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The Marco Problem
Even many of those who love Marco Rubio worry that he’s somehow — what’s the word? — perhaps a little soft. In my inbox this afternoon I found this, and I stress that it comes from a friend who was just as happy as any of us that Marco surged to a strong finish in Iowa:
To put it bluntly: What’s this guy going to [expletive] up? I don’t mean genuinely contested issues like immigration.
What’s his Souter? What’s his Brady Bill? What’s his Harriet Myers? What’s his No Child Left Behind?
I’ll vote for the guy, but I want to know how he’s going to sell me out.
And the answer to that is — what, exactly?
Good people of Ricochet, my friend and I await your replies.
Published in General
I’m reasonably confident he’ll send a team to Mars, which will encounter a dust storm so severe they’ll have to scrub the mission, during which time one of the team will get injured and be presumed dead, and they’ll find out after it’s too late that he is actually alive. And it will be all Rubio’s fault for having sent them there in the first place.
That we can’t know, though we can have our suspicions. We can be confident, though, that it will be less bad than most, and compensated for by lots of good.
What kind of question is this anyway? I mean really. Leave Rubio out. What is the next President, whoever they may be, going to get wrong? We have no way of knowing.
Why go into it assuming he is going to sell you out. Why, worry unnecessarily? Everybody disappoints you, but our job when we look for friends, spouses, and political candidates is to find the best possible match. We aren’t ever going to find a perfect. There is no perfect match. Marco will do things that will disappoint us, Marco will do things that disappoint himself, but on balance he will be much better than either of the remaining geriatrics on the left.
If you have decided that he is your candidates and you think he is the one to run the country then remember, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Hear Hear…also, why does the quote include your photo? What hey?
Interesting how your friend phrased that by excepting immigration. Rubio *has* sold out there.
Possibly because you selected the photo?
A massive amnesty followed by huge welfare payments (err tax credits) already in the Rubio Lee plan.
Not really what he was saying. I think he was saying what “safe” Republican issue is going to screw up.
Don’t blame me, I’m just the operator.
Indeed. They will all let us down.
I’d say the only one not to let me down is me, but knowing me like I know me, I am sure that I would let me down, too.
Conservative paranoia?
Probably not much on his own, but there will plenty of advisors both in the Executive and in Congress who will be steering him wrong. Maybe his experience with Schumer will make him more cautious than a Ben Carson. Neither Trump nor Cruz will be as open to hearing different points of view as Rubio is.
I have a post in the queue in which I pose the same question, and I hope to write on the matter before long. What I will say now is that Marco is slick and calculating. He has already indicated just how willing he is to “triangulate.”
Ordinarily, this would not much matter. But the left has its knife at our throats. Whose throats is Marco willing to let them slit?
Or repeated conservative experience?
It that really how you view him? That is how I view Cruz. Macro I see as one of the most genuinely decent people to seek the office in ages.
Mike and Guru already hit the high points:
Legal status for illegal immigrants that will necessarily lead to citizenship and voting in the name of civil rights and compassion.
A tax credit welfare laden tax plan in partnership with Sen. Lee.
Outside of those already known I just have one other concern and it actually isn’t a President Rubio it is the Republican Congress during his term.
Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell et al have shown little or no discipline in increasing our national debt and constantly increasing spending. Additionally, comprehensive immigration reform is still lurking in Congress. I do not see a President Rubio as a credible firewall to the progressive Republican Congressional leadership. This is an area I think Cruz’s lack of friendship and cooperation in the Senate is a plus.
I am not as concerned about a Republican President enacting their agenda as I am about stopping the Republican Congressional agenda.
In Senator Rubio’s favor I think his attention to detail regarding foreign policy is a plus and I have no issue with any of the mickey mouse stuff from his past like the credit card deal or his brother (brother-in-law?) past issue.
I think his character is as sound as Ted Cruz and the others.
I remember asking myself the same question about McCain and Romney, and that is the problem.
Peter, if it is any consolation to you and your friend I don’t think of Rubio is a sell out or will. On the issues I’ve highlighted he has been transparent and forthright. His immigration position and legislation previously championed is out there. His tax plan with Mike Lee isn’t hidden away.
When put on the spot he has tap danced on the immigration stuff. Cruz has tried to juggle chainsaws on roller skates answering the same stuff.
I don’t think Rubio is going to sell any of us out. He is on record with his priorities and communicates them well: legal status for illegal immigrants, welfare credit laden tax code, rubber stamp Ryan/McConnell. If you and your friend share those priorities Sen. Rubio is your guy. Respectfully, I disagree with those priorities, but that means we disagree, not that Sen. Rubio is a sellout.
Which candidate could you not ask that question about? In 1982, National Review was mad as hops at Ronald Reagan.
Your friend asked a stoopid- and pointless- question.
I agree it’s a mistake to be overly haunted by the missteps and mistakes of past republican presidents and then worry about unknowable prospective ones. This is politics after all, and these leaders are human. Mistakes of judgement or political pressures/troubles will produce unfortunate results always. Tell your friend to focus on the potential good things that might get accomplished.
OTOH, it is interesting to speculate about the most likely vulnerabilities/flaws/blind spots of Rubio which might lead to lasting harm. IMO, while I find him the strongest and most preferable of all the candidates on foreign policy matters, I do see him potentially overreaching or being too adventurous/hawkish. Since the executive has so much power in the handling of foreign affairs and the military, this is where I think whatever flaws Rubio has could do the most damage.
Here at home Rubio would be constrained by and have to partner with the congress so much I think the bigger worry should be what kind of congress would Rubio have to work with. For example, I suspect he won’t be driven enough to reign in spending and reform entitlements, but if a conservative enough congress gets elected, he may have no choice but to “harden” up his policies there. Ditto on immigration. People who worry about Rubio selling them out on that issue first need to work to get the right congress in place, which will be necessary no matter who wins the nomination/presidency.
Me too.
Edited to add:
I mean I feel the same way.
It’s actually a luxury, when you think about it. Apart from the immigration backstory, there’s so little to choose from ideologically that it all comes down to “feel.” We’ve never been in that position before.
The next GOP president, whoever that may be (please, God, let there be one in 2017), is going to disappoint some of the conservative voters some of the time. It is unavoidable. True conservatives are a minority in the U.S. Compromise is inevitable and gradual, small-step change is the best we can hope for.
Don’t let our vision get in the way of improving our present reality. And remember the scriptural injunction to “put not your trust in princes.”
Me three.
Of course, its usually a mistake to get too fond or lose too much skepticism/cynicism regarding any politician. People who seem too good to be true usually are.
Is it fair to regard this as specifically “the Marco Problem”? Isn’t it a concern (expectation?) we’d have for any Republican president — that post-presidency we’ll look back and say, “he got these things wrong”.
And this includes even Cruz, btw: his Value Added Tax would be the mother of all gifts to the left — a sneaky Euro-style tax with no obvious victims that, once instituted, could be very easily raised, over and over. I’m shocked that he’d be so naive as to propose such a thing.
All these guys have their blind spots. That’s the thing about humans.
Agree. This is another area where I think Cruz’s animosity with Congress is a plus.
And someone else would always agree with you? Never make a bad call? There is no such thing as perfect.
I disagree. It is perfectly possible to pass an immigration bill that will grant legal status to some illegals, but permanently deny them citizenship. The Gang of 8 bill did not do so — it provided a path to citizenship, which I oppose — but it is possible to take a middle position between “make em’ all citizens” and “deport the lot of them.”
I submit that if associating with Mike Lee makes you a RINO, then the term has become meaningless. I think that Lee is one of the two most conservative Senators in my lifetime. Cruz is the other. Rubio is probably in the top ten.
Brent, I don’t mean to be overly critical. I think that you are one of the most conservative guys here, probably even more conservative than me, and I’m pretty far to the right on virtually every issue. Just about everybody is to your left, and mine.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between Lee and Cruz (a few inches to my left), and Rubio (maybe a foot to my left), and Bush or Kasich (say 10 feet to my left). Not to mention Clinton (a couple miles to my left) or Sanders (in near earth orbit, to my left).
Indeed it would. Although I don’t think we’d really have to worry, because there is no way in hell he could ever get his plan as currently designed passed into law. There are too many interest groups who would choke on it to ever see it get the congressional support it needed. Getting to such a radically reformed system would require at least two incremental phases first to overcome the massive resistance Cruz’s plan would run into. What’s more, once the voters were made aware of how much of a tax increase many of them in the middle class would actually be swallowing by such a plan, even at the initial rates Cruz is proposing, I think anyone in congress or running for congress would run as far away from the VAT as fast as they could.