to Politico, Ellison has found his latest challenge: getting Marco Rubio into the White House.

Ellison will hold a June 9 fundraiser for the Republican senator at his Woodside, California, estate that will feature a $2,700-per-person VIP reception and photo op with the candidate and a dinner for supporters who have raised more than $27,000 for Rubio’s presidential campaign. It’s not an official endorsement, but having the world’s fifth-richest person in his corner would be a coup for Rubio, particularly as his fellow Floridian Jeb Bush gobbles up donations from the Sunshine State’s wealthiest Republicans at a record pace. Ellison, 70, is worth an estimated $54 billion. (His income in 2013, when he was still Oracle’s CEO, broke down to about $38,000 per hour.)

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Is Marco Rubio This Eccentric Billionaire’s New Pet Project?

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Marco Rubio Is a Moron

by AdelaidaH Posted on May 18, 2015

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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Marco Rubio Is a Moron

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Bush v. Rubio: Who Will Win Neocons’ Hearts and Minds?

by DemetriMattox Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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As Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, once political pals, now compete for the Republican presidential nomination, one battle they will be waging with each other will be who has better neoconservative bragging rights. Both have recruited prominent policy wonks from the hawkish wing of the GOP, and they may be heading to a showdown over who gains more support from this influential cadre. (Should he enter the 2016 race, Republican candidate Lindsey Graham will take a stab at winning over this group too.)

Ever since Rubio entered the Senate in 2011, he has made a strong play for the neocons. He has reached out to some of the George W. Bush administration’s most hawkish alumni for advice on foreign policy, and he has made national security a centerpiece of his campaign. The Rubio Doctrine, which he outlined in his first major foreign policy address as a candidate on Wednesday, comes straight out of the neocon playbook, calling for a robust military and aggressive approach to intervention.

But Rubio may find that out-neoconing Jeb Bush won’t be so easy. Bush, too, has assembled a foreign policy team almost entirely made up of former George W. Bush administration officials—including Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq War who for years peddled a conspiracy theory favored by neocons that held that Saddam Hussein, not Al Qaeda, was the main sponsor of anti-US terrorism. And Bush’s ties to the neoconservative movement date back to the mid-1990s, when he became affiliated with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a foreign policy think tank established by leading neocons and hawks.

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Bush v. Rubio: Who Will Win Neocons’ Hearts and Minds?

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Obama Just Called Out Florida’s Climate Deniers in Their Own Backyard

by DenisIqiummiqml Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama just marked Earth Day with a speech on climate change, given from a podium in Florida’s Everglades National Park. The choice of venue was appropriate from an environmental perspective—the Everglades is already acutely feeling the impacts of sea level rise—but it was also telling from a political standpoint. Although our swampiest national park has a long history of bipartisan support, it’s located in a state that has recently produced some of the most absurdist climate denial in recent memory—and Obama didn’t forget to mention it.

Florida is home not just to Senator Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential contender who maintains that humans can’t affect the climate, but also to Governor Rick Scott, who landed in headlines last month after apparently barring state employees from talking about climate change.

“Climate change can no longer be denied,” Obama said today. “It can’t be edited out. It can’t be omitted from the conversation… Simply refusing to say the words ‘climate change’ doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening.”

Obama also took a jab at Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) for bringing a snowball onto the Senate floor. “If you have a coming storm, you don’t stick your head in the sand,” he said. “You prepare for the storm.”

You can watch the full speech below (starts at 48:00):

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Obama Just Called Out Florida’s Climate Deniers in Their Own Backyard

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Cruz Campaign Accuses Paul and Rubio of Wimping Out on Gun Rights After Newtown

by ClarissSiggers Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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With the gaggle of GOP 2016 presidential contenders growing, the Republican wannabes have largely refrained from assailing one another and have instead focused their wrath on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But now Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has launched one of the first R-on-R attacks, and he has done so regarding an issue of primal importance to the Republican voting base: guns.

A few days ago, Cruz’s presidential campaign zapped out an email hitting up conservatives for donations. The solicitation showed Cruz, the tea party favorite, wearing a bright orange hunting vest, with a shotgun on his shoulder, and its message was stark: Send me money so I can support your Second Amendment rights, which “serve as the ultimate check against government tyranny.” Cruz warned that he was “under attack from the left-wing media and even Republicans who want to label me as an extremist—all for supporting a fundamental right.” And then he took a shot at the other GOP 2016 contestants: “I’m the only candidate running for President who not only believes in the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms—but has the record of fighting for it, tooth and nail.”

The only Republican 2016er who’s a proven crusader for gun rights? That was quite the claim—and a dig at everyone else in the crowded field, particularly the other GOPers who are competing for tea party and conservative voters. After all, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has declared himself a champion of gun rights. He has long supported the National Association for Gun Rights—a group that hypes itself as the conservative alternative to the NRA. Rand Paul often signs email solicitations for this outfit, such as one that asserted that President Barack Obama and the United Nations were plotting to “CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL ‘unauthorized’ civilian firearms.'” (Paul was not invited to the NRA’s recent convention—because, NGAR president Dudley Brown claimed, “Paul is more pro-gun that the NRA.”) Paul has repeatedly moved to eviscerate the gun laws of Washington, DC. And prior to becoming a senator, he campaigned at a gun rights rally with armed militia members who noted that guns could be used to prevent “progressive socialists” from thwarting Second Amendment and other rights. That is, Paul has established a rather die-hard stance on guns.

Yet that did not stop Cruz from depicting himself as the only true and tested advocate for gun rights in the Republican’s 2016 gang. So what does the Paul campaign think of this Cruz attack? Paul campaign officials would not comment on the record. “We’ll pass for now,” spokesman Sergio Gor said—a suggestion that the Paul did not want to mix it up with Cruz at this point.

The same sentiment was not evident when I asked the Cruz campaign how Cruz could justify this implied assault on Rand Paul. Rick Tyler, a well-known conservative consultant working for Cruz, responded with a detailed email that essentially accused Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another GOP 2016 candidate, of wimping out at a key moment for the gun rights crowd:

From April 11-18, 2013 in the shadow of Newtown, CT, when the Democrats were lined up to hammer Republicans, Paul and Rubio never came to the floor to stand up for the Second Amendment when the Toomey-Manchin gun bill which would have required background checks on all commercial gun sales was being considered. On April 17, Cruz came to the floor promoting a bill (Grassley-Cruz) he co-authored which was the conservative alternative to Toomey-Manchin and which did not expand background checks and made it easier to purchase and transport guns against state lines. It got 52 votes including 9 from Democrats but failed the cloture vote. During that time Cruz and Lee were very aggressive in defending the Second Amendment including gathering stories for the Congressional Record of Americans who used a firearm in self-defense.

With this note, the Cruz campaign, rather than retreat from a political fight over who’s best on gun rights, made its assault on Paul and Rubio explicit, asserting that both Paul and Rubio failed the gun rights movement in its hour of need.

And once again, Paul’s campaign did not engage, declining to answer questions about Tyler’s amplification of the original criticism. Rubio’s campaign also did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul has insisted in the past that after the Newtown gun massacre, he quickly took steps to prevent any gun safety bills from advancing in the wake of that tragedy. On April 10, 2013, he wrote on CNN’s website, “Along with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, I circulated a letter promising to ‘oppose any legislation that would infringe on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.'”

Following the Newtown tragedy, Paul considered Cruz an ally in the battle to beat back gun safety legislation. These days, Cruz is not returning the favor and looking to turn Paul and Rubio into targets in order to best them among a critical GOP constituency. The question is, how long will this remain a one-way fight?

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Cruz Campaign Accuses Paul and Rubio of Wimping Out on Gun Rights After Newtown

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Marco Rubio Is Running for President. Read These 7 Stories About Him Now.

by KianWatling9965 Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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That makes three: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has told donors that he will mount a presidential bid. He is scheduled to officially announce his candidacy Monday evening in Miami with a speech on the steps of the Freedom Tower, the historic landmark where the US government processed Cuban refugees in the 1960s.

The first-term Florida senator was considered one of his party’s brightest rising stars until a doomed immigration reform push in 2013 eroded his support among conservatives. Rubio has since worked his way back to prominence, casting himself as a leading foreign policy hawk. His candidacy is not a surprise at this point, but it does set up a political soap opera, given that Rubio will be challenging another establishment-minded Florida Republican—Jeb Bush—who was once seen as Rubio’s mentor. Bush’s expected (official) entry into the race will likely diminish Rubio’s chances.

Here are some of the best Mother Jones stories on Rubio.

Meet the billionaire car dealer who could be Rubio’s Sheldon Adelson.
His presidential bid could revive interest in a number of past scandals—some of which have not been resolved.
Rubio was once his party’s leading advocate of immigration reform. Then he retreated.
He used to believe in climate science. What happened?
His ideas on how to beat ISIS are a little odd.
Will Rubio be the candidate of Silicon Valley?
Our original Rubio cheat sheet from 2012, when he was considered a potential Romney running mate.

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Marco Rubio Is Running for President. Read These 7 Stories About Him Now.

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Could Rubio’s Past Slip-Ups Haunt a White House Bid?

by JermainDuCane Posted on March 5, 2015

Mother Jones

Every day seems to bring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio closer to a presidential run. In recent weeks, the first-term senator has toured the early primary states, including Iowa and New Hampshire, to promote his new, and very presidential-sounding book, American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone.

A talented orator, a Spanish speaker, and a legislator from a key swing state, Rubio could be a strong GOP contender. But his political career in the Florida State House from 2000 to 2009 dovetails with a golden age of corruption in Sunshine State politics. The FBI and the IRS descended on Florida in 2010 to investigate how Florida Republican officials and top pols, including Rubio, used their state party credit cards. He was not the worst offender. Others were criminally charged; Rubio was not. But by the time Rubio was running for the US Senate in 2010, the St. Petersburg Times noted the “sheer number of public corruption investigations under way appears unprecedented in Florida.”

During that race, Rubio’s opponents hounded him over these issues. Still, Rubio was elected. But a presidential bid would bring national scrutiny to his record in Florida. Here are some of the scandals that Rubio has survived…so far.

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Could Rubio’s Past Slip-Ups Haunt a White House Bid?

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Marco Rubio Has the Hots for Uber

by RefugioDurbin Posted on January 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) obligatory presidential aspirant book, American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone, is out this week. National Review has published an excerpt in which Rubio draws on his experience as a part-time college professor teaching political science at Florida International University to make the case that the car service app Uber is America’s best argument for deregulation. He writes:

The students in my class were genuinely intrigued by this innovative service and wondered why they didn’t have it in Miami…Politicians, I said, had passed rules to stifle competition that might threaten their constituents and supporters in the existing taxi and sedan-service industry…As my progressive young students listened to me explain why government was preventing them from using their cell phones to get home from the bars on Saturday night, I could see their minds change.

Rubio, realizing that he’d converted “a bunch of 20- and 21-year-old anti-regulatory activists,” goes on to claim that government regulation too often stifles innovative “little guys” like Uber—”little guy” being a relative term, in this case, when referring to a company that worth a reported $40 billion.

Other Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, have voiced support for Uber, but Rubio has been the GOP’s most vocal and prominent Uber advocate. Last spring, Rubio gushed praise for the company while touring its DC offices. Following the senator’s lead, the Republican National Committee released a petition last August asking people to support “innovative companies like Uber” against bullies in the government and taxi unions. “I can’t overstress the importance of finding a real-life example for us to contrast what we believe in with what the other party believes in,” RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski told Townhall about the petition effort. The implication was clear: Democrats want to choke the life out of the sharing economy by overregulating services like Uber and Airbnb, while Republicans want to see them thrive.

Republicans certainly have an incentive to align themselves as the official party of the sharing economy. They see it as a chance to win back the tech-savvy young voters who’ve spurned much of the GOP platform in the past. Democrats, unsurprisingly, see it as “pandering.”

The strategy ignores some Uber realities. Without tougher regulations on driver background checks, for example, the already lengthy list of violent and abusive behavior by Uber drivers could grow longer. Some low points from the past two years: An Uber driver with a prior felony conviction was charged with battery of a passenger, another one took a Los Angeles woman 20 miles out of the way to an abandoned parking lot, and another driver beat a passenger in San Francisco—with a hammer. In response to concerns over safety, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick pushed for more thorough background checks for drivers—a dreaded regulation for Uber that might be popular among some of Rubio’s former students.

But even if Uber remains a symbol of free enterprise and entrepreneurship, it’s close to becoming seen as an enemy of free speech and the press. Last November, Uber senior vice president Emil Michael suggested digging up dirt—“your personal lives, your families”—on journalists who produced coverage critical of the company. Some argued the issue was overblown, but ultimately the incident earned Uber a few enemies within the press. The company made a sharp U-turn after it was criticized, saying later that it was not going after journalists, but rather against its opponents in the taxi business.

Uber’s rapid expansion from tech upstart to indisputable giant could present a catch-22 for Rubio. In its quest to stave off regulation, Uber has hired a legion of lobbyists—including former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe—to achieve its goals. “More often than not, big business co-opts big government—and vice versa—and they work together,” Rubio writes in his book. He’s referring to how regulations help entrenched interests, but his argument can apply to Uber’s push for deregulation too. “After all,” he writes, “big corporations can afford to influence government, and the little guys can’t.”

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Marco Rubio Has the Hots for Uber

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Here’s How to Tell if Marco Rubio is Serious About Fighting Poverty

by DelmarMonahan Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote briefly about Marco Rubio’s poverty reform proposal, and I was….unenthusiastic. I don’t believe that Rubio is really serious; I don’t believe Republicans will follow his lead even if he is; and I imagine that once Rubio provides us with details, his proposal will turn out to be little more than a plan to cut spending on the poor.

Jared Bernstein followed up last night with a bit more on those pesky details. For example, Rubio proposes that we should get rid of most federal anti-poverty programs and simply give the money to the states, where they can experiment with different approaches. But there’s a problem with block grants like this:

“Revenue neutrality” may sound technical and inoffensive, if not fiscally sound, but what it really means is the safety net will be unable to expand in recessions. Let’s see the details, but typically under these arrangements, states will be unable to tap the Feds for unemployment benefits, nutritional assistance, and all the other functions that must expand to meet need when the market fails. This would be a huge step backwards, essentially enshrining poverty-inducing austerity in place of literally decades of policy advancements to meet demand contractions with temporary spending expansions.

The chart on the right shows what Bernstein is talking about. The blue line shows TANF, the basic welfare program that was block-granted as part of the mid-90s welfare reform. During the Great Recession, spending on TANF didn’t budge. Conversely, both SNAP (food stamps) and unemployment insurance rose during the recession, as they should have. Will Rubio’s plan include automatic stabilizers based on eligibility requirements? Or will it strangle safety net programs by not allowing them to grow when the economy is bad? We’ll have to wait and see.

Rubio also wants to replace the EITC with wage subsidies. I’ve pointed out before that the experience of other countries that have tried this is decidedly inconclusive, so it’s something to be cautious about. Still, if it’s done right it has the potential to be an effective program. However, Bernstein is worried about Rubio’s apparent proposal to change the program to be more generous to married couples:

What Sen. Rubio appears to be up to here is targeting the so-called marriage penalty—the idea that since EITC eligibility is based on family income, combining incomes through marriage can lead formerly eligible workers to lose eligibility.

But it sounds to me like he’s losing the income targeting of the program and will end up shifting current EITC spending away from single parents with kids to married couples with kids (along with childless adults, who get little—too little—from the EITC). Given that kids in single parent families are already more likely to be poor than those in married families, the only way this idea could not increase child poverty would be if he spent considerably more on it than is being expended on the EITC. And that’s not likely what he’s got in mind.

This would fit with Rubio’s belief that government programs should encourage marriage, a popular notion in conservative circles. Now, it so happens that I think we should encourage marriage. In fact, I wish this were a more popular notion among the educated liberal class, which pretty clearly thinks marriage is a great thing but is often skittish about “imposing” its values on others. I say: be less skittish! Nobody wants to lock others into bad or abusive marriages, but generally speaking, marriage has a ton of benefits: for the couple itself, for their children, and for society. I’m all for it.

That said, I’m pretty skeptical that the government should be in the business of encouraging or discouraging marriage, and I’m even more skeptical that offering a few more or a few less dollars in welfare programs is likely to have any effect anyway. So I share Bernstein’s concerns. However, there’s no special reason to think the status quo is ideal in this regard, so if Rubio’s proposal ends up shifting spending a bit, I’m happy to evaluate it on the merits.

Still, the devil is really in the details here. EITC is a program with a lot of history behind it, and we know that it works pretty well. Wage subsidies show some promise, but they’re untested and extremely sensitive to program design. We’ll know how serious Rubio is about this stuff based on how much thought he ends up putting into his final proposal. I’ll be waiting.

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Here’s How to Tell if Marco Rubio is Serious About Fighting Poverty

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