“Dems, Don’t Freak Out About Rubio Just Yet”: Let’s Take A Look At His Drawbacks, Shall We?
So in the past week or so, it seems that people have decided that Marco Rubio is going to be the GOP nominee. What people, you ask? Oh, you know—the kind of people a person like me means when he says “people.” Which is to say, not regular real people, but total political junkies, and, being on the side of the fence I’m on, mostly liberal total political junkies.
The logic is straightforward enough. It looks like the race will eventually whittle down to one outsider vs. one insider. The outsider could be Donald Trump or who knows maybe Ben Carson, with an outside shot at Carly Fiorina. As for the insider, not so long ago that was either Rubio or Jeb Bush or John Kasich, throw a dart. But Bush just keeps getting worse and worse, and Kasich looks increasingly goofy. This is a great mystery so far. Here’s a guy 20-something years in the public eye. He should be better at this. But he’s not. An NBC/Marist poll that came out Monday showed Kasich on the march in New Hampshire over the last month, but in the wrong direction—he’s gone from 12 to 6 percent. In Iowa, he’s nowhere.
So that leaves Rubio as Mr. Insider. He’s been good in the debates, has gained some ground in most polls, and at least conveys the impression of actually trying. And since none of my people can really believe that Trump or Carson is going to win the actual nomination, it’s going to have to go to the insider in the end. Hence, Rubio.
Now, here’s the second thing these people believe: Rubio frightens them. They think he could win. “He’s the one who makes me nervous,” they say.
Well, of course he could win. And I don’t deny that he has certain attributes the others lack. But I think my little focus group is over-sweating this. So herewith, four reasons why Rubio might be formidable, and four corresponding reasons why he’s being overrated.
Reason One: This whole youth business. Let’s face it, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the spring chicken. At least she’d be shy of 70 when inaugurated. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden probably couldn’t last two terms. So Rubio can lay it on thick with all that cloying rhetoric about the future and passing torches to a new generation. The media really fall for that. Oh, and speaking of…
Reason Two: It seems the media like him. They sure like him more than they like Hillary. If she’s the nominee, the default narrative in the media will be something like “fresh-faced new figure takes on tired old hag.”
Reason Three: The Latino vote. You’ll be reading a lot if he’s the nominee about how he won 55 percent of the Latino vote in his first Senate run in Florida in 2010. The press will be full of breathless stories about how if he can replicate that, the Democrats are doomed.
Reason Four: He seems reasonable and totally unthreatening, which may make it hard for Democrats to sell people on the idea that he’s a right-wing extremist. There’s an art for these wingers in knowing how to emphasize all the non-extreme stuff and really play down the extreme parts. Rubio is better at that than the others. A case in point is that woman-on-the-$10-bill business from the second debate. Three of them said Rosa Parks, but Rubio said it first. This was after Rand Paul said Susan B. Anthony, which isn’t bad, but Anthony doesn’t cover nearly as many reassure-mainstream-America bases as Parks does. Also keep in mind that he had that crackerjack answer about Black Lives Matter recently, which was likely the best response to the movement by a GOP candidate. If Rubio can keep doing things like that, the “No, you fools, he’s a true right winger!” counter-narrative might be very tough to advance.
All right. Now, here are the reasons why Rubio is eminently beatable in a general election.
Reason One: His youth story line can be very easily countered. Picture a Clinton-Rubio debate. Rubio prattles on about youth, the future, optimism, what have you. Mrs. Clinton? “Well, look, the Senator is undoubtedly younger than I am, that’s an objective fact. But if we’re talking about which one of us has the policies of the past, I’d say voters should look beyond mere age. Which one of us wants to keep fighting the Cold War in Cuba, and which one of us wants to move toward a new future there? Which one of us opposes gay people getting married, a policy of the past that large majorities of Americans no longer support? Which one of us would allow no abortions even in the case of rape and incest, which is literally kind of a 19th-century position? Which one of us not only opposes raising the minimum wage but opposes the existence of a federal minimum wage law, which would put us all the way back to 1937, the last time this country had no federal minimum wage? That’s the candidate of the future?” Boom. If she said something like that and made two good commercials and Democrats in general hammered away at it, Rubio would shut up about the future pretty fast.
Reason Two: The women’s vote. Let’s go back to that abortion sentence above. It was at the first debate that Rubio said no rape or incest exceptions on abortion. Now, if he becomes the nominee, he’ll try to walk that back in some way, at least rhetorically, and he’s usually been clever and slippery in the way he’s worded it. No Republican nominee since abortion became a public issue has ever opposed exceptions for rape and incest. It’s an extreme position that should, if the Democrats hit it the right way, cost him a few points among suburban women in all the key swing states.
Reason Three: The Latino vote. He’s not getting close to 55 percent among Latinos. OK, some say, but what if he gets a mere 40, isn’t that enough? Well, maybe, maybe not, depending on other factors. But after being for immigration reform, he’s now basically against it and against a path to citizenship, although here too he is slippery. He says now that we should postpone the citizenship debate for 10 or 12 years, which means that if he serves eight, he won’t be the guy to be doing anything about it.
So that’s a way of being against it without saying the words “I’m against it,” but people aren’t stupid. In one recent poll that looked especially closely at Latino preferences (PDF), Clinton led Rubio among Latinos 61 to 31 percent (statistically, no different from how she fared against Bush or Ted Cruz). I would bet you today that that’s about how it will end up if those two face each other. And that ain’t enough.
Reason Four: The Electoral College. My long-suffering readers know that I bang on about this a lot, but the Democrats have a big advantage here, and I see nothing about Rubio that will shake this up. Rand Paul could have beaten Clinton in Colorado and Nevada, maybe even Ohio. Not Rubio. And fine, let him win Florida. A Democrat can still get 300-plus electoral votes without Florida.
So there you have it. Calm down, people. Rubio is better than the rest of the field. That’s about all that can be said of him at this point.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, October 6, 2015
“Whose Positions Are ‘Extreme”?: Marco Rubio, ‘A Woman Has A Right To Choose’, But Not Really
A few years ago, shortly before Election Day 2014, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) realized he was struggling with women voters and he worried about whether the gender gap would derail his campaign. Walker responded with a TV ad in which, in the context of the abortion debate, the governor defended leaving these decisions “to a woman and her doctor.”
Substantively, the rhetoric was ridiculous – it reflected the exact opposite of Walker’s policy agenda – but the Republican candidate saw value in trying to use his rivals’ phrasing to make his own far-right policies sound more mainstream.
BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reported the other day on a similar tactic adopted by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
“Again, terrible tragedy what happened in Oregon, but you’re right, every single year unborn in this country are killed legally, through laws that allow that to happen,” Rubio said when radio host Glenn Beck asked him to respond to Hillary Clinton’s comments on the Oregon shooting, which Beck used to pivot to the issue of abortion.
“Look, I recognize this is tough issue and I actually do believe that a woman has a right to choose with her body,” he added. “The problem is that when there’s a pregnancy, there’s another life involved and that life has a right to live. And so, as policymakers we have to choose between two competing rights, and I’ve chosen as a matter of principle to choose life in that debate.”
First, it’s a lingering mystery why we still see competitive candidates for the nation’s highest office associating themselves with Glenn Beck, chatting about who they see as radical, without appreciating the irony.
Second, it’s jarring for Rubio, who’s been a consistent far-right voice on issues such as abortion and contraception access, boast that he “actually” does “believe that a woman has a right to choose with her body” – though he’s comfortable pursuing an agenda to curtail and restrict that right.
The Florida senator added that Hillary Clinton “has extreme positions” when it comes to reproductive rights.
Rubio has argued more than once in recent months that if a woman is impregnated by a rapist, the government has the authority to force her to take the pregnancy to term, regardless of her wishes.
How eager is he, exactly, for a debate about whose positions are “extreme”?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 12, 2015
“Badly In Need Of Some New Talking Points”: Rubio Needs A New Excuse To Ignore The Climate Crisis
As recently as two years ago, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made his favorite case for doing absolutely nothing about the climate crisis. First, the far-right senator argued “government can’t change the weather,” suggesting the Floridian’s understanding of the issue lacked maturity.
But Rubio then added, “There are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point. China and India, they’re not going to stop doing what they’re doing.”
This year, the Republican repeated the talking point at a Koch brothers event: “[A]s far as I can see, China and India and other developing countries are going to continue to burn anything they can get their hands on.”
This rationale for simply allowing the crisis to continue with no American leadership at all was always bankrupt, but last week, it started collapsing in new ways. China, for example, announced its first-ever commitment to a cap-and-trade policy – a step Rubio and others on the far-right insisted China would never take.
And now India is taking steps of its own.
Under growing pressure to join in an international accord to battle climate change, India on Thursday announced its long-term plan to reduce its rate of planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution and to aggressively ramp up its production of solar power, hydropower and wind energy.
So, when Rubio said China and India are “not going to stop doing what they’re doing,” he had it largely backwards.
It’s important to emphasize that India’s announcement isn’t nearly as ambitious as it should be, and does not constitute a sweeping plan to curtail carbon emissions. That said, as the New York Times’ report added, “some environmental advocates praised the plan’s commitment to renewable energy and said that, if enacted, it could put India on track to reduced carbon emissions in the long run.”
And given that Republicans have insisted for years that China and India intend to do literally nothing about the crisis – a claim that the GOP has used an excuse to ignore the climate emergency – it seems the right is badly in need of some new talking points.
The Rubio campaign was asked to respond to these developments the other day. A spokesperson for the Republican senator responded, “Marco is opposed to cap-and-trade and other forms of a national energy tax. He has outlined concrete proposals that will help us seize our energy potential without increasing the reach of the E.P.A.”
The answer had nothing to do with the question, and Rubio’s position still doesn’t make sense.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 2, 2015
“The Trouble Is With The Messenger”: Rubio Targets Trump, But Leads With His Chin
Donald Trump’s first real interview on matters of foreign policy and national security clearly didn’t go well. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt pressed the Republican frontrunner on a variety of key issues – the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, for example – and the GOP presidential candidate not only struggled, Trump dismissed the questions themselves as “ridiculous.”
The second-day question, of course, is whether a candidate’s ignorance has any effect on his or her standing. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), talking earlier to CNN, clearly hopes to make Trump’s difficulties as consequential as possible.
“If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then you are not going to be able to serve as commander and chief,” Rubio told CNN in an interview here.
“This should be part of the reason why you are running because you understand the threats that the world is facing, you have deep understanding and you understand what to do about it,” Rubio added. “And if someone doesn’t, I think it is very concerning.”
At face value, there’s probably something to this. Even if someone were to give Trump the benefit of the doubt – maybe he confused the Quds Forces and the Kurds because it was a phone interview and he misheard the host – major-party presidential candidates should know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. Heck, anyone who reads news articles once in a while about the Middle East should know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah.
If Rubio wants to make the case that interviews like the Trump-Hewitt exchange point to a candidate who’s probably unprepared for national office, it’s a credible message.
The trouble, however, is with the messenger.
Rubio, a member of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, is basing much of his campaign on his alleged expertise on international affairs. The far-right Floridian would love nothing more than to be seen as the candidate who has a “deep understanding” of “the threats that the world is facing.”
But Rubio has run into Trump-like problems of his own. Just last week, in a big speech on foreign policy, the GOP senator told an embarrassing whopper about military preparedness, touching on an issue Rubio should have understood far better.
In June, Rubio was asked about his approach towards Iraq. Told that his policy sounds like nation-building, the senator responded, “Well, it’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”
Just this year, Rubio has flubbed the details of Iran’s Green Revolution. His criticisms on the Obama administration’s approach towards Israel were quickly discredited as nonsense. His statements of nuclear diplomacy were practically gibberish.
In the spring, Rubio had a memorable confrontation with Secretary of State John Kerry, which was a debacle – the senator stumbled badly on several key details, and Kerry made him look pretty foolish.
Soon after, Rhonda Swan, a Florida-based journalist, wrote that the Republican senator “should be embarrassed.” Swan added, “By his own standard that the next president have a ‘clear view of what’s happening in the world’ and a ‘practical plan for how to engage America in global affairs,’ Rubio fails the test.”
What’s more, as readers may recall, when Rubio has tried to articulate a substantive vision, he’s relied a little too heavily on shallow, bumper-sticker-style sloganeering, rather than actual policy measures. Rubio declared “our strategy” on national security should mirror Liam Neeson’s catchphrase in the film “Taken”: “We will look for you, we will find you and we will kill you.”
Soon after, the candidate’s team unveiled the “Rubio Doctrine,” described by Charles Pierce as “three banalities strung together in such a way as to sound profound and to say nothing.”
Rubio said this morning, “If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then you are not going to be able to serve as commander and chief.” That may be true. But is there any reason to believe the Florida Republican knows the answer to these questions?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 4, 2015
“Marco Rubio; Let Me Be Your Front Man, Republicans”: To Continue To Advocate The Fiscal And Regulatory Policies The GOP Craves
Today, Marco Rubio delivers a speech in Detroit, where he will again make the case to Republicans that the solution to their economic vulnerabilities lies in nominating Marco Rubio. “If I’m our nominee … We will be the party of the bartenders and the maids, of the people that clean our rooms and fix our cars,” Rubio promises. The choice of working-class occupations is hardly an accident — Rubio is describing the occupations held by his parents when they came to the United States. Rubio’s idea of a “party of” is quite literal — he means the party would be identified with the classes of the parents of its candidate rather than, say, its policies.
Many Republicans blame Mitt Romney’s defeat on his personal wealth, and there has been a renewed vogue for the always-popular appeal to personal working-class authenticity. Scott Walker has a story about buying a really cheap sweater. John Kasich is the son of a mailman. (National Review’s Kasich profile begins, “Have you heard that John Kasich’s dad was a mailman? If not, then you’ve probably never been around Ohio’s Republican governor.”) Hillary Clinton, too, reaches back to her mother to cast herself as the child of working-class toil. But Clinton grounds her appeal to hard-pressed Americans primarily in terms of her policy platform, which she has emphasized in a series of detailed speeches.
Rubio is unusually clear about his strategy to respond to Clinton’s arguments about policy with appeals to his background. “If I’m our nominee, how is Hillary Clinton gonna lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck?” he said at the first Republican debate. “I was raised paycheck to paycheck. How is she — how is she gonna lecture me — how is she gonna lecture me about student loans? I owed over $100,000 just four years ago.” This is Rubio’s plan. Clinton will attack the Republican economic program, and Rubio will talk about his life story.
Rubio’s platform is not entirely devoid of appeals to the working class. He emphasizes an expanded child-tax credit, which would provide benefits to families of modest means. George W. Bush, likewise, portrayed his tax cut as a plan aimed primarily at people like a low-income waitress mom, even though the overall impact was to make the tax code much more regressive. Rubio’s program would have the same effect, but more so. Even Rubio’s tax-cut plan, the most allegedly moderate aspect of his platform, would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. Other elements would compound the impact. Rubio would raise the Social Security retirement age, a change with little impact on white-collar workers, but a punishing blow to people who work on their feet or in some other physically demanding way. He would repeal Obamacare, whose benefits are heavily tilted toward low-income workers:
Rubio has sketched out a vague concept that would replace Obamacare, which — to the extent its effects can be defined — would shift much higher costs onto low-income workers, like bartenders and maids.
Rubio has voted for the Ryan budget, which would effect the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Indeed, he has set himself to Ryan’s right, criticizing the chairman’s compromise to slightly ease the impact of budget sequestration. He was also an early supporter of the 2013 government shutdown.
Rubio promises to repeal Dodd-Frank, a position that finds immense favor on Wall Street. Rubio may be the most forthrightly pro–Wall Street candidate in the race. His undiluted attack on Dodd-Frank prompted a grateful Richard Bove to write a column headlined “Thank You, Marco Rubio.” Bove is the author of Guardians of Prosperity: Why America Needs Big Banks. Some critics of Dodd-Frank favor (or like to position themselves as favoring) even more stringent regulation. Bove makes no such pretense. His book’s own summary begins, “Since the financial crisis, amid outrage at the likes of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase and Washington’s rejiggering of the financial system, the banking industry has had one major defender: Richard X. Bove.”
It is positions like this — along with his past, retracted but perhaps still secretly held support for immigration reform — that have endeared Rubio to his party’s donor class. “At the American Enterprise Institute’s annual donor retreat in Sea Island, Ga., one attendee says Rubio got rave reviews from a crowd that included several billionaires,” reported National Review’s Eliana Johnson. “And in late January, the senator impressed the libertarian-leaning crowd at the Koch brothers’ donor conference in Palm Springs, Calif., and came out on top of an informal straw poll conducted there.”
In 2004, Democrats did not think they could frontally attack the Bush administration’s hawkish policies, so they wanted to use their candidate’s biography instead. That was the all-but-explicit message of John Kerry, who promised Democrats his military background would insulate him from attacks. Republicans who favor tax cuts for the rich, cuts in social benefits for working-class Americans, and deregulation of Wall Street face a similar dilemma. What these donors want is a candidate who will continue to advocate the fiscal and regulatory policies they crave, but can sell it to the public. Rubio is all but explicitly making the case for himself as the front man to make that sale.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, August 20, 2015
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