Florida Senator Marco Rubio is very charismatic, handsome, youthful, and charming, and Time Magazine called him “The Republican Savior”.
Then he gave the response to the State of the Union Address, and showed total hypocrisy when he stated that government gets in the way, and cannot solve people’s problems or help them in a major way.
But then, he also said in the same speech that he would never have finished his own education without the federal government loans program, and that his mother depended on Medicare for her health care, although now the federal government should be cutting both programs and others as well.
In so doing, being contradictory, Marco Rubio messed up his chance to be impressive, just as Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and the same age as Rubio, did when he responded to the State of the Union Address in 2009.
And when one examines the Rubio record, he discovers the following facts:
Rubio has had huge personal debt problems and was implicated in a political credit card scandal.
Rubio has lied and exaggerated about his family history, including the idea that his grandfather escaped Fidel Castro and Cuba, when he actually migrated in 1957, when Fulgencio Basista was still in power.
Rubio backed Florida Governor Rick Scott in his scheme to limit the hours and participation of voters in the Sunshine State.
Rubio voted against the extension of the Violence Against Women Act.
Rubio has been involved in support of groups that are vehemently anti gay rights and marriage.
Rubio supported a bill to allow employers to deny birth control insurance coverage to employees.
Rubio has called for Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel to withdraw, denying President Obama the right to select his own cabinet officers, as long as there is no corruption involved.
Rubio has denied science, questioning climate change and evolution
Rubio signed the Grover Norquist tax pledge.
And the list of faults and shortcomings goes on beyond this short list above, and disqualifies Marco Rubio as a serious Presidential nominee in 2016.
And yet, when compared to Jindal, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, and many others, Rubio probably has a better chance to be the GOP nominee in 2016, and lose to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or whoever else the Democrats nominate!
So, don’t worry about Rubio then!! LOL!!!
I just cannot help thinking how odd it is that some minorities such as Marco Rubio, Allen West, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Susana Martinez and tens of thousands of other conservatives are somehow deemed less authentic than elite whites who merely profess a particular sort of empathy for minorities.
“although now the federal government should be cutting both programs and others as well.” Please tell me where in his speech or proposal does he say both programs should be cut.
Rubio said that government cannot help people, is not the answer, while he and his mom benefited from government, and now he says that is not the answer. Is that NOT English enough for you? 🙁
“I believe in federal financial aid. I couldn’t have gone to college without it. But it’s not just about spending more money on these programs; it’s also about strengthening and modernizing them.” “When I finished school, I owed over 100,000 dollars in student loans, a debt I paid off just a few months ago. Today, many graduates face massive student debt. We must give students more information on the costs and benefits of the student loans they’re taking out.” “Medicare, is especially important to me. It provided my father the care he needed to battle cancer and ultimately die with dignity. And it pays for the care my mother receives now. I would never support any changes to Medicare that would hurt seniors like my mother. But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now, is in favor of bankrupting it.Republicans have offered a detailed and credible plan that helps save Medicare without hurting today’s retirees. Instead of playing politics with Medicare, when is the President going to offer his plan to save it? Tonight would have been a good time for him to do it.”More government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back.” “More government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them.” “And more government isn’t going to inspire new ideas, new businesses and new private sector jobs. It’s going to create uncertainty.” “Because more government breeds complicated rules and laws that a small business can’t afford to follow.” “Because more government raises taxes on employers who then pass the costs on to their employees through fewer hours, lower pay and even layoffs.” “And because many government programs that claim to help the middle class, often end up hurting them instead.”Now does this mean there’s no role for government? Of course not. It plays a crucial part in keeping us safe, enforcing rules, and providing some security against the risks of modern life. But government’s role is wisely limited by the Constitution. And it can’t play its essential role when it ignores those limits.” _ Marco Rubio. So you see it not that we are against government per se, but against excessive extra-constitutional big government that is counter-productive. He says that “MORE” government is not the answer and nowhere is he or anyone against a safety net. But one thing is a safety net and quite another micromanaging the lives, freedom and property of the citizens. That is something progressives either do not want to or do not or will not understand. I hope this is ENGLISH enough for you.
It is good enough English LOL, BUT it is well known that Rubio was for the Ryan Budget of 2011, and has the interests of the upper two percent primary in his mind, since he refuses to understand that for ten years they have not paid a fair share of taxes, and it is time for them to pay some of what they gained over the ten years, which multiplied, and would not affect their overall wealth, while helping with the issues of education, infrastructure, and health care!
Why do you as well as the media, the Democrats and Obama constantly insult us, the people who voted for conservatives to go to Congress? I mean it is really insulting to say that we care only for interest of the , first it was 1% now its 2%. That we hate poor people, the elderly and children. I mean your accusation is so absurd, it does not resist the minimum analysis yet you, as well as the President, the Democrat party and the media repeat it constantly. What kind of a President talks like this, totally disregarding the opinion of half of the American people who sent their Representative to Congress? “Are Republicans in Congress really willing to let these cuts fall on our kids’ schools and mental health care just to protect tax loopholes for corporate jet owners? Are they really willing to slash military health care and the border patrol just because they refuse to eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies? Are they seriously prepared to inflict more pain on the middle class because they refuse to ask anything more of those at the very top?” This is totally insulting our motives and intelligence. What kind of a President talks like this? Only a Chavez -like one! Constantly doubting our motives, which can only be evil and thus being divisive. Finally , and I know this is hopeless, but I have to post it. The Internal Revenue Service show America’s top 1% of income earners receiving 18.9% of the nation’s adjusted gross income and paying 37.4% of all federal income taxes — about double their share of total income. Similarly, the top 5% of income earners received 33.8% of the nation’s adjusted gross income and paid well over half the total federal income tax bill — 59.1%. In the same way, the top 10% of America’s income earners received 45.2% of the nation’s adjusted gross income and paid 70.6% of all federal income taxes. In all, the top half of income earners in the U.S. received 88.3% of all income and paid 97.6% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom half of earners received 11.7 % of total income and paid 2.4% of total federal income taxes. Regarding percentages of income paid in taxes, Internal Revenue Service data shows the top 1% of income earners paying an average federal income tax rate of 23.4%, about double the 11.8 % average federal income tax collected on all income from all taxpayers. The 23.4% tax rate doesn’t count income taxes at the state level – 11% in Oregon and Hawaii on incomes over $250,000 and $200,000, respectively, 10.5% on high incomes in California, etc. So, what’s “fair?†What’s “fair†about sticking the next generation with $16 trillion in debt, and adding $1 trillion in red ink a year? See: http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43373-06-11-HouseholdIncomeandFedTaxes.pdf
Interesting, Juan, how people like you act as if the deficit and the debt ONLY began in January 2009, when most of the national debt, as I have explained before, occurred under Reagan and Bush II for foreign adventures and corporate loopholes and defense spending, and the stratification of income is the greatest EVER in American history now!
But that is fine for you, and your side does not care about middle class and poor Americans, and just want more and more tax breaks. And when you say adjusted gross income, that is after all the tax breaks and favors that wealthy people and the corporations receive. Why should the oil industry have any support from government? They don’t earn enough in sales and profits? Why should Walmart stick us with their employees’ health care, when the family members have as much in assets as the bottom 60 percent of America combined, and they did NOTHING to earn that wealth?
There are plenty of wealthy people who inherit obscene amounts of money and do nothing productive, but they are to be honored, while the middle class and poor are trashed as lazy when they cannot live on half the income they had before the BUSH RECESSION that was the worst since the Great Depression, and is taking almost as long as the Great Depression to recover from, just like after Coolidge and Hoover, but instead blaming everything on FDR? History repeats itself, and the GOP continues to back the elite against the average Americans, and we are sick of that favoritism!
“What kind of a President talks like this? Only a Chavez -like one! ”
Damn, I was the 4 millionth person to like President Obama on Facebook and
the bas**rd didn’t give me a house!!!!
I never said deficits and debt started with Obama, where did you get that idea? If we conservatives opposed Bush W big government, spending and debt, how and earth are we supposed to tolerate Obama’s bigger government and even bigger spending and debt? It’s irrational!! It’s incoherent! So now, either the Republican “moderate” establishment elite represents its conservative base and constituency,those not represented by the ruling class of the beltway and mega-cities or they will have to go. There is a long struggle within the Republican Party, but now the time has come to finish it once and for all. The Republican Party had been the party of government between the Civil War and 1932. But government then was smaller in size, scope, and pretense. The Rockefellers of New York and Lodges of Massachusetts – much less the Tafts of Ohio – did not aspire to shape the lives of the governed, as does modern big government. FDR’s New Deal largely shut these Republicans out of the patronage and power of modern government. By the late 1930s, being out of power had begun to make the Republicans the default refuge of voters who did not like what the new, big government was doing. Some Republican leaders – the Taft wing of the Party – adopted this role.The Rockefeller wing did not.That is the Ford, Bush, Dole, McCain and Romney types. Though the latter were never entirely comfortable with the emerging Democratic ruling class, their big business constituency pressed them to be their advocate to it. A few such Republicans (e.g. Kevin Philips The Emerging Republican Majority) even dreamed during the Nixon-Ford Administration of the 1970s that they might replace Democrats at the head of the ruling establishment class. But the die had been cast long since: Corporations, finance, and the entitled high and low – America’s “ins†– gravitated to the Democrats’ permanent power, while the “outs†fled into the Republican fold. Thus after WWII the Republican Party came to consist of office holders most of who yearned to be “ins,†and of voters who were mostly “outs.†As you know, back in 1960 Barry Goldwater began the revolt of the Republican Party’s constituent “outsider†or “country class,†that is the people who live outside the beltway and not represented by the establishment ruling class, by calling for a grass-roots takeover of the Party. This led to Goldwater’s nomination for President in 1964. The Republican Establishment maligned him more vigorously than did the Democrats, just as they did with Reagan and today with the Tea Party Reagan Conservatives. But the Goldwater movement switched to Ronald Reagan, who overcame the Republican Establishment and the ruling class to win the Presidency by two landslide elections. Yet the question: “who or what does the Republican Party represent†continued to sharpen because the Reagan interlude was brief, because it never transformed the Party, and hence because the Bush dynasty plus Congressional leadership (Newt Gingrich was a rebel against it and treated a such) behaved increasingly indistinguishably from Democrats. Government grew more rapidly under these Republican Administrations (Bush senior and Bush W) than under Democratic ones (except under Obama). In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political blackballing of Barry Goldwater. For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a “country class.†Yet modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.†They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the identity of Republican voters and of the majority of Republican elected representatives, the Republican leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet the Republican leadership has hardly never defended them. Finally, while a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.
HAHAHA, I LOVE your sarcasm, Paul! LOL
“Ronald Reagan, who overcame the Republican Establishment and the ruling class to win the Presidency by two landslide elections. Yet the question: “who or what does the Republican Party represent†continued to sharpen because the Reagan interlude was brief, because it never transformed the Party, and hence because the Bush dynasty plus Congressional leadership ….”
Juan,
Beneath your rants about the “Establishment” of the system and “the ruling class” why do I detect a tinge of Karl Marx trying to break out? I’m waiting for a “Come the revolution…”
to come to the surface.
Thanks again, Paul! The Tea Party Movement represents a negative populism of the 19th century, a desire for a simpler, rural America, but that will NEVER occur, Juan! Big Government is here to stay, and the masses who are more than ever ethnic minorities, along with white labor, will want an activist government, and higher taxes on those who are most successful, as they owe the country for their success by contributing without complaint, and the corporations need to be told that they they will get no more tax breaks, until and when they return jobs to America and stop cheating the system, encouraged by the GOP for many decades! We need TR back in the Republican Party!
Because you do not understand to what I am referring to. Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class. The differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it. Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat†was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.†Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in†language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government. Its attitude is key to understanding our bipartisan ruling class. Its first tenet is that “we†are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained. By taxing and parceling out more than a third of what Americans produce, through regulations that reach deep into American life, our ruling class is making itself the arbiter of wealth and poverty. By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support. Obamacare is a template for the ruling class’s economic modus operandi: the government taxes citizens to pay for medical care and requires citizens to purchase health insurance. The money thus taken and directed is money that the citizens themselves might have used to pay for medical care. In exchange for the money, the government promises to provide care through its “system.†But then all the boards, commissions, guidelines, procedures, and “best practices†that constitute “the system†become the arbiters of what any citizen ends up getting. The citizen might end up dissatisfied with what “the system†offers. But when he gave up his money, he gave up the power to choose, and became dependent on all the boards and commissions that his money also pays for and that raise the cost of care. By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition. Though they cannot prevent Americans from worshiping God, they can make it as socially disabling as smoking — to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience. Though they cannot make Americans wish they were Europeans, they continue to press upon this nation of refugees from the rest of the world the notion that Americans ought to live by “world standards.†Each day, the ruling class produces new “studies†that show that one or another of Americans’ habits is in need of reform, and that those Americans most resistant to reform are pitiably, perhaps criminally, wrong. In sum, our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislike that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way. For our ruling class, however, America is a work in progress, just like the rest the world, and they are the engineers.
My gosh, Juan, you REALLY do have a conspiracy theory!
But do you really think that the average “Joe” or “Jane”, many of whom are poorly educated, know how to run their lives and affairs and bring up their children without government involvement in the best fashion long term? Do you realize how even senior citizens who are poorly informed, can be manipulated so readily? I did not realize just how much anti establishment, anti institutional, that you really are, as if the Tea Party Movement is good for America, when it is a return to the backwardness of our rural, countrified past of frontiersmen, the time of the Old South, the old Great Plains, and yet run by wealthy businessmen such as the Koch Brothers, who know just how ignorant these masses are, and exploit them so that all social, economic and political reforms of the past century, which have made America a better place and brought up standards of living and made us the envy of the world, can be destroyed.
You seem to think that the Tea Party will be successful, but all they will accomplish, and are already doing so, is to destroy the GOP and give most elections to the Democrats, as the masses will NOT go the way of the Tea Party, although they might in some states, notorious for moving steadily backward, as Kentucky and Oklahoma. But the time of big government in our lives is NOT going to be reversed, but it is important that the proper people and goals are in charge, not the corporate interests which are anti progress and anti tax of their assets!
Ron: Thanks for confirming everything I think about the establishment mentality…LOL! Are you serious or are you pulling my leg??! You are such an elitist that you sincerely don’t realize it. I guess some part within me wants to believe that a person cannot really believe what you just wrote! Your contempt for the hard working average American is, how should I say, confirmatory of what I have just posted. I have never called the American people “ignorant masses” as you have. I have said there are low information voters, people who don’t have time to investigate or don’t care about the issues, but that does not mean they cannot make decisions and live without the guidance of the federal government. You treat our fellow Americans as children! As a matter of fact Time magazine praises Obama for just doing that, capturing the vote of the low information voter. But well, is not your fault, that is what you have been bread to believe. That is why it is natural for you to say that “it is important that the proper people and goals are in charge”. Furthermore you merge the establishment with the institutions as if they were one. No Ron, the institutions of this country ,established by our governing document the Constitution, belong to us , the American people, not the establishment. I have never said I am against the institutions, but against the beltway establishment mentality. It is actually very funny to watch and listen how predictable they are, from both parties.
I am, to some extent, “pulling your leg”, but it is clear that the average American is ill equipped to be left on his or her own and to be able to bring up a family without any intervention by government, but the point is that I do not fear government or see it as the enemy, but rather the promoter of good and progress, while you do not feel that way.
I am the optimist that government has made life better, and the only thing standing in the way is that there is greed and selfishness, which must be overcome by government intervention and regulation, including against discrimination and bias. I do not apologize for my viewpoint, as I believe America is better because of progressivism and liberalism, and if the Republicans would return to the times of Rockefeller and others who followed the TR-Ike tradition, I would have no problem with the GOP, but they are now destructive and monstrous in their greed and selfishness favoring the wealthy!
So greed and selfishness must be overcome by government? I think Milton Friedman put it best. “Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.†“Is it really true that political self interest is somehow nobler than economic self interest? Where in the world are you going to find these angels to help organize society for us?”
― Milton Friedman
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
You may “worship” Milton Friedman’s beliefs, but I do not. Look at what happened in industrial England before government reforms, and what happened in America’s Gilded Age before reforms adopted in the Progressive Era, New Deal, and Great Society!
You might like this, Milton Friedman v Mike Harrington on the Gilded Age… debates starts at 29:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3N2sNnGwa4
This is interesting, but I still prefer Michael Harrington, sorry to disappoint you! LOL
Professor,
And then there is that old bromide about one finding it impossible to pick themselves up by their bootstraps when they don’t have boots!
Thanks again, Paul!
Definition of ignorant (adj)
ig·no·rant
[ ÃgnÉ™rÉ™nt ]
1.lacking knowledge: lacking knowledge or education in general or in a specific subject
2.unaware: unaware of something
3.resulting from lack of knowledge: caused by a lack of knowledge, understanding, or experience
—————————————–
Doesn’t seem “ignorant masses” would be incorrect unless one has a different definition of ignorant.
Such as this:
ig·no·ra·mus
[ ìgnə ráyməss ]
1.insult: an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody’s level of intelligence or education
———
Juan,
Your serve.
Ron: You don’t disappoint me. I didn’t post the video to change your mind. I know perfectly well that is impossible, nor is it my goal.
Paul, I’m not even going to bother…
Well, I also know it is impossible to change your mind, Juan! LOL
Marco Rubio is not divorced from his political party’s platform.
In addition to the water-drinking moment, I listed to his Republican Response, following President Obama’s State of the Union Address, and it was more of the talking points that would make the “Conservative Entertainment Complex” (David Frum’s words, right?) feel comforted.
The fact that the junior U.S. senator from Florida is part of the Hispanic demographic (as is New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez) does not mean the Republican Party has the electorate figured out. When John McCain nominated Sarah Palin his 2008 vice-presidential running mate, it proved true that just because one chooses someone who fits a demographic profile will not good-as-guaranteed catapult the political party’s ticket to a national victory.
You are correct, D, as Sarah Palin, just being a woman, or even Susana Martinez, does not make her a woman we would elect, anymore than Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, or anyone else, can be seen as winning over the diversity vote, simply because they are Hispanic, Latino or African American. It is their views and their beliefs that matter, and these people simply do not represent the interests of the vast majority of women or minority groups and never will in our lifetime!