Why rubio is bad

I have a record of supporting pro-life policies, and will continue to do so in public and private life. Budget : In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? Unknown Position. Crime : Do you support mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders?

Washington Post "I personally believe that legalizing drugs would be a great mistake and that any reductions in sentences for drug crimes should be made with great care.

Economy : Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? The federal gas tax feeds Washington's overspending. Transportation dollars are taken from the states and funnelled through a Highway Trust Fund that is pillaged every year by Washington special interests. And decades-old federal red tape adds cost and stands in the way of innovative solutions. Economy : Do you support lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? Instead of rewarding repressive, anti-American regimes like Cuba and Iran with undeserved concessions that legitimize and enrich them, he should condition normalized relations on real, irreversible results that protect U.

The current tax code taxes too much, taxes unfairly, and conspires with our outmoded welfare system to trap poor families in poverty, rather than facilitate their climb into the middle class. Our reforms seek to simplify the structure and lower rates. Education : Do you generally support requiring states to adopt federal education standards? Tampa Bay Times "Common Core started out as a well-intentioned effort to develop more rigorous curriculum standards.

This effort to coerce states into adhering to national curriculum standards is not the best way to help our children attain the best education. Empowering parents, local communities and the individual states is the best approach. Unfortunately, the bill does not grant States autonomy in all education decisionmaking, expands the Federal Government's role in pre-K, and fails to include important measures that broaden school choice.

Due to these shortcomings, I am unable to lend my support to this bill. Energy : Do you support building the Keystone XL pipeline? Cosponsored and voted in favor of S. President, six years is too long. The Florida senator had come in second, barely, eking out a win over Ted Cruz by two-tenths of a point — though, as it would be argued incessantly, this was a score, given that Rubio came in fifth in New Hampshire and had almost been left for dead.

A series of huge, looming TV screens broadcast Fox News. Krauthammer pondered what the race might look like were Ben Carson and John Kasich, like Bush, to quit. There was no indication of this happening then, but whittling down what was once a candidate field to a two- or three-way contest had been a fantasy of the GOP cognoscenti for months.

Rubio has one of the most perfect-looking families in national politics. He also looks as if he could be running for president of the Young Republicans , with a smooth, unworried face, full head of dark-brown, perfectly parted hair, and an easy, seemingly genuine million-watt smile. A slew of media outlets concurred: Rubio was clearly the GOP candidate with the broadest appeal.

Trey Gowdy, who is white; Sen. Over the past two days, the three had barnstormed across the state with Rubio, providing a feel-good image of an inclusive GOP that, having been carefully stage-managed to project just this narrative, was duly captured on every video and cellphone camera.

Republicans, despite their wins on the state and local levels, have lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections.

Younger voters, who were more progressive on social issues, felt the party was out of touch on issues like gay marriage. Republicans needed to rebrand, and Rubio, the telegenic and rhetorically gifted junior senator from Florida, seemed the ideal candidate through which to do it. Best of all, he was a genuine first-generation success story, the kind of candidate who might, they hoped, do for Republicans what Obama had done for the Democrats.

Rubio had barely arrived in Washington before he was tapped as a possible vice-presidential contender in , and, though losing out to Paul Ryan, he won the coveted keynote slot at the Republican National Convention — and was also selected to give the official GOP response to the State of the Union speech which he delivered in English and Spanish.

What was also real was that Rubio had risen spectacularly fast, and with almost no real legislative achievements. In fact, during the past year, he had the worst attendance record in the Senate, a point that Trump, among other candidates, would goad Rubio on throughout his presidential campaign. Still, in any other year, Rubio might have gotten away with it. But in this bizarre election season, in which a billionaire not-all-that-conservative demagogue has been embraced by Republican voters as, bafflingly, a tell-it-like-it-is populist, Rubio came across as exactly what he is: a malleable, transactional and utterly manufactured candidate, bolstered by the elites.

E very great political narrative requires a degree of complicity. In , long before anyone in Washington had heard of him, when he was still living at home with his parents in middle-class West Miami, year-old Marco Rubio approached a local power broker named Rebecca Sosa and told her he wanted to run for the local city commission.

Sosa was dubious. Rubio was handsome, charismatic and endearing. The more he spoke, the more Sosa concluded she was looking at a star. From this moment onward, Rubio, not unlike Obama, became the beneficiary of the fervent desire, and patronage, of those eager to see him as a transformative figure, the embodiment of the American Dream.

Miami attorney J. Buddy, pull the tapes from Florida! Rubio struck him as earnest and sincere. Rubio won the seat, and sometime later he and Bendixen had lunch.

But ideology, as Rubio would prove time and again, mattered far less than expedience. Several years later, Bush, who introduced Rubio to many of his top donors, would serve as both a sounding board and a source of moral support when Rubio decided to challenge then-governor Charlie Crist in the Republican primary for Senate.

Among the most prominent, ultimately failed ideas was a plan to eliminate property taxes on primary homes, which established Rubio as an anti-government, anti-tax crusader: the perfect candidate for the nascent Tea Party. The answer is, Rubio has always been an establishment choice. Since his Senate run, his truest base has been the broad network of mostly white Republican elites operating behind the scenes. In an illustration of the split between the GOP base and its donor class, Singer was also a major funder of the movement for gay marriage.

Rubio seemed like a neocon, but nobody really knows, says Elise Jordan, a foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Or is this what he decided would be more politically advantageous at the time? Turning away from DeMint, Rubio allied himself instead with Sens.

Rubio hungrily leapt at the opportunities afforded him. But one moment that made him look especially terrible came right before the New Hampshire primary, on which he had put all his chips. So, he tried it out again— two more times! After the third time, Chris Christie ridiculed Rubio for it, utterly puncturing him. What did Rubio do? He said the line a fourth time. By late February , the Republican candidates still had hope, even as it was becoming clearer that Trump was running away with the nomination.

So in a February 25 debate, Rubio opted to step up his attacks on Trump. It was too little, too late. Rubio had come out strongly against Trump. He had needed to defeat Trump. His career depended on it: He had promised not to seek reelection for Senate even if he lost the nomination. And then—of course—he broke his pledge not to run for re-election. He became a senator with no further political prospects.

There are no presidential elections happening anytime soon that he could run for. The base is completely Trumpified. He remains unforgiven for his attacks on Trump, despite apologizing for them , and is resented by the Never Trumpers for becoming Trumpy.

Being characteristically a squish, he can be neither a fierce Trump critic like Justin Amash nor a full-on Trump cheerleader like Lindsey Graham.

But the erstwhile anti-socialist Marco Rubio wants an industrial policy for America. Never mind that. And recall how, in , Rubio had attacked the wisdom of using tariffs for confronting China? Rubio still craves attention. And he has been opining about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, sometimes with tweets that are bitter and hypocritical. Rubio was a failed candidate. He was also once a rising star. It is sad to see how he has proven to be petty, regretful, a dud of a legislator, and a flip-flopper.

He opts for what is convenient at this very moment, even if it might hurt him in the future. He will take any side of the issue that polls 51 percent with the base.