A.G. Gancarski
The path to the GOP nomination, for Marco Rubio, clearly involves winning GOP Primaries in Minnesota and Puerto Rico, before holding an MSNBC Town Hall.
The big news coming out of the event had gotten reported, to a large degree in teaser promos.
He won’t say that he would be interested in running as Donald Trump’s VP. His line: “I’m running for President. I’m not looking to be anyone’s Vice President… I’m not running to be anybody’s Vice President.”
That includes Ted Cruz. There will be no unity ticket, which he called “House of Cards” stuff.
“It looks good on TV, it doesn’t ever work that way. Bottom line is, you know, this process is going to play itself out.”
He also wishes that he hadn’t gotten into the mud with Trump, a decision that did him no more good than it did Jeb Bush.
On the “personal stuff,” it’s something that “at the end of the day, it’s not something I’m entirely proud of,” Rubio said, noting that his kids saw it.
As well: “If that’s what it takes to become President of the United States, I don’t want to be President.” In fact, at one point, he said that there’s nothing wrong with being a “private citizen.”
That last quote, teased out in MSNBC promos Wednesday afternoon, gets to the heart of the matter. Playing dirty and doing it convincingly enough that it works (as do Trump and Ted Cruz) isn’t always what it takes to get elected President. But being able to is a necessary prerequisite, except in the most anomalous of elections (and the last one like that was 40 years ago).
The rest stayed the same: “It’s all going to come down to Florida for me,” in a way diminishing the importance of the myriad other states when he lagged way behind the leader.
“The only one [in Florida] who has a chance of beating Donald Trump is me,” Rubio added.
Rubio described Florida as “a state that’s been operating largely off the national media,” by way of explaining how the “earned media” ensures that the polls lean Trump’s way without exception.
From there, Chuck Todd attempted to engage Rubio into an ideological contrast with Trump’s less interventionist conservatism; Rubio attacked briefly, before saying that he was a “Ronald Reagan conservative” and then saying that the “lack of American leadership” has caused “the sort of vacuums that allow jihadists in.”
Rubio, the choice of the neoconservatives in Washington, pivoted to well-honed talking points rather than going deep in the traditional discussion in GOP primaries between the interventionist wing and the more isolationist wing.
The Rubio rhetorical appeal never went too far from the #NeverTrump refrain. For those looking for an affirmative case to support Rubio from this event, as with most recent ones, it was tough to find, amidst attacks on “Trump University” and other canards Florida voters with televisions have been more than exposed to, with no effect in the polls, for weeks now.
Rubio, when asked about donations from groups like the private prison Geo Group, said they had no influence on his campaign or policy positions, before – again – going into an attack on Trump’s campaign financing. Rubio noted that, on every issue from private prisons on down, lobbyists donate to candidates on both sides of the aisle… an insight worth a deeper inquiry than this format would ever provide.
An interesting reference surfaced about twenty minutes in: advocacy for the Clinton-era initiative Plan Colombia, ramped up by the Bush administration. Results for Plan Colombia were mixed. Lots of military hardware went over there to strengthen the regime, and to poison the illicit plants, but the end result failed to stop the demand for coca.
Rubio was on firmer ground talking about Cuba policy, when he blasted the current “loophole that allows people to come into the US, claim residency, and then live in Cuba.”
“There are people in Cuba legitimately fleeing oppression,” Rubio added, but there are those exploiting the policy.
Another interesting comment came when he was asked about climate change and sea level rise, where Rubio said he wanted a “diverse portfolio” of energy types, driven by the market, not “government mandates.”
When asked how he would avoid a financial meltdown such as 2008, Rubio talked about the decline in his home equity, before maligning the fed for “goosing up the housing market” and “keeping interest rates artificially low” while mandating “exotic” financing packages.
He called for “very specific rules” regulating the Fed, to stem against rate manipulation, then talked about how “complex laws” have helped big banks at the expense of community institutions.
Where has this guy been for the last few weeks?
Talking about policy, not mentioning Trump, you could see why DC insiders and many Florida Republicans wanted Rubio to run for President. Of course, this isn’t a policy wonk’s year. It’s the year of performance art, prop comedy and stinging jabs. It’s the year of Donald Trump.
Marco Rubio stepped into the arena, and figured out too late that Trump dictated the rules of the game. Whether it’s the media’s fault, or that of a business as usual approach to campaigning, or of something else, will be determined by the inevitable campaign autopsies once Marcomentum has finally, inevitably come to rest.
