Mitch PerryThe suspense is over: The Associated Press reported Monday morning that Marco Rubio is officially the third Republican to declare his candidacy for president for 2016
But all eyes remain on how Rubio will deliver that announcement later Monday in downtown Miami.
Giving a little pre-speech smacktalk to welcome Rubio to the highest level of scrutiny in American politics was Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, always poised to attack a Republican — and in the case of Rubio, a fellow South Floridian to boot.
“At every turn, Marco Rubio has pandered to the Republican base throughout his whole career, instead of looking out for his constituents and the country,” Wasserman Schultz said Monday morning in a press conference conducted at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in downtown Miami. “All we need to do is look at this record, and see that he’s nothing more than a flat earth society worshiper, whose been a self interested and opportunistic politician throughout his whole career.”
The DNC chairwoman picked apart virtually everything that Rubio has worked on since being elected to the Senate in 2010. She also said he’s no different than any of the other members of what she termed the “clown car” that represents the growing list of GOP presidential candidates for 2016.
Rubio supporters are pushing the Florida senator’s relative youth (he’s 43) as a positive attribute, saying that the freshman Cuban-American legislator provides a fresh and new image on the presidential landscape, particularly when compared to 67-year-old Hillary Clinton, who just announced her candidacy for 2016 on Sunday.
But Wasserman Schultz was withering in denouncing that theory, using the image of a prune to describe how truly “fresh” the GOP Senator from West Miami really is.
“When you have a prune that’s wrapped in tinsel, it doesn’t make it fresh and new; it makes it something old wrapped in prettier, shinier packaging,” she said in one of her more colorful descriptions.
She used also Rubio’ backtracking from the comprehensive immigration reform bill that he helped craft in 2013 as an example of how far right-wing the GOP has become in recent times.
“As soon as he stubbed his toe in the water to try to step a little outside of the Republican mainstream to support comprehensive immigration reform? He got yanked back by his right-wing tea party base, and he ran, cowering in the corner, back to the safe place of being opposed to comprehensive immigration reform.”
The DNC chairwoman said that wasn’t leadership.
“You’re going to need a stronger backbone than he’s demonstrated if you want to be president of United States of America.”
Wasserman Schultz’ energetic zingers aside, it appeared she was simply reciting from an approved list of criticisms produced by the DNC. Moments before her 11 a.m. press conference, an email was sent out by the Democratic National Committee echoing the same points, stating that Rubio, “has consistently sided against women, against seniors, and against Latinos on the issues that affect and matter to them most.”
Joining Wasserman Schultz at the press conference was Tony Lima, executive director with the South Florida LGBT activist group SAVE (Safeguarding American Values for Everyone). Lima blasted Rubio as being out of step and out of line with his comments regarding same-sex marriage, in particular.
“On the freedom to marry, Rubio has opposed equality for same sex couple every step of the way,” Lima said. “And he’s played the victim in the face of criticism for his anti-gay positions, while attacking innocent LGBT citizens and allied Floridians and Americans in the same breath. He supports a hateful federal marriage amendment which would write discrimination into the Constitution for the first time in our country’s history, he’s
disrespected the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law by suggesting that court rulings in more than half of the U.S. are not legitimate, stating, ‘I don’t agree that the courts have to power to do this.'”
Wasserman Schultz said the DNC would be on hand all the way through to check Rubio on his statements throughout the campaign. She said neither Bush, nor Rubio, were threats to take their home state if they were the eventual GOP nominee vs. a(ny) Democrat in 2016.
