“Is Rubio Really Hillary’s ‘Nightmare’?”: If This Is Her Nightmare, Hillary Is Getting A Good Night’s Sleep
Well, 14 more Republicans announced their candidacies, but clearly, Marco Rubio was the It Boy on the Republican side this week. It started last weekend with a Times article advancing the idea that Rubio as the GOP nominee is a “scary thought” for Democrats for all the reasons you can reckon on your own—he’s Latino, he’s young, he’s charismatic, he has a “million-dollar smile” (not kidding!), and of course he might be able to defeat her in “vital” Florida with its 29 electoral votes.
Mmmm, okay. He is most certainly Latino and young, not much arguing with those. He is reasonably charismatic. He has about a $627,000 smile, which isn’t a million (a little too on the boyish and elfin sides to project the proper Reaganesque, enemy-smiting mien) but isn’t peanuts.
I would add other and I think even more substantive claims for him. He’s not stupid, in policy terms, and more to the point isn’t intentionally stupid, constantly playing down to his most rigid base’s lowest common denominator. He does that only about 78 percent of the time, which in the context of today’s GOP is almost impressive. I could picture a President Rubio dragging the party to a couple of places where most of it really would prefer not to go. Not a lot of places, but a couple, which is two more than most of them would do.
But is Rubio really Clinton’s nightmare candidate? First of all, let’s say this. Elections are far less about the dollar value of smiles and whether a candidate colors her hair than journalists would like to think. They’re more about what the political scientists call “the fundamentals,” by which they mainly mean the economy. If the economy is still chugging along in the fall of 2016, creating 225,000 jobs a month—and by that time, if the streak holds, wages would probably be going up as well—then nobody is Clinton’s nightmare. All right, two other ifs: no terrorist attack, and no giant, quid-pro-quo Clinton scandal. If all that holds the only drama ought to be whether she tops 350 electoral votes.
But if all that doesn’t hold, then we have a race. I suppose Rubio is as plausible as any of them and more than most of them. But let’s stop and take a look at the bases of these nightmare claims. There are two.
The first is that he’ll compete with her among Latinos. The data point you’ll often see invoked here is that when first running for Senate in 2010, Rubio drew 55 percent of the Latino vote against two opponents. That he did. But here are two reasons that impressive number doesn’t necessarily translate to a presidential race.
Number one, neither of his opponents that year had much going for them among Latinos. Independent Charlie Crist wasn’t really trusted by anyone because of his party flipping, and Democrat Kendrick Meek just never fired, as they say in the horse-racing business. Number two, voters understand, Latino voters included, that a vote for senator and a vote for president aren’t the same kind of vote. For the Senate, independent and even a few Democratic Latinos would be more willing to cast an “identity” vote, just for the sake of seeing one of their own (more or less their own, since there are many different kinds of Latinos in Florida) in the Senate. The candidate’s positions matter, of course, but if voters know he’s only one of 100 in a body that never does much anyway, positions aren’t dispositive.
But a presidential vote is a different thing. There, you’d better believe positions matter. And here, Rubio has the same problems with Latino voters all the Republicans have.
Spend a few minutes on this web page, brought to you by the Seattle-based Latino Decisions. The polling I’m about to cite is from last November, so things may have changed. But still. It’s a bucket of icy water on the nightmare thesis.
Rubio favorable-unfavorable among Latinos: 31-36. Rubio favorable-unfavorable among Latinos in Florida: 39-42. In seven states with sizable Latino voting blocs, Rubio was underwater in six of them (all but Texas). Oh, and in six of the seven states (all but Florida), Clinton’s favorable numbers among Latinos were more than twice Rubio’s.
Why would this be? Are Latinos uniquely immune to the charms of high dollar-value smiles? No. The answer is his positions. Latinos support a path to citizenship, President Obama’s executive actions, and Obamacare. Rubio opposes them all. Those positions, especially on immigration, are deal breakers for a big majority of Latino voters, most of whom don’t feel an intense natural bonhomie for Cuban-Americans, who’ve always been seen to occupy a different political space from Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Central Americans.
Now as I say that was last November. Things have probably shifted a little in his direction since then, just because some people may have forgotten his lame immigration reversal. I called four pollsters to try to get current numbers on Clinton vs. Rubio head-to-head among Latinos, but oddly, none had anything current based on large enough sample sizes. If we start to see such numbers and Rubio is with 15 points or so, then Clinton should worry a little. But the overall numbers, in which she has essentially the same narrow-ish lead over Rubio that she has over everyone else, don’t suggest that he’s doing much better among the small subsets of Latinos in these polls than any other Republican is.
And now, to our second point (remember, there was a second point way up there!): “vital” Florida. I really wish people who write about politics would bother to understand the electoral map. This is a longer conversation and another column but please remember: Florida is vital to Republicans, but it’s gravy for Democrats. Obama won Florida in 2012, but if he’d lost it, he’d still have received 303 electoral votes.
Think of it this way: The Republican can win all the normal red states plus the violet quartet of Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada, as well as Iowa and New Hampshire—two states that have gone Republican just once each since 1992—and still have only 262 electoral votes. The Democrat can afford to lose Florida and still have a number of paths to 270. The Republican cannot.
Rubio has some strengths the others don’t. But if all this adds up to a nightmare, I’d think Clinton is sleeping pretty well at night.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 29, 2015
“The Bullies Are Being Persecuted? ROTFLMAO”: Marco Rubio Pathetically Plays The LGBT Victim
Poor Marco Rubio. With history rushing past him, its dust gritty in his eyes, he, the bully, resorts to playing the victim.
And so it was on Tuesday, when he tried—in this now-practiced right wing way—to claim that he and other Christians were the victims of LGBTs and their demands for, er, basic equality and civil rights.
What else can Rubio do? People like him have lost the argument.
All they can do now, after years of fostering a climate of prejudice and persecution against LGBTs, is to claim that with the prospect of equality, it is they, the bullies, who are persecuted.
They cannot argue how equality affects them negatively, so merely claim to be victims.
This is all they have, after years of using every trick in the book to keep LGBT people unequal, feared, and stigmatized.
It would be funny, this attempted sleight-of-hand, this laughable co-opting of the language and mantle of victimhood, if Rubio’s words were not so disgusting, and such canards.
On Tuesday, Rubio dared to use the phrase ‘hate speech’ when describing how, one day, those who objected to marriage equality would be seen as propagating hate speech.
Does Marco Rubio have any idea of the toxicity of the phrase he is flinging around to score some cheap political capital?
Does he have any idea of the true ‘hate speech’ LGBTs have suffered, not just on political platforms at the hands of people like Marco Rubio in their stoking of their Christian voting base—words like ‘unnatural,’ ‘pretend families,’ words of exclusion that seek to put us outside the boundaries of family, home, and love?
Because ‘hate speech’ doesn’t end on political platforms. They’re the words that LGBTs hear before they are beaten by homophobes on street corners and in schoolyards. Beaten, sometimes fatally. How dare Marco Rubio seek to invoke a phrase like ‘hate speech’ to feed his own pathetic persecution complex? Has he any idea of the true cost of ‘hate speech’ as it has been used against LGBT people?
Rubio said ‘mainstream Christian’ teachings would soon be seen as hate speech in his scary new world where those pesky homosexuals are treated just as the same as everyone else under the law.
“Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” Rubio said. Absurdly. You are only labeled a ‘homophobe’ and ‘hater’ if you come out and say something homophobic and hateful.
Mr. Rubio, despite great provocation by you and others like you, LGBTs and their supporters—many of whom are Christian, by the way—who back equality actually think you can say and think whatever you like, as long as it doesn’t incite violence and hatred. If it does, they will object, as any reasonable person might.
If you claim that LGBTs do not deserve marriage equality, and your argument has the ring of prejudice about it—and it necessarily would because you are arguing against the principles of equality—then expect to be called out for it.
But you are not being silenced. You are being disagreed with. And now you’re feeling persecuted because it’s not just LGBTs calling you out on it, but all those who believe people should be treated equally under the law.
Simply, Mr. Rubio, when will you stop scapegoating LGBTs to score votes? Why are you so dead-set on maintaining inequality and discrimination? What’s in it for you? Rubio also said, “After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech and there’s a real and present danger.”
Again, this is doom-saying nonsense, and yet another attempt to paint “the gay agenda” as an uncontrollable monster, out to silence its objectors.
The truth is that for years LGBTs have had to fight to be heard themselves, to be visible, to lobby for equality under the law.
LGBT activists have never said the teachings of mainstream Christianity or the catechism of the Catholic Church are pernicious. They have argued against those teachings being warped by bigots and opportunists like Mr. Rubio to attack LGBT people, and deny them their civil rights—but not for them to cease to exist or be practiced.
In a way, Rubio’s nonsensical words are heartening. They are like the last gasp of a poisonous old world order of determined prejudice and discrimination. How furious and scared he must have been to see Catholic Ireland face down the kind of misinformation and lies he and his cronies propagate against LGBTs on Saturday, and vote instead for a future of equality.
Rubio and others like him know their grip on fear and prejudice is loosening. And so now, he plays the victim: it’s the last pathetic piece of pantomime left to him.
Quite simply, even Rubio’s followers and supporters know LGBT people—and they do not like to see these family members and loved ones persecuted so viciously for whom they choose to go to bed with. And so, with the grit of history in his eye, Rubio continues howling in the wind—his words more and more lost in the tempest of history passing him by.
By: Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast, May 26, 2015
“Chest-Thumping Belligerence, Been There, Done That”: Why Marco Rubio’s Tough Guy Act Is Actually A Display Of Cringing Cowardice
Marco Rubio is laying out his foreign policy platform for 2016, and the take-home message is this: PANIC!!!
Join me in keeping our country safe in the New American Century. Click here now: http://t.co/r8aMy4fU2E pic.twitter.com/g5ri5UuCT0
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 16, 2015
Elsewhere, Rubio is laying claim to the usual panoply of hyper-masculine tough guy imagery: flags, bald eagles, and banners proclaiming “American Strength.”
What he means by strength can be seen in a speech he gave to the Council on Foreign Relations, blaming everything bad that has happened overseas in the past six years on President Obama’s insufficiently aggressive stance towards Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba. It would appear that chest-thumping belligerence is how safety is to be obtained.
Let’s call this what it is: cowardice. Whatever happened to political courage?
I’m speaking of real political courage, not the kind that neoconservatives equate with moar war. The politics of courage, as it is practiced by the Republican Party, is heavily gendered and homophobic — as can be seen in the slurs (e.g., “sissy”) used against those less militarily inclined. Attacking political enemies for lacking “manly” courage is a political commonplace going back hundreds of years.
Sexism, of course, has been a bipartisan affair, but these days Rubio’s party is undoubtedly the worse offender. Since the end of World War II, attacking liberals for their weak, effeminate unwillingness to make the “tough decisions” to kill or imprison lots of people has been a staple of conservative rhetoric. This has been buttressed more recently by Democrats’ association with feminism and gay rights, their corresponding greater number of female candidates, and the opening of a gender gap between the parties.
Such attacks rely on sexist tropes about women (or LGBT people) being incapable of hard, logical analysis due to excessive emotion or softness. Needless to say, those are totally illegitimate grounds for criticism. To the contrary, there is nothing strong, tough, or courageous about constant demands for more use of violence, or executing innocent people, or invading random countries for no reason.
However, if one can clear away the various prejudiced dross, there is a political case to be made for courage. I reject the idea that one can quickly and easily obtain more security by sacrificing liberty — and I also believe that not flying into a hysterical frenzy every time something terrible happens takes real courage.
After 9/11, that kind of courage was notably absent from American political leadership. Instead, there was a grasping panic; impossible, childish demands for physical security (the “one percent doctrine“); and a blind, psychotic thirst for vengeance. The most convenient victim turned out to be Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. That war of aggression did nothing for American security — indeed, it gravely harmed it. And like any act of bullying, it was fundamentally an act of cowardice.
Sometimes courage requires standing up to physical danger, like not losing one’s wits when under fire. It can also be strength in the face of pain and grief. A sensible reaction to terrorist attacks would involve both: a realization that total security is an impossible goal, and that senselessly lashing out at random targets will not heal the damage done by the attackers.
Unfortunately for something like half a million Iraqis, President Bush was a knock-kneed coward. It’s too bad that Rubio mistakes his foreign policy for courage.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, May 20, 2015
“Appealing To Fear In The Name Of Security”: Marco Rubio Wants To Scare Americans Into Voting For Him
The 2014 midterm was the election of fear, and offered a likely foreshadowing of the strategy the Republicans will use to try and win the White House in 2016. In the midterms, the GOP stacked up impressive victories by brilliantly stoking a nightmare vision of an America about to be overrun by Ebola patients, anchor babies, and ISIS assassins. In their quest to replace Barack Obama, Republican presidential hopefuls are making the starkest possible case that security is the primary issue, eclipsing all others.
Yesterday, Marco Rubio announced the new theme of his campaign: “The fundamental problem we have in America is that nothing matters if we aren’t safe.” According to Rubio, “The world has never been more dangerous than it is today,” which means “the economic stuff” has to take a backseat to national security. Rubio’s emphasis on safety echoed a remark made by his rival Chris Christie the same day: “You can’t enjoy your civil liberties if you’re in a coffin.”
These statements are startling in the all-or-nothing choices they offer. Without security, “nothing matters.” If we don’t have security, we’ll be in a coffin. This black-and-white language negates the possibility that security is one value among others, that it needs to be balanced against competing values such as liberty or peace. It’s hard to imagine cruder appeals to fear.
And by appealing to fear in the name of security, they only ensure they’ll get less of what they say they want.
While some political leaders have relied on fear-mongering since time immemorial, the specific national security based anxiety voiced by Rubio and Christie has a particular lineage. According to George Mason historian Peter N. Stearns in his 2006 book American Fear, “American culture launched a really distinctive approach to fear only in the twentieth century: There was no long legacy of public fearfulness. Indeed, current standards are particularly striking in their contrast with nineteenth-century norms, which quite explicitly called on Americans, at least American men, to face fear directly and stare it down.”
Stearns locates the origins of fear culture in modern American politics in the Cold War. His argument is in keeping with findings of many historians that the very idea of “national security” as a pre-eminent goal crystallized in the early days of America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson said it was necessary to “scare the hell out of the country” in order to shore up support for an anti-communist foreign policy.
In his 1974 work The Logic of World Power, historian Franz Schurmann argued the Cold War consensus was based on “a new ideology” and “the key word and concept in that new ideology was security.” For Schurmann, part of the power of the concept of security was that it encompassed domestic economics as well as foreign policy. Social Security, after all, was the cornerstone of the New Deal. The promise of “national security” as a foreign policy goal was that it would bring the same type of peace of mind that Social Security gave to citizens.
In practice, the excessive weight given to security produced not greater calm but more fear. The search for absolute security could brook no opposition, so the enemy became not just Stalin’s USSR but the idea of communism, leading to a global crusade abroad and an ideological purge at home. As the conservative foreign policy analyst Robert W. Tucker noted in his 1971 book The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy, “By interpreting security as a function not only of a balance between states but of the internal order maintained by states, the Truman Doctrine equated America’s security with interests that evidently went well beyond conventional security requirements.”
The hair-trigger overreactions of the early Cold War were revived after 9/11, when policymakers once again launched a global war on the grounds that it was needed to ensure security on the home front. The best articulation of the post-9/11 culture of fear—and the concomitant willingness to do almost anything to secure an impregnable level of safety or security—can be seen in the 1 percent doctrine as articulate by Vice President Dick Cheney: “If there’s a 1 percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” In effect, Cheney was calling for the United States to become one giant safe space, even if it meant massively overreacting to threats abroad.
Because of the language of security originated in the New Deal, the earliest critics of this discourse came from the political right. Throughout the early Cold War, Ohio Senator Robert Taft, the stalwart of the Republican right, warned that America was becoming “a garrison state.” In his libertarian classic The Road to Serfdom (1944), F.A. Hayek argued that, “nothing is more fatal than the present fashion among intellectual leaders of extolling security at the expense of freedom. It is essential that we should relearn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty.”
Hayek was of course writing about the economic realm, but his insistence that security needed to be balanced against liberty applies just as well to foreign policy. If Rubio and Christie had any interest in moving beyond the politics of fear, they could do well to read that earlier right-wing thinkers warned that the idolatry of security brings not safety but unending jitters and a loss of liberty.
By: Jeet Heer, Senior Editor, The New Republic, May 19, 2015
“The Conservative Imagination”: Why Republicans Cannot Have A National Security “Doctrine”
In case you missed it, Marco Rubio delivered a Great Big Foreign Policy Speech yesterday, at the hallowed venue of the Council on Foreign Relations. It was such a big deal that Charlie Rose introduced him. And it even unveiled a proposed “doctrine” for national security, which I am sure the Floridian hopes will soon be known as the Rubio Doctrine.
But as Peter Beinart notes at The Atlantic, the Rubio Doctrine is basically just a collection of banal principles almost anyone could agree with:
The Rubio doctrine, which the Florida senator announced on Wednesday, “consists of three pillars.” Pillar number one is “American strength”: America must “adequately fund our military.” Pillar number two is “the protection of the American economy”: America must pursue “free trade.” Pillar number three is “clarity regarding America’s core values”: America must “support the spread of economic and political freedom by reinforcing our alliances, resisting efforts by large powers to subjugate their smaller neighbors” and “advanc[ing] the rights of the vulnerable.”
These, Rubio told moderator Charlie Rose, “are timeless truths.” But that’s precisely the problem. Historically, foreign-policy doctrines have been the opposite of “timeless.” They represent efforts to further American interests and ideals by offering a specific response to a specific geopolitical reality. Every president wants the United States to be strong, prosperous, and moral. Doctrines are supposed to outline a strategy for achieving those goals. They are not the goals themselves.
The most significant part of Beinart’s critique is this acerbic explanation of why Rubio has to keep his “doctrine” at 40,000 feet above the specific challenges of our era:
Rubio and most of the other GOP candidates want the United States to go on offense overseas after the perceived retrenchment of the Obama years. But Americans have little appetite for additional wars, and the threat that Republicans focus on most—“radical Islam”—lumps together states and organizations that are not only disparate, but bitterly hostile to each other. Truman’s “containment” doctrine and Reagan’s doctrine of “rollback” each had problems. But at least they were aimed at a specific enemy. Rubio can’t lay out a doctrine like that today because the two enemies he and other Republicans talk about most—Iran and ISIS—are only linked in the conservative imagination. On the ground, they’re at war.
That’s a bit of a problem, eh? I’m guessing if Rubio were challenged on this point, he might answer the way Will Rogers once did shortly before World War I when he was asked exactly how he proposed to drain the Atlantic Ocean, which was his “solution” to the problem of German U-Boat attacks: “That is a detail, and I am not a detail man.”
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly 15, 2015
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