Marco is gaining in the polls and in my opinion he is exactly what this country needs. A young, committed conservative who can articulate conservative positions with the fluency and humor Reagan did, and who can galvanize the millennials and bring them into the conservative fold. I know many are hesitant because he is young and a first term Senator, a brand of which Obama destroyed, but Rubio is smarter than Obama and much more practical. I implore everyone to give him a second look, beginning with his excellent analysis of last nights speech:
28 thoughts on “Marco Rubio”
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He’s certainly one of the best of those in the race right now – and I’ll probably go for him should he make it to my State in the primaries, though I do worry about his inexperience.
Rubio is OK, though I prefer Cruz because I think he has been more consistent. I am very impressed by his record as an attorney, repeatedly arguing in front of the Supreme Court. He has been up against serious opposition, probably the best the other side could provide, at the highest level of legal wrangling, and won. That tells me a lot about how he functions under pressure, as well as his innate skills. Rubio is quite skilled at campaigning, and he is definitely miles above the quality of his Dem opposition, no matter who it is, but I haven’t seen a lot of foundation beneath his political skills. I’m not saying it isn’t there, it’s just that I haven’t seen it. And he was very wobbly when pressured on immigration. He just strikes me as needing a little more seasoning.
It is really hard to quantify a potential candidate when there is the constant reality that even someone who is not your first choice, or even second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth, and so on for quite a way down the list, is still so vastly better than the current president, and than the potential Dem candidates. So if Rubio were to be the nominee, I would vote for him without the slightest hesitation.
I’d vote for Trump, too, if necessary, but like my vote for McCain it would be after holding my nose. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ll be faced with that decision.
Cruz is my second choice and I get the “experience” factor with him. His command of facts and debating skills are second to none. I think Rubio and Cruz are closely aligned and I would be happy with either one, but I just lean Rubio because of his broader appeal. I think Rubio has the ability to broaden the conservative tent particularly with the younger generation which I think is very important for the future of this country. And the why in the hell isn’t our GOP candidates in Chicago exposing the failures and corruption of the Democrats?
I also have to point out that when confronted with a Washington Post article detailing NJ Muslims celebrating 9/11, Rusty dismiss’s the account. Just another denial of reality that progressives are so good at.
Isn’t it interesting that most, if not all of us regulars here are coalescing around Rubio and Cruz or Cruz and Rubio. I guess great minds do think alike. I like Rubio for the same reasons Cluster stated, plus I think he’s by far the most likable of all the candidates, and I like Cruz for the fact that he’s the most likely, IMO, to honor his oath to the Constitution without reservation. Having take a similar oath, and still defending it today, that is one of, if not the most, important considerations for me. We are in the shape today because ever since the ink dried on the Constitution, there have been those bent on subverting it, modifying it and ignoring it in ways that the drafters never contemplated. In the last century the assault has been constant. We’re never going to get back to where we were before the dawn of the Progressive era, at least not in my lifetime, but, absent a president like Cruz, we’re going to keep sliding further and further down the rabbit hole. I think the next few years are going to see a level of civil disobedience the like of which we’ve never seen, both on the part of the states and individuals. I want a President who is going to allow that to play out, and I think Cruz is the best bet.
So I am outnumbered here so far, 2-1 with Mark yet to name his candidate (c’mon Mark, get off the fence). Here is another reason why I lean Rubio – in order to win, we have to appeal to LIV’s and I think Cruz speaks past them. Cruz is so flippin smart that often he talks above his audience and that would definitely be the case in a general election when all the ill informed, over emotional LIV’s are paying attention. Rubio, just like Reagan, has that ability to reach them at their level. However I have thought of this scenario too – a President Cruz with a Secretary of State Rubio. Cruz would obviously be a good President, and I think Rubio could be an amazing Secretary of State. This country definitely needs young, principled, committed conservatives and both of these candidates fill that need.
Personally, I would prefer your second scenario, a Cruz presidency with Rubio doing what he has to do to build up his qualifications and experience to step up in eight years.
I think we would see a different Cruz on a campaign trail against a Dem candidate. In the primaries, he is being very careful to avoid the trap of going after fellow Republicans, and is staying in the area of more abstract thought rather than taking apart an opponent’s position. He is also pretty funny, which has started to come out, and up against the totally humor-deficient Clinton or Sanders he will stand out as being much more likable.
As for appealing to younger people, we have plenty in the GOP tent to show that this can be a vibrant, exciting party and not a tired old party whining the same old whines and clinging to always-failed old political models. Cruz, while not having Rubio’s movie star looks, is only 44, and while those good looks and charm might attract some who are looking for that kind of thing, that very youthfulness could also come across as too young and not quite ready for the job. As much as I like Rubio, he is almost too boyish.
We just need to remember that so far we are seeing good conservatives competing against each other, and when either one of them is head to head with the Dem candidate I think Cruz will hold up better, even though his appeal is more cerebral. And compared to either Hillary or Sanders he will look plenty young and handsome by comparison. The Dems might pull a younger, more dynamic, candidate out at the last minute, but so far there doesn’t seem to be anyone like that waiting in the wings. Obama was that guy for the Dems, eight years ago, but he was still on the radar, and the Dems are running out of time to find a new flavor of the month.
So I am outnumbered here so far, 2-1
I hope that was said tongue-in-cheek. I’d be happy with either of them, and each brings a particular strength to the table. Cruz is the better debater, but Rubio, I think, is the better communicator, if that makes sense.
Makes perfect sense and a good way to put it. I think these two will rise to the top come February with the dark horse being Christie.
I think I still shy away from Cruz on the “electability” front more than anything else…but I’m becoming more convinced that the Democrats are so weak that we could nominate just about anyone and win…as long as that person has the guts to really take the fight to the Democrats.
I used to feel the same way about Cruz lacking appeal, but he got such great responses in the debates that I started to realize that a lot of people really respond to what he has to say. I’m starting to think that it might be his lack of superficial good looks that makes him seem more…serious. Is it too early to drag out “gravitas”?
And, as I said earlier, I think we will see a different Cruz when he is up against a Dem—sharper, funnier, more electable.
We also need to look at what has happened when we have passed on good candidates and looked just at who we thought might be “more electable”. Mitt Romney, anyone?
OT, but did anyone think we’d ever see $37 oil again or $1.69/gal gas?
On the surface, cheap oil seems great, but as one in the middle of oil exploration country and in a business that works with oil exploration companies, I am concerned that the longer oil prices stay in the basement and the more oil companies either go under or drastically cut back the less competitive we will be in that area, and the more vulnerable we will be as a nation. Oil and gas exploration depends on so many other businesses, as these support businesses go under it will be harder and harder to ramp up production again if we need to. It can take a long time to rebuild the infrastructure that supports oil and gas exploration and extraction, and I don’t like seeing this whole infrastructure crumble, people out of work in that area and moving into other kinds of work, businesses shutting down, etc. We have already lost many of the smaller oil exploration and production companies, leaving only the biggest, which is not necessarily a good thing. I think having a lot of smaller companies out there doing well, making money, producing oil and gas, makes for a stronger country overall than having it all concentrated in a few huge corporations.
There is another side of the coin when it comes to cheap gas. When you look at the stats of which states have had the best economies and lowest unemployment, they have been oil-producing states. This industry has carried the water for the whole economy for the past few years, and seeing it set back as it has been is a little alarming, as there is nothing to take its place.
I work with a lot of Canadians and North Dakotans who tell me that the price needs to get to $50 before they can start ramping up again.
Still, it is rather nice to fill up for $25.
Exactly. Ask them how long it will take them to be as productive as they were a year or so ago, if their support industries have gone away. It’s complicated: To drill, a company has to build a drilling pad where the rig is set up, and often has to build a road into the site—excavation companies don’t just pop up like mushrooms, and need time to build up employee and equipment rosters to be able to handle the work. At $60,000 to $200,000 per piece of heavy equipment, business like this are not easy to start up and operate. An idle rig costs something like $60,000 a day for every day it is “stacked”—that is, sitting on a trailer and not actually at work, so waiting to have pads and roads built is very expensive. A drilling site needs manpower, much of it skilled, and a lot of these people are giving up on the industry and moving into other kinds of work. It takes time to put together a skilled crew that works well together. A highly functional oil patch depends on so much, from people to deliver fuel and equipment to the sites to tire stores and parts stores and even housing and restaurants in the area, and when this elaborate infrastructure crumbles it takes time to build it back up again.
Even if oil suddenly surges to $60.00 a barrel, or more, it will take a while to get the industry up and running again as well as it was before the oil price crash. And it will be, for a long time, an industry where only the big companies who had the big pockets and lots of cash to fall back on who will be doing the work, with the little companies trying to get reestablished, if they try at all. Personally, I liked the fact that a couple of years ago this was an area where the little guy could do well, but the little guys were the first to go, and will be the last to come back.
This just in (kind of), Iran tests their mid range ballistic missiles in violation of UN resolutions and the new agreement they didn’t sign. I know all of us are shocked over this and it’s good thing the media is keeping the focus on what really matters – Donald Trump.
It’s stunning how bad Obama really is.
This just in from National Review:
In the aftermath of the Sinai, Paris, and San Bernardino, the eyes of the world are understandably fixed on ISIS. In the meantime, however, Iran not only grows more powerful, it plays a much more shrewd long game designed to establish itself as a regional jihadist superpower — and America is helping it along. Of all the dangerous legacies of the Obama administration’s weakness and appeasement, strengthening Iran may ultimately prove the most deadly of all.
It turns out that ISIS has been infringing on the Sinaloa Cartel’s drug business in the middle east. ISIS has been capturing drug shipments and destroying them, prompting a sternly worded email from cartel leader Chapo Guzman. Here is an excerpt:
“You [ISIS] are not soldiers. You are nothing but lowly p*ssies. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”
“My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a wh*re that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them.”
Who wins this battle? My money is on Chapo.
http://www.cartelblog.com/el-chapo-sends-threatening-message-to-terrorist-group-isis/
A safe bet. ISIS cuts off people’s heads. el Chapo cuts off people’s heads and puts them on a pike.
OT, but we have an update on micro-aggressions and coded racism.
Some of you may have read the comments by Shaun King, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that people have guns to compensate for specific anatomical defects, graphically explained.
Milo Yiannopoulos, a reporter at Breitbart, wrote King asking for comment: “Why are you deleting your tweets? Is it because you were embarrassed about your past statements on firearms coming to light?”
Would you like to expand for the benefit of our readers on your views that guns are “phallic” symbols? Did you find wielding a loaded handgun, as described in your 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2013 tweets, sexually gratifying?
The answer was pretty amazing. The writer later admitted that Shaun King was not writing the email responses himself, but stood behind them because they were “true”. The response to the questions asked by Yiannopoulos, above, was:
Phallic symbols are all throughout society. Shaun believes that white supremacy drives NRA gun policies in this country. Furthermore, white supremacy is actually fear masked as superiority. Racial symbolism is present throughout the world, be it in depicting Jesus as an effeminate European, a firearm, the game of pool, etc.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/12/08/we-asked-ny-daily-news-columnist-shaun-king-a-simple-question-and-got-a-very-bizarre-response-back
Admittedly, peeking into the psyche of the average Rabidly Radical Leftist can be pretty creepy, given the oddities we routinely find when we do, but this is remarkable for its nuttiness. OK, I’ve heard criticism in the past for white Christians portraying Jesus as looking more European than Semitic, but we have to remember that according to Black Liberation Theology Jesus was a black man executed because of his race by white Europeans, so there is nothing new about any group of Christians wanting to identify with Jesus and therefore to have Jesus identified with them. “Effeminate”? Well, remember that this comes from someone speaking for the man who found scads of sexual content in the act of firing a gun, so we need to consider the source when we see sexual and gender identification like this.
What made my jaw drop was the statement that “the game of pool” is actually racial symbolism. Who knew? Evidently the Shaun King contingent knows. Is it because the 8-ball is black? Well, we can’t make it pink, because that would open up a whole new can of hysteria. We can’t make it red, obviously, and having a white 8-ball would send the black race-baiters into new frenzies.
Thinking about it, we couldn’t have the 8-ball be green, because that would offend enviros, and Kermit. Orange would stir up Bronco fans, and believe me, you don’t want to do that. They are already pretty worked up over the My Little Pony lawsuits complaining that the Bronco logo makes horses look mean and demeans all of equitania. Yellow would upset the Bowe Bergdahl apologists. We would have to get rid of the stripes, as they are symbolic of white domination and desire to commit genocide (colorcide?) by taking over and therefore diminishing the true color of the ball.
But the real problem with pool is the sexual symbolism, its representation of male dominance by having every other aspect of the game controlled by a phallic symbol which attacks the balls with great violence, divides them with the intent to conquer, and generally represents the pure evil of maleness.
I think I’m getting it. It’s not a game at all, but an elaborate code that allows people to express hatred and evil intent in the guise of innocent entertainment. It represents racial and sexual violence, even beginning with the word “break”.
Oh, the horror. Thank God for the Shaun Kings of the world, who lead us out of darkness and ignorance.
Thanks Amazona. Playing pool will never be the same again.
LOL. And just think, you didn’t even have to be sent to a reeducation center to correct your thinking and open your mind to the vast universe of psycho-sexual-racist-nativist-genderist symbolism which surrounds us and pervades every aspect of every thought and action.
Glad to help.
Snooker is even worse…
Snooker even SOUNDS dirty
” Shaun believes that white supremacy drives NRA gun policies in this country.”
Actually the NRA is defending 2nd Amendment rights to all. It is the Democrats who wish to impose gun control. Don’t forget, gun control originated as a means to disarm the black man.
Shaun King is ignorant and does not know history.
Can I say that?
“Can I say that?”
Get in line
Another OT, this one very serious and, finally, hopeful.
Several posts ago I gave my opinion t that a reasonable person would agree that both the Left and the Right want the same things, such as dealing with poverty, and simply have different ideas of how best to accomplish this. (BTW, when I tried to move the discourse away from issues to objective discussions about how best to govern the nation, Stuart disappeared. Fancy that.)
Anyway, it was encouraging to read that two public policy institutes, one from the Left and one from the Right, have been working together to try to find actual solutions to problems. Sometimes I add my own emphasis to quotes, but in this case I would have to emphasize the entire article. So I did.
”Two of the oldest and most venerated public policy institutes in Washington, D.C., the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, have produced a new joint report dealing with the issue of fighting poverty in America.
The report, “Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream,” is noteworthy for a number of reasons. One is that it reflects a consensus view between long established Washington institutions representing opposite sides of the political spectrum, with AEI being right of center and the Brooking Institution left of center.
But also noteworthy is the nature of this consensus. The report focuses on three pillars that need attention: family, work, and education.
That scholars from these two institutions — one on the left and one on the right — agree that the state of the American family is of critical importance to the economic well-being of Americans is news.”
Later in the article:
”Johnson’s war on poverty followed the civil rights movement and the social unrest of the 1960s. Rather than concluding that it was necessary to bring what was working in America — traditional values, limited government, personal responsibility — to those parts of the nation that were not working, we ushered in a new era of big-government solutions.
These big-government solutions undermined the traditionally successful values and institutions of the country. Little was done to eradicate poverty but much was done to break down the American family and add hundreds of billions in new spending to the federal budget.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2015/12/09/scholars-shine-new-light-on-old-truths-for-fighting-poverty
I would have put quote marks around the word “solutions” but otherwise I found this article to be extremely important and hope it provides the foundation for a lot of the upcoming presidential campaign.
Not sure I won’t support Cruz in the Primary, but Rubio’s a close second. I like the way he carries himself. He is just flat impressive! He’d be my first choice, but he is so young and the lack of experience in Washington cause me to question his electability in the General. I will support him enthusiastically if he wins the nomination. However, anyone going up against the Hilda Beast has my vote in the general. Especially, after the revelation from the released email they had troops ready to go. I knew that in my heart from the get go, but I really wanted to believe it wasn’t true. Being a vet, I knew better. I knew they let them die to protect their BS narrative. Then, they let the fall guy rot in jail for how long? They sicken me.