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Primary Lesson
National Review’s two cover stories on Rubio.
The two biggest losers of the 2016 cycle are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Bush came into the election with a reputation as a conservative reformer, a successful governor, and (by many accounts) the smarter, better of the sons of George H. W. Bush. That said, Jeb had a number of significant problems — the wrong last name, lack of charisma, support for Common Core, etc. — any one of which might have sank his candidacy, though it’s at least arguable that he was undone by his stance on immigration.
Rubio’s example, however, provides much greater clarity. To be sure, his boyish looks and lack of executive experience didn’t help, nor did the fact that he’s apparently never seen an overseas conflict that he didn’t think could be improved by the addition of American combat forces. But these shortcomings were hardly deal-breakers for most. Coupled with Rubio’s charm, eloquence, patriotism, policy cred, anti-abortion advocacy, personal story, and conservative record, the Republican Party and conservative movement would have found in him one of its best advocates in decades, had it not been for one thing: The Gang of Eight.
There is no good excuse for Rubio’s advocacy of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. Not only was the bill a stinker, it was the sort of phonebook-sized, let’s-fix-everything folly that should be considered objectionable on its face. Moreover, Rubio had witnessed — as we all did — the debacle of the 2007 immigration bill, which proved that Republicans who could otherwise endure a great deal of legislative incompetence would go into open revolt against their party about this. As an intelligent man of 40-plus years who had spent more than a decade in state-level politics, Rubio should have known this and stayed as far away from the it as possible. Even his fans considered it a significant demerit, but — for many — it was the deal-breaker. Rubio might well have lost the nomination without this, but it’s hard to imagine his campaign crashing in such dramatic fashion.
If Rubio’s career is the sacrifice necessary to make the GOP to realize that Republican voters will punish even one of its brightest stars for endorsing amnesty or amnesty-lite immigration policies, the lesson will have been worth it. The price, however, will have been a high one.
Published in Immigration, Politics
Yep. If Cruz is elected, McConnell had better run on back to Kentucky.
“Git!”
They don’t care. That much is now plain to see. They are ready to take their ball and go home if the illegals can’t play. The only purpose the GOP has in discovering what voters think is to better hoodwink them.
As the shattered careers of Republican pro-amnesty politicians (Cantor, Jeb, Boehner and Marco) accumulate around him, Michael Medved plays “Baghdad Bob” on his talk radio show, waving exit polls that prove that Republicans really favor Gang of Eight-like amnesty.
Sure we do, Michael. Just like the Democrats do.
Other folks claim that amnesty and immigration aren’t that important an issue to Republicans; but then they have to square that opinion with how big an issue it seems to be to Democrats.
Finally, those who downplay immigration as an issue need to explain why the party’s donors refuse to budge on their veritable open borders position despite the havoc it is wreaking on the party’s leaders.
Gee, I thought Congress was a co-equal branch of government and that Cruz would need McConnell to accomplish any of the things that Cruz has run on. It seems to me that McConnell would have more leverage over Cruz once he became president than he did when Cruz was a junior backbencher who wanted to grow his profile by giving McConnell the middle finger.
Would we have the same conversation if the issue wasn’t immigration? What if dream GOP candidate X was great except for being pro-abortion. What if Candidate X was in league with Pelosi, Reid, Biden and Lucifer in crafting comprehensive abortion reform with on demand abortion up the day of delivery and taxpayer funding for all abortions? Maybe even a tax credit for an abortion for not producing another carbon dioxide emitter? Would we be having the same “it’s just one issue. It’s not a big deal. He’s perfect otherwise” discussion? It’s the “open borders is great for everybody” supporters who don’t get how much of a hotbutton issue it is for some folks.
The sentiment is fine, but the relevant question is “How many?” That’s another function of the legal system of immigration: numbers.
If 100 million feel the way you describe, are you OK with accepting them? Fifty million? One-to-two million per year – forever?
And why is your emphasis only on the emotions and the capacities of those who want to become Americans? Shouldn’t a larger part of your concern be with those Americans already here, with their emotions like love and with their desire to contribute to the country of their birth?
It is disrespectful to place one’s fellow Americans second in one’s thoughts about immigration. That is the lesson the Trump voters are trying to teach the bien-pensant in Washington and elsewhere. Expecting hard-working people simply to deal with an idealized impression about immigration and to understand that it is all for the best is an attitude which is not in the best traditions of America.
I would save a lot of time here if I just created a macro that typed: “What Brent said.”
Does that 55% “fact” have the same provenance as the 97% global catastrophic warming consensus? Exit polls are famously inaccurate. Only balloting is accurate, and then only if it is fair and legal.
Immigration is #1 because it is tied to so many other deadly issues, such as a dirty bomb in a wheelbarrow.
That is some feat.
Thanks.
Exit polls confirming election results is one thing, but asking other policy questions is another. How was the question posed? What was the sample demographic, etc.? Margin of error? Same issues as any other poll attempting to discern attitudes about policy.
For all the declarations around here that Trump isn’t a conservative, he seems to have identified some new and interested voters along with some old discarded ones – and he’s selling some conservative ideas to them. We can get hung up on his contradictions and assure ourselves that he’s lying, but my anecdotal experience is that people are listening to him on immigration enforcement, fairer trade (since when is that not conservative?), repealing Obamacare and replacing with interstate insurance competition and HSA’s, flatter lower and simpler tax system, improving conditions for domestic employment.
After every defeat there is a rush to draw some over-simplistic conclusion about what went wrong.
The Go8 is a handy excuse to latch onto, but it’s a much bigger deal to Ricochet-types than it is to most voters. And even at that, it’s hard to tease out whether Rubio was hurt more by the policy, the people he fell in with, or the sharp betrayal of those who supported him.
My take is that a lot of things went wrong for Rubio, far and above the Go8, many of which have been mentioned on this thread. But in the final analysis, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he simply wasn’t as good a candidate as many here like to imagine. In addition, he ran a rather lumbering campaign that did little to distinguish himself from the pack. He was slow to respond to the Trump phenomenon, and when he finally did, he responded poorly — with schoolyard taunts that made him look small and made Cruz look like the adult. Some of this can be chalked up to bad timing: the voters just weren’t in the mood for what he has to offer. But a leader adapts and finds a way. Rubio did not find a way. The harsh reality is that he did not show himself to be a a leader, and if Americans want anything in a president, it’s leadership.
This will be an interesting test. Does Cruz cave, stand on principle, or find some diplomatic compromise? I’ll be watching.
Brent, it’s customary to put brackets [ ] around “COC”. Oh, wait. You were talking about the Chamber of Commerce.
Upon reflection, you should still have put brackets around it.
It may or may not be paramount. Tom’s point is that whether it is or not, it’s still a deal-breaker for many. And he’s correct about that.
On the Gang of 8 business, it’s particularly important to remember the cultural significance of the moment. After the 2012 election, Democrats and the media were crowing about how their majority was not only permanent, but growing due to America’s growing Hispanicization. I, for one, remembered nothing but the dread that there could never be another conservative government of the United States as long as voters vote on ethnic lines.
And then Marco Rubio gets on the stage with Chuck Schumer and tried to ramrod a bill to increase the growth rate of the Coalition of the Ascendent.
This didn’t only tell us where Rubio’s priorities lied with respect to the issue of immigration, but where they lied with respect to the Conservative movement, the Republican Party, and the citizens of the United States. He picked improving his DC media reputation and his standing among power brokers over favoring his conservative constituents and preserving America’s unique culture*.
If he did this in 1987, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But he did it in 2013.
Which leads to my second point: Rubio really isn’t that gifted a politician. He’s good at delivering speeches and reciting conservative talking points, but his judgement is questionable and persuasive he ain’t. He reminds me of Obama, but without the media’s adulation or a world-historic fiscal crisis easily blamed on the opposition party to run against.
*I, for one, like America without favelas.
Of course, but this doesn’t make is a deal-breaker for most.
In discussing Rubio’s connection the the Gang of 8 bill, no one has really emphasized what should be obvious: he represents Florida, a state with a large Hispanic population, a large immigrant population, a place where the immigration issue is just different, especially in south and central Florida, which are not at all southern.
Welllll, I can see this will go nowhere, but an ineffective Senate Majority Leader is under pressure to depart. McConnell’s cards are on the table — it used to be his table.
You do not do any favors by shifting Rubio from principled champion of amnesty to merely hispandering. My guess is that you do not think central Florida would be made better through becoming more “southern”?
You know, you all do realize that while we are beating up on Mitch McConnell — he and Chuck Grassley are currently what stands between us and a liberal taking Scalia’s seat. And they’re holding firm.
In politics, you get what you reward. So maybe between beating McConnell up over everything else — let’s give him some credit. At least enough that he continues to think it matters.
And yet Rubio won his 2010 Florida US Senate race against the retiring GOP governor by highlighting the governor’s support of amnesty and weakness on immigration enforcement, pledging to do the opposite.
But once elected, he betrayed that pledge by joining the Gang of 8 and allowed himself to become the face of the omnibus immigration bill, the largest amnesty and biggest foreign worker increase in history. He even allowed various special interest groups to run non-stop ads featuring him touting the legislation on conservative TV and radio, even though the bill was written primarily by the staff of New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
So Rubio betrayed the Florida voters who sent him to DC based on his promises. Then when he got there, he turned around and pushed for the opposite based on the supposed support by a large Hispanic immigrant population who probably didn’t vote for him – at least they wouldn’t have if they took him at his word.
I know Florida is supposed to be weird but this strains credibility.
This needs to be sung from the rooftops.
We voters have far more power than we could ever imagine. Write thank-you letters.
I see the failure of the Rubio campaign in marketing terms- he had a “stuck in the middle strategy”. It appears that the strategy was to be everybody’s second pick, and then win by becoming the guy who could unify the party. Not entirely insane, particularly when a fractured field held open the potential for an open convention, where acceptability across the party becomes the single most important factor.
The major problem with this approach is that you aren’t anybody’s first pick with this approach, and the dynamics of the campaign require you to be able to lock up a few wins to show that you’re going to be there until the end (winner take all states make that even more important). In other words, he never had a base from which he could grow.
The second major problem with the approach is that he was the top threat to EVERY other candidate. It’s not just the kazillion dollars that Bush dropped on him, it’s that he also took flak from Trump, Cruz, Carson, Kasich… let alone the kamikaze dive bomb from Christie.
Strategy matters. Cruz likely had the best strategy coming into the campaign- his failure has been tactical. In not killing the Trump campaign early on when he might have had a chance to, he allowed Trump to ride in on the battleground that Cruz had prepared for himself.
You’re welcome. But it’s really kinda weird. I think it and you type it. (Or more often – you’ve already typed it.) And if not you, then iWe, or Son of Spengler, or Tabula Rasa. There are more, surely.
This is is why I advocated for a Triple Dawg Like button several years ago – to make my life easier. (And isn’t that the point of everything?)
What great stand is this? They are under no obligation to consider the nomination and hold hearings. This is a bunch of grandstanding.
What do they do with the power of the purse? Nothing, because that takes courage and conviction.
If you don’t at least note when they do the right thing you will get less and less of them willing to take the heat and do it.
There really is no way for them to please you.
Agreed. I’d add that he started off behind for me in that he is a bit too young, a bit unripe in political/vocational experience on a wider stage, and a bit too polished.