The recently elected senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been talked up a lot as a VP nominee, because he's handsome (which appears to be GOP priority #1 these days), has a Spanish-surname, and got his start working for a Cuban-American Congresswoman who is half-Sephardic by ancestry so you know he's sound on the World's Most Important Issue: West Bank settlements.
Putting a Cuban on the GOP ticket to win the growing Mexican vote makes about as much sense as when Newt Gingrich got the House to pass a statehood for Puerto Rico bill in 1998 to win the Mexican vote.
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The recently elected senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been talked up a lot as a VP nominee, because he's handsome (which appears to be GOP priority #1 these days), has a Spanish-surname, and got his start working for a Cuban-American Congresswoman who is half-Sephardic by ancestry so you know he's sound on the World's Most Important Issue: West Bank settlements.
Being a neo-con seems to be his primary qualification. From what I've seen, the guy is not too bright.
Thanks, Steve. I was going to ask you to write about this.
The pundit class are morons.
The very white Marco Rubio is apparently the perfect affirmative action GOP VP candidate because under current American law, he's considered Hispanic, so of course millions of poor brown-skinned mestizos will vote Republican to support their fellow 'Hispanic.'
La Raza, indeed!
Make Christie the VP nominee. He'd demolish Biden in a debate, and be a blocking back for the guy at the top of the ticket.
He's pretty and a *bit* sibilant, but can he type?
The recently elected senator Marco Steve Sailer:"Rubio (R-FL) has been talked up a lot as a VP nominee, because he's handsome (which appears to be GOP priority #1 these days), has a Spanish-surname, and got his start working for a Cuban-American Congresswoman who is half-Sephardic by ancestry so you know he's sound on the World's Most Important Issue: West Bank settlements."
Well, to be fair, he is a senator from Florida; I think that giving the GOP a leg up in that state in 2012 is another important factor.
Excuse me, the WMI is *gay marriage in West Bank settlements*
Get it straight!
Inside-the-beltway Republicans LOVE this guy. I think they think he's their JFK. You can tell he's been groomed by the neocons cause he's a hawk more than a tea partier. Those effing Libyan idiots have been firing into the air all day on the news. Looks familiar, like, exactly like IRAQ.
"The recently elected senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been talked up a lot as a VP nominee, because he's handsome."
Rubio is not only extremely handsome, but also a former college football player who almost made it to the NFL. So he has the potential to win the macho vote as well. Women and gay guys loooooooooooooove Rubio. Women melt when he opens his smile. Just watch his interviews with Greta Von Susteren on FOX and you'll see that she is almost throwing her panties at him every time he smiles. As for the poster who said Rubio is not intelligent, he had a reputation as a brilliant lawyer before he got into politics. He is also very gifted with the spoken word. His eloquence is legendary. No wonder he is called the Republican John F.Kennedy. This guys seems to have everything. the sky is the limit.
"Putting a Cuban on the GOP ticket to win the growing Mexican vote makes about as much sense as when Newt Gingrich got the House to pass a statehood for Puerto Rico bill in 1998 to win the Mexican vote." Wait. You mean Serbs and Croats aren't all that likely to get along? Flemish and Walloons?
"who almost made it to the NFL."
And, Rubio invented the Apple II in 1977.
Plus isnt Rubio the son of pre-Castro emigrants? It's not like he's a refugee from Castro or anything.
He could say he was a refugee from Batista but anyone who would be sympathetic to that isnt voting Republican.
Oh, Please! The GOP is throwing this election, so they're not going to put Rubio on the ticket until 2016!
Man, I was just reviewing Rubio's educational background, and it is even feebler than I had anticipated: Tarkio college (one year, football scholarship),Santa Fe Community College, BS University of Florida, JD cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law (US NEWS ranking of 82). I guess that good looks plus being Hispanic/Latino (Even a White Hispanic like Rubio)will carry you pretty far in the current GOP.
Yes, almost made it to the NFL. I remember the big debate was whether to draft him or Peyton Manning #1 in the NFL draft.
Dan in DC
Those of us who are, like me, almost entirely descended from British Protestants who got here before the Revolution (I am not pure; I admit that I have an English great-grandmother who came over in a (spit!) Steamship, of all things, in the nineteenth century) will probably vote for Marco Rubio for President, if he is running.
I may be a registered Libertarian, but am leaning more towards Throne and Altar.
Well, to be fair, he is a senator from Florida; I think that giving the GOP a leg up in that state in 2012 is another important factor.
Good point. Just imagine if the Florida GOP were lucky enough to have a popular Republican Governor this election cycle. Why, his endorsement would ensure a state primary victory, and virtually guarantee the nomination, no doubt leading to an easy win on the way to the White House.
Wasn't Rubio on a plane to Israel within 48 hours of his election?
Who says it's about the Hispanic vote? He's a conservative.
but idio...er i mean, conservative analysts, continuously tell me how gingrich is the smartest guy in the race by a big margin.
in reality it's ron paul by a gigantic distance, despite some of his eccentric positions on a few topics.
gingrich is the kind of guy who would come up with karl rove-style suicide plans for conservatives, and then republicans would follow him off a cliff because he's "so smart".
"Mexicans will vote Republican in droves if we just (fill in the blank with Gingrich plan utterly divorced from factual reality)."
Maybe off-topic but why doesn't America just give P.R. its independence? I could never figure out what America gets from having that poor, Spanish-speaking island.
So is Rubio some kind of 4.5 gen standby between Jeb Bush and his son?
The reverence shown Rubio has always been a bit mysterious to me. It seems Florida produces a lot of GOP politico-bubbles. Charlie Crist was huge stuff, until the primary flame-out. Can a gov with, what, 80% approval in a big state really be *over* that easily?
I'm not thinking about policy, just popularity. The GOP's obsession with a clean, articulate Hispanic is just a bit mysterious, in ways that transcend the question of what Rove is dictating to beltway insiders.
Maybe the long, long game thinking here is that Hispanics will prove the more virtuous superminority: harder working, more devout, more conscientious than African-Americans. And if Republicans promote them as charismatic leaders, way in front of Dems, they'll seal up some kind of dynastic/iconic association with Hispanics, make Rubio or somebody their JFK, and thus secure multigenerational loyalty based on something 'bigger' than amnesty-pandering.
Even if there were something to such a notion, it's still an odd way of thinking. It would seem like a Protestant's deluded misreading of Catholic culture. Anyway, shouldn't Jeb be working to rein in Rubio's star? Shouldn't he be desperately protecting his perch for an 'opening'? And for the son?
A Romney-Crist ticket would be highly amusing, I must say.
Handsome means women's votes. Yes particularly White women are that shallow. See Sen. Scott Brown.
However, Rubio puts Florida in the likely Republican win column, and electoral votes are important.
The idea of rolling out an upper caste Cuban to woo the Meso-American vote is idiotic. This underscores the actual racism (yes, I used that word) of so much of the American political class. They really think that Marco Rubio, Iberian scion from Cuba, and Jose Vargas, mestizo sheetrock hanger from Chiapas, are equivalent.
"I could never figure out what America gets from having that poor, Spanish-speaking island."
As Admiral Mahan explained in the 1890s, a naval base in Porto Rico would protect our future Isthmusian Canal from the dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy.
To re-phrase: No election was ever lost by underestimating the intelligence of the American voter.
No matter where I go, I encounter whites posing the same question: "Mexican, Puerto Rican...they're both Hispanic, what's the difference?" "Salvadoran, Mexican..." "Puerto Rican, Cuban..." "Colombian, [take your pick]..." Almost as bad as the Island/Anywhere else choice among blacks--whites do not see it and cannot understand it...or pretend it doesn't exist.
"Handsome means women's votes. Yes particularly White women are that shallow. See Sen. Scott Brown."
Whiskey, don't ever stop being you.
"Rubio is not only extremely handsome, but also a former college football player who almost made it to the NFL."
He looks like a duck to me.
Cuban Dan Quayle.
I have to disagree on this one. I think Rubio would be a great VP candidate-- not because anyone believes Mexicans will vote for Republicans unless they advocate socialism, as you've demonstrated for years -- but to blunt the chattering class who controls the narrative and to allow whites, the only game in town, permission to vote for white interests, implicitly.
Rubio's not going to win the votes of Mexicans in Boyle Heights, that's absurd. But he will make very strong statements against amnesty and affirmative action and he will allow whites to vote for their own interests, absolving them of racial guilt trips, much as Obama did four years ago. The chattering class will be tongue tied, because they don't know the difference between a Cuban and a Mexican, operating as they do under the framework of the fictitious "Hispanic" ethnicity.
Finally, Rubio might actually encourage some "Hispanics" to identify as white, or a desire to be part of the generic white party, as opposed to the losers, jotos, and welfare cheats in the black party. And having as many Hispanics self-identify as white is a legitimate goal in maintaining white hegemony.
Peter Schiff is a funny guy
Yeah, Rubio's unlikely to get fulsome praise from Andrew Bacevich or Stephen Walt any time soon but I'm a bit surprised the self-styled expert blogger on the Republican Party's flaws apparently doesn't know the history of the PR connection. Every candidate since Nixon has been pro-statehood (partly arising from DC statehood realpolitik, partly for the 8 potential e.v.) and it intensified of course during the Rove interval. I've only heard the problems of this patently insane proposal publicized by that perennial pinata of the paleos, one "Glenn Beck" but it'll possibly perish as our mainland economy circles the drain and about 51% of Puerto Ricans persistently don't perceive the point of the plebiscites. It was a pipe dream and plain independence is more of a possibility now.
The reason the GOP woos Hispanics is that they think they're something like Italian-Americans in 1935, and a significant portion can be wooed to the Republicans in the next generation or two. They may be wrong, but it's worth noting that the shift in Italian-American votes toward the Republicans didn't seem that likely in 1935 either.
So he has the potential to win the macho vote as well. Women and gay guys loooooooooooooove Rubio. Women melt when he opens his smile. Just watch his interviews with Greta Von Susteren on FOX and you'll see that she is almost throwing her panties at him every time he smiles. ...
Is that you, Whiskey, posting as an Anon.?
The recently elected senator Marco Rubio
So, what's the Jewish connection?
and got his start working for a Cuban-American Congresswoman who is half-Sephardic by ancestry
Aha!
Yes, he's got a Spanish last name and he is probably friendly to Israel. This must surely mean that he is an idiot!
I disagree with stari_momak
Rubio is a gifted speaker, both with large and small audiences.
Obama strove to be an orator (we know how that turned out).
"He looks like a duck to me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNA3bzVGIdA
Marco Rubio?
Sure.
to coin a phrase...At least he's not Obama.
GOP doesn't woo Hispanics, or not much. It woos SWPLs by pretending to woo Hispanics.
"Well, to be fair, he is a senator from Florida; I think that giving the GOP a leg up in that state in 2012 is another important factor."
The GOP will have no problem in Florida in 2012. If George Bush beat Al Gore there, just about any Republican could beat Obama. If Northeastern moderate Romney is the nominee they'll need a genuine Southerner or Westerner.
One pretty boy on the ticket is quite enough.
No, his primary qualification is that he's hugely popular in Florida, the swing state with the largest number of votes.
That is about it.
Don't give politicos too much credit for being able to think big picture.
-Osvaldo M.
Rubio's not going to win the votes of Mexicans in Boyle Heights, that's absurd. But he will make very strong statements against amnesty and affirmative action
Is this true? I thought I remembered Rubio throwing Arizona under the bus on immigration and generally being squishy about it.
-osvaldo M.
Steve, you're burying the lede, the GOP doesn't need Rubio on the ticket because Mitt Romney himself, by Census definition, is Hispanic!
Because his dad was born there, Romney's actually a natural born citizen of Mexico (as their constitution defines it) who'd be eligible to be run for President of Mexico if he'd bother to live there long enough to meet the residency requirement (I wonder if Mitt ever regrets the road not taken).
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/mitt-romneys-foreign-policy-advisers.html?showComment=1318070838484#c2776156990994073701
As a Northeastern moderate (and a Chicano), Romney will need a popular social conservative on the ticket, Mike Huckabee is his best bet, though Rick Santorum does well with the bible thumpers in the primaries, he might have a shot at VP.
The reason to keep Puerto Rico is so that when Cuba petitions for statehood, PR can come in too and the donkeys will get two senators to balance the two elephants from Cuba.
Anonymous said,
"Cuban Dan Quayle."
Are you kidding me? You obviously haven't hearden the guy speak nor listened to his interviews.
I don't think the idea is to win over Mexican voters. Florida is a key swing state as 2000 proved.
It makes as much sense as nominating a Puerto-Rican to the Supreme Court to win the Mexican-American vote. Good thing nobody would be stupid enough to try that.
"Cuban Dan Quayle."
"Are you kidding me? You obviously haven't hearden the guy speak nor listened to his interviews."
He's like a cross between Arnez and Montana.
'Luuuuuuuuucy!!! This country is like a big fat p---- just waiting to get f---d'.
From the ideal of colorblind politics to the reality of color-coded politics. For example, no way GOP or Democrats are gonna nominate or vote for an Arab-American as presidential candidate even if he is indeed the best.
"He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.
But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-halfyears before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959."
He's another Quayle
Rubio is not only extremely handsome, but also a former college football player who almost made it to the NFL. So he has the potential to win the macho vote as well. Women and gay guys loooooooooooooove Rubio. Women melt when he opens his smile
Hey, it's Whiskey!
As for the poster who said Rubio is not intelligent, he had a reputation as a brilliant lawyer before he got into politics.
Lawyers are morons. It's not a field which requires a whole lot of brilliance.
I thought I remembered Rubio throwing Arizona under the bus on immigration and generally being squishy about it.
Yup. He perfectly represents the current GOP establishment - a blend of neoconservatism and the US Chamber of Commerce.
The reason the GOP woos Hispanics is that they think they're something like Italian-Americans in 1935, and a significant portion can be wooed to the Republicans in the next generation or two. They may be wrong, but it's worth noting that the shift in Italian-American votes toward the Republicans didn't seem that likely in 1935 either.
Two other things are worth noting.
1) Maybe the Hispanics will turn out to resemble Jewish-Americans or African-Americans instead of Italian-Americans and not shift toward the Republican party at all.
2) It took about sixty years for those Italians of 1935 to shift towards the Republican party. So in this analogy, we're holding out the hope that maybe, half a century from now, Hispanics will give a little more than half their votes to the GOP. But in the interim we're going to relive the glory days of the 1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's when the Democrats ran the country with an iron hand.
It's not called "The Stupid Party" for nothing.
I have wondered long and hard about Puerto Rico. Why? Why? Well, the deepest seas in the world are off its shores, and I happen to know they are extremely well patroled by the American military. They don't keep their mits on these places for nothing.
Then too, the Bermuda Triangle will definitely be of strategic use if they could only figure out how to control who disappears forever in an electrical white haze.
I mean there's got to be a good reason our betters inflict these things on the taxpayers.
Rubio's family wasn't persecuted by Castro, a key Rubio claim. They left some years before Castro came to power. He is a fraud. Somehow this doesn't matter = perhaps because the Chamber of Commerce and West Bankers consider him their boy.
""who almost made it to the NFL."
And, Rubio invented the Apple II in 1977."
"Yes, almost made it to the NFL. I remember the big debate was whether to draft him or Peyton Manning #1 in the NFL draft."
Hey, the guy is pretty impressive, I hear the Minnesota Timberwolves have high hopes for him after the NBA strike is over too.
I don't know that Rubio is such a "fraud." I mean, esp compared to what's in WH now. Apparently an extreme supporter of Communist Cuba attempted a hit-piece on Rubio and got called on his deliberately mis-quotes: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2011/10/did-the-washington-post-embellish-marco-rubios-embellishments.html
I doubt Rubio would try to dissemble with a story like this. Again, unlike what's in the WH now, there are a lot people who have known him personally and politically in Florida, know where he comes from etc. He can't get away with that much.
If being handsome means winning White women's votes, then how do you explain the demise of Mitt Romney?
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