Tag: marco rubio

The answer to Marco Rubio’s and Rand Paul’s problem is simple.

The problem is simple: both men are Senators in states where you cannot run for two federal positions at the same time.  The answer is equally simple: neither should run for President in 2016. Rand Paul should stay in the Senate and be an awesomely cranky Senate Majority Leader*; and Marco Rubio should run for governor of Florida in 2018 and get ready for 2024.

There. Problems solved.  That should have cost each Senator five thousand dollars apiece in consulting fees, but apparently those jobs are all locked up already.

Moe Lane

*Seriously, there’s all sorts of things that you can do to a federal bureaucracy from the top.

So, I’ve figured out how to keep Marco Rubio doing stuff we’d all approve of..

Piss him the hell off.

Fourteen minutes’ worth of Cuba apologists’ guts being made into garters, including the apologists in Congress. Oh, my, yes, most assuredly the apologists in Congress. Watch it even if you’re still mad at Marco: you probably won’t stop being mad at him, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that Tom Harkin is quietly seething because there’s no way he can match Senator Rubio’s ability to put the rhetorical boot in.

Moe Lane

I am going to be blunt about recalling Senators.

This specific bad idea is courtesy of Hot Air: apparently people want to recall Marco Rubio (:shaking head: I told you guys, no Senators.  I did!) over immigration.  This is the checklist that you have to go through, to recall Marco Rubio:

  1. Pass a Constitutional amendment in Congress that would permit states to recall federal legislators.  ANYBODY WHO IS TELLING YOU THAT THIS IS NOT A NECESSARY STEP IS EITHER WRONG, OR PERNICIOUS.  You will be able to tell which by whether or not that person is asking for your credit card number.
  2. Have that Constitutional amendment get ratified by the states.
  3. Pass legislation in Florida that would give the state the ability to recall federal legislators.
  4. Start a recall on Marco Rubio.
  5. Have it succeed.
  6. Win the resulting recall election.

Continue reading I am going to be blunt about recalling Senators.

Marco Rubio to do Full Ginsburg… +2.

Allahpundit sums it up pretty well:

The menu for Sunday TV brunch: Marco Rubio with a side of Marco Rubio, served a la Rubio with just a sprinkling of Rubio on top. He’ll be on all five major shows this morning (“the full Ginsburg”) plus Univision plus Telemundo to sell the Gang of Eight’s new “earned amnesty.”

In case you were wondering, the full Ginsburg is named after William Ginsburg, attorney for Monica Lewinsky: he managed to appear on all five major Sunday morning political talk shows in the same day.  In 1998, this was an accomplishment; these days, it’s an opportunity to exercise some cynicism.  A look at the folks that have done this since then has shown that the maneuver has been done for a variety of reasons and causes; but Rubio’s (and, earlier, Jeb Bush) certainly upped the ante on this one.

Moe Lane

PS: As to the proposal, itself… frankly, I think that 95% of the arguments on this, pro and con, are resting on an extremely flawed premise: which is to say, we are ever going to see a return to the high levels of illegal immigration that occurred in previous decades.  You can say that I found What to Expect When No One’s Expecting‘s arguments otherwise to be highly persuasive.

Well, the two SOTU responses helped redeem the night.

Not much need for analysis on this one, but generally: Marco Rubio’s speech was solid, well thought-out, and aside from that water bobble thing (which he smartly made fun of himself, afterward) on-key.  Rubio is good at this sort of thing, which is one major reason why the grassroots went with him early in 2010.  As for Rand Paul… I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the man is a sarcastic so-and-so.  Which was, in its way, a great response to Barack Obama’s opinions, which are far too often quite profoundly silly.

I’m sure that people are going to try to mock the Rubio water thing, but I wouldn’t sweat it too much.  God knows that it’s not like Obama’s rhetorical gifts are going to overshadow it, based on THIS SotU address.  That was… boring.  Horribly, horribly boring.  Even by Obama standards.

Marco Rubio and the Immigration Controversy Time Bomb.

I could live with this. More importantly: so could probably 50+% of the electorate, which I suspect is getting thoroughly tired of this issue.

[Marco Rubio’s] wholesale fix tries to square—triangulate, if you will—the liberal fringe that seeks broad amnesty for illegal immigrants and the hard right’s obsession with closing the door. Mr. Rubio would ease the way for skilled engineers and seasonal farm workers while strengthening border enforcement and immigration laws. As for the undocumented migrants in America today—eight to 12 million or so—he proposes to let them “earn” a working permit and, one day, citizenship.

Those proposals amount to a collection of third rails for any number of lobbies. Organized labor has torpedoed guest-worker programs before. Anything that hints of leniency for illegals may offend the talk-radio wing of the GOP.

Continue reading Marco Rubio and the Immigration Controversy Time Bomb.

BTW: Marco Rubio’s running for President.

Or is at least angling for a VP slot in 2016. From The Corner:

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida says the Senate’s fiscal-cliff compromise, which passed the upper chamber early Tuesday, was a political mistake.

“I just couldn’t vote for it,” Rubio told reporters. “I ran, just two years ago, on the idea that I wanted to be part of solving the long-term problems this country faces. Time and again, we’re given choices here that don’t involve that.”

Via Hot Air Headlines.  Of the other four GOP holdouts… oh, I am a cynical evil giraffe this morning.  Suffice it to say that these Senators have their reasons, and that I expect that Mike Lee’s and Rand Paul’s are ones that I would actually like.

QotD revisited, The Huffington Post (!) Gets Off A Good One edition.

On the suddenly-dead talking point about Rubio and the age of the Earth (spoiler warning: it’s pretty much the same thing as what Barack Obama said about the age of the Earth, which is why it’s a suddenly-dead talking point):

Scientists say with 99 percent certainty that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. Politicians such as Rubio and Obama instead say with 100 percent certainty that the Earth is at least some number of years old and that they like winning elections.

…You don’t say?