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Open Letter to Marco Rubio: Run for President
Dear Senator Rubio:
I’m writing to ask you to run for President of the United States against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
I understand that in doing so, you would be breaking a promise you made during the campaign. But such promises are never absolute. Franklin Roosevelt ran in 1940 on a promise not to send American boys to fight in any foreign wars. He broke that promise. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he would have been betraying his oath of office not to do so.
More generally, consider a situation in which you agreed to take your family on a road trip with a friend, who you promised to let drive the car. But then you discovered that he insisted on drinking and playing chicken with oncoming traffic. Would you keep your promise to let him drive, putting your children’s lives at risk? I don’t think so, and no sane person would fault you for breaking your word to keep your family safe. Well, we now face an analogous situation, and it is the country that is at risk.
Consider the crisis we face in the present election. On the one hand, we have Hillary Clinton, a corrupt social democrat who would continue the disastrous policies of Barack Obama for another four or more years, notably including the cancerous expansion of the hyper-regulatory state that is strangling our economy and imperiling our freedom. On the other, we have Donald Trump, a vicious con artist who is engaging in xenophobic demagoguery to mobilize mob support behind an agenda of unlimited government, socialist policy, and unconstitutional one-man rule, and who moreover is committed to gutting the Western alliance and the global system of free trade, the two principal pillars supporting the security and prosperity of the civilized world since 1945. As if that were not enough, Mr. Trump also evidences clear symptoms of megalomania and mental instability, so much so that you yourself publicly stated that you would fear to have his finger on the nuclear button. Indeed, having a crazy person in charge of our nuclear arsenal would place every human being on this planet at risk, including your children and mine. So campaign promise or not, the only moral course of action for you is to try to seize the wheel.
It would be a fight against the odds, certainly, but there is a chance you could win. Here is why.
- Both Clinton and Trump are widely detested. Indeed, their principal appeal in the coming campaign would be that, in a two-person race, each is the sole alternative to the unspeakable other. Furthermore, they will both be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to amplify this situation by running torrents of powerful negative campaign ads to demonize each other. They would not start directing fire against you until after you became a clear threat, and by then it could be too late for them to stop you.
- You are no doubt aware of the large numbers of anti-Trump Republicans who would seize the opportunity to vote for you, but you should also consider the anti-Clinton Democrats who might go your way as well. Almost half the Democratic Party base is so distressed with Clinton that they are still holding out for the hopeless Bernie Sanders campaign. Many of these people desperately want someplace else to go after Hillary gets the nomination. The smell of xenophobia from the Trump campaign is likely to be so repellent to them that they couldn’t support him, regardless. But many of them might be willing to support you.
- The real Republicans want someone who will defend the Constitution and the principle of limited government. The sincere Democrats want someone who will stand for the weak against the powerful, the ordinary citizens against the privileged. Everyone wants a chance to vote for a decent person. Neither Trump nor Clinton represents any of those ideals. You represent all of them.
- It may be that you might be too late to get on the ballot in every state, but this would not be a show stopper. In the three-way race, you don’t need to contest every state, or even most of them. If you were to win even a handful of states (and I think you could do much better than that) you could stalemate the Electoral College and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where your winning chances would be excellent.
There are those who say you should not do this, because if you were to fail, you would increase the prospects of a victory by Clinton. But this makes no sense, because while Trump might possibly nominate Supreme Court Justices less destructive than those that would be recommended by Hillary, this is very small beer compared to the catastrophic potential for global depression and large scale conflict that would be unleashed by Trump’s program of trade war and the abandonment of Western collective security. So, though the collection of camp followers and careerists now seeking sinecures in a Trump administration might find your frustration of their ambitions very upsetting, one way or another the mad Don must be put down. If not by you, then by Hillary; if it is not be by Hillary, then it will have to be done by you.
Furthermore, whether it is you or Hillary who gets to take Trump’s scalp as a trophy to the White House, by running you will greatly increase the chance that Republicans will hold onto the Senate, the House, and innumerable state and local offices that now stand to be lost as millions of Republicans choose to stay home rather than soil themselves by pulling the lever for Trump or Clinton. So there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by giving it a try.
So sir, I ask you to take heart, raise the flag and sound the battle cry of freedom. There are millions of us who will rally to your standard. The fate of the republic is at stake. You know it, and we know it. Don’t desert us, and we won’t desert you. Lead and we will follow. Charge and we will fight. Together, we can prevail.
Fortune favors the brave.
Published in General
Marco could win me over. All he has to do is to introduce one bill:
Comprehensive EMIGRATION Reform.
It would be legislation to facilitate the permanent departure from America of those who are not happy here. Subsidies as well as one-way transportation payments could be involved.
Qualified applicants would include those who seek “to fundamentally transform the United States of America.”
I think that this is broadly accurate; the sore loser laws technically aren’t a problem, but when Bloomberg realized it was too late to run, it was too late to run. We haven’t gotten earlier since then.
Plus, of course, Marco has continually rejected this, Romney has talked to the potential people and clarified that there isn’t someone who is plausible and keen to consider it, etc. etc. etc.
We have plenty of races that demand our attention; governors and congressmen and such. I don’t see any value served whatsoever by fantasizing about a white knight coming in to save us.
Didn’t work out well for Bush when Perot ran third party, did it? At least you agree that it won’t get us the election. I like Rubio but I don’t think shouting from the sidelines over a relatively uninspired, run of the mill, garden variety Republican does anything at all.
Bush lost voters to Perot. Trump is losing them to nobody. If someone joins in they pick up nobody’s votes. Not Trump’s.
The point is that this election is already over. But perhaps conservatives can still participate.
I want Cruz and Rubio to leave the garden and build a new party from the ground up.
He’s my senator and I admired him as he took down a most popular governor in his 2010 race. I voted for him, contributed to his campaign, and was thoroughly charmed by him after making his acquaintance at our local political forum but he’s not ready for prime time and he made a huge mistake giving up his senatorial seat. (Food for thought there: a reckless, rookie political decision.)
Now, he needs to run for governor in 18 months and gain some executive experience. I want him to stay in the political arena but not as a third party presidential candidate.
Rubio could win because Hillary and Trump will deploy massive media firepower to publicly expose the totally disgusting nature of each other. Even if Rubio does not win, he would still accomplish two critical goals;
1. Help the down-ballot GOP candidates by getting millions of Republicans to the polls who don’t wish to disgrace themselves by voting for Trump.
2. Insure that Hillary defeats Trump. This is essential because Trump would destroy the Western alliance and the global system of free trade, the two primary pillars supporting the civilized world order since 1945.
I voted for one of the most honorable and successful third party candidates in America in 1992 and that accomplished nothing but the election of Bill Clinton. Don’t ever compare Trump (as much as you may dislike him) to any of the Clintons.
Note to Ricochet editors: I didn’t sign up for this crap.
Yes because when it comes to protecting what is left of America from the Left which hates it the global financial system must take precedent. You know part of my definition of Conservatism involves this thing called patriotism which requires me to fight enemies foreign and domestic. The Bretton Woods view of things will have to take a back seat.
Trump is certainly not to be compared to Clinton. Trump would destroy the global system to free trade, thereby sending the world into a catastrophic depression. Clinton would not do so. Trump would gut the Western alliance, thereby unleashing wars of aggression that could cost the lives of millions of people. Clinton would not do so. Trump wants to change libel laws to allow government officials to sue press that speak ill of them, thereby ending freedom of the press in America. Clinton would not do so. Trump is a lunatic. Clinton is not. The two are indeed quite different.
Neither did I, but we seem to be getting plenty of it lately.
Very interesting take. Thank you.
Interesting proposition. It doesn’t seem immediately workable to me, but it merits consideration.
I am speechless at the ignorance of this comment and fully prepared (as usual) to get a CoC violation/suspension for saying so.
Well, that may all be true, Robert, but what if Trump advocates establishing a permanent US colony on Mars by the end of his second term – then what would you say?
Likewise… It’s shaken my faith in rocket scientists!
Something very strange is going on with Ricochet…I honestly have no idea what Rob and Peter are thinking…assuming they’re still in charge.
This is very silly. A large proportion of Republican votes are party line, every time (Democrats have theirs, too). What map could Clinton lose to Rubio that Obama defeated Romney in? Do you think that the panhandle would turn out in large numbers for Marco over Trump? Do you think a Republican can win Florida without them? How about Virginia? Rubio might beat Trump there (more of the Kasich and Cruz votes would go to him than to Trump and they were close in the primary, with the shift possibly outweighing the party line effect in Virginia) but there’s no way that either could beat Clinton with the other siphoning off votes. If Clinton has Florida or Virginia, where might she lose such that she fails to reach 270? Pennsylvania? To who?
The mutually assured destruction only works if Rubio sneaks up on them, and you can’t subtly run a Presidential campaign. If he got massive donations, they’d include siphoning off much of Trump’s advertising support, making the Clinton imbalance unstoppable. If he didn’t get massive donations, then, well, Nader isn’t just a river in Egypt.
If Rubio ran, every single Republican office holder would have to weigh in on their position. It would do incredible amounts of harm to downticket races. By far the biggest strategic challenge facing GOTV operations on both sides is overcoming the split in the party and reducing bitterness. Marco understands this, which is why he explained that this is a terrible idea long before you posed the question to him.
Well, maybe; perhaps you have a clearer idea of how Trump would actually engage with the global trading system than I do, but imposing tariffs in the ways that he suggests needs Congress and I have no sense of how he would achieve those aims. Sure, he’d be more persuasive to some Republicans than Clinton would be, but he’d be less persuasive to Democrats. It seems essentially impossible to me that he’d get either the House or the Senate to depart from the current legal framework in a meaningful way; I don’t think he could get more than a minority of Republicans to support it, nor that it would matter if he did.
If this is your aim, though, why do it through a third party run rather than (much more cheaply) being an honest Clinton surrogate? It seems clear to me why Rubio would not do that, and I don’t think that achieving the aim but also being dishonest about it would be any more appealing.
For Trump to win he will need his fan club plus a goodly portion of oh-what-the-heck-vote-he’s better-than-Hillary vote and at least five percent on top of that. Guess what? That’s me and my fellow cuckservatives. So yes, we will have to be won over. Otherwise The Donald will be just a head-scratching footnote in the annals of American politics.
James, early in the campaign it seemed there was some some overlap between Trump and Sanders positions and ideas each of their respective supporters favored. Immigration comes to mind, but also trade issues if memory serves.
Do you not think given the rather extreme left idealogical bent of Congressional Democrats that Trump may find odd alliances for things such as tariffs? Do unions tend to favor this sort of thing?
I hope you stay home. I’ve already won. The GOP as it is currently constituted will never recover from this season. It will have to change to survive. There is still a moral duty to try to make that a positive change, but I insist on rebating potential downsides with the fact that we were already screwed. What we have done is break the back of the cabal that thought they could jam Jebbang down our throats.
They can be in charge all they want, but they don’t run the show. By the time they realize that the libertarian internet machine has claimed another site, it will be too late.
Agreed. I just wish it was an actual conservative that done it.
Me too. Tried that.
Exactly. This is the largest lesson that I have learned.
It’s true that he could get some Dems, but for his headline stuff he’d be limited to quite a small base (Brown/ Sanders/ Whitehouse etc.), somewhere between a dozen and half that, and even they could be spooked by his rhetoric, just as Obama kept stopping Collins from working with him on healthcare.
Sure, but in that sense of the extreme left (essentially, the old hard left) it doesn’t have a lot of representation in the Senate. Using rape as a metaphor for commercial intercourse with China and suggesting we should return the favor makes it hard for the most liberal senators like Leahy and Murray to get on board.
Unions represent a lot fewer folks threatened by trade these days and a lot more people concerned with race and gender. There are unions focused on protectionism, but even on easy fights they’ve been losing for a long time.
Listen to JoE he was a rabid Rubio supporter, if he thinks its a bad idea. It’s a bad idea.
The more this goes on the more I am stuck in a quandry:
Do I want Trump to lose in a landslide? or Do I want him to win so that the creature can turn on it’s creator? (Not sure who the creature and the creator is in that scenario, in either case it will be a great feeling of schadenfruede).
I agree almost entirely with Zubrin’s worries, but add me to the chorus of those who think this idea is mistaken. A Rubio campaign would be too damaged at this point — the Gang of Eight, pledging to support the nominee, losing Florida, etc. — to work. Moreover, I gather the ship has sailed on an independent run, which basically leaves the Libertarian party as a throwaway.
I don’t think the ship has sailed. Mickey Kaus points out that the longer this campaign goes on, the tireder the public will become with this pair, because they are both deeply unlikable, and because the mud-flinging hasn’t even really started. Usually people know that mud-slinging is just that, but in their cases, the mud will actually be the ugly truth. That means an independent might do better jumping in later rather than earlier, when despair has really set in with the electorate. It will be better if he or she is drafted in a dark time, as the case continues looking worse and worse with the two lame candidates on offer.