With Trumpism in eclipse, Marco Rubio embraces ‘center-right’ brand

A U.S. Senator from Florida released a video Friday morning , in the wake of Donald Trump supporters’ deadly siege of the Capitol Wednesday.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, in a four minute address, indicated that his post-Donald Trump political identity will involve a rededication to center-right branding, as Republicans find themselves relegated to a minority in Congress and, in 12 days, without control of the White House.

“For those of us on the center-right of American politics, this moment calls for honest reflection,” Rubio said deep into his statement.

“It wasn’t long ago that we controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House,” Rubio said. “Four years later, we’ve lost all three.”

“We need to reflect on why this has happened. Because this country needs a viable, attractive alternative to the agenda of the radical left. We shouldn’t and we can’t go back to the party of 2012, a party that frankly was out of touch with the unheard voices of millions of working Americans.”

“We must continue to fight for working Americans, not for corporations,” Rubio added, calling for opposition to, among other things, “identity politics” and this “cult of wokeness” as part of the center-right rebrand.

The timing of these remarks is notable politically. Rubio will face a spirited Democratic challenge in 2022, and potentially a primary challenge from the right before that, with even First Daughter Ivanka Trump floated as a possibility.

The Senator prefaced his political strategy meditation with some reflections on the events, issuing at least partisan blame on the “double standard” of the “mainstream media” in forging extremism on the right, drawing parallels between the deadly violence that brought the business of government to a halt Wednesday and the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer.

“I remember what they now call insurrection, they were justifying this summer as the ‘language of the unheard,” Rubio said, issuing well-worn critiques of the “blatant bias and the double standard” of “biased mainstream media” such as CNN and MSNBC.

In the wake of the unprecedented Capitol siege, with the police overwhelmed by so-called Patriots traipsing through the citadel of democracy, Rubio recalled cable news anchors’ commentary on the summer protests, and how they may have driven people on the right to extremism.

“So many people have sought political shelter in divisive political movements and conspiracy theories that offer the promise of fighting back against it,” Rubio said.

“We can’t allow our anger about all of that stuff to turn us into them,” he further cautioned.

Noting the “nonstop bias and double standard of the legacy media,” Rubio said that “millions of people” thought the election wasn’t legit.

“And of those millions of people,” Rubio added, “tens of thousands went to Washington D.C. this week, demanding that action be taken, that we do something.”

“99% of the people that came here have nothing to do with that mob, nothing,” Rubio said. “But 1% of tens of thousands of people is a lot of people.”

“Many of those in the mob were driven by a ridiculous conspiracy theory,” the Senator added, “and others were lied to by politicians telling them the VP had the power to change election results.”

The Senator embraced the rhetorical flourishes of Trumpism increasingly as the November election approached, including an appearance in Hialeah days before the election when he seemed to countenance activities not completely removed from the Trumpist terror attack this week.

The Senator praised a group of Trump supporters’ vehicles that menacingly surrounded a Joe Biden campaign bus while it was traveling on a Texas interstate en route to Austin.

“We love what they did, but here’s the thing they don’t know,” Rubio said. “We do that in Florida every day.”

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— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 8, 2021