Category Archives: Politics

There will be plenty of postmortems dissecting how Marco Rubio went from Tea Party darling Senator-elect in 2010 to a humiliating flame-out in this year’s presidential election.

The five obvious reasons, in order of importance, we think, are:

1.  His leadership of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty scheme.

2.  His leadership of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty scheme.

3A.  His robotic persona in the debates.

3B.  His resemblance to Barack Obama in 2008:  a blank slate, with few accomplishments and no executive experience, who says the right things on the surface—allowing voters to project whatever specific viewpoints they wished upon him—and checks the diversity boxes.  (Notwithstanding (3A), Rubio’s rhetoric is, of course, more substantive than Obama’s.)

3C.  Later in the race, his association with the D.C. establishment.

Although we are glad that the primary campaign served its purpose of vetting candidate Rubio, we can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that he didn’t live up to his promise.  To take one example, his speech after President Obama announced his appeasement of Cuba in December 2014 was outstanding.

It is certainly plausible that he could come back.  At 44, he has decades of opportunity left in him.  How he uses the first of those decades will speak to his character and his seriousness to be a viable presidential candidate.

The best course of action for Rubio would be to run for governor of Florida in 2018, when Gov. Rick Scott (R) cannot run again due to term limits.  Rubio needs the executive credentials and gravitas that would come from such a stint.  Of course an electoral loss would derail him (though it didn’t in Richard Nixon’s case, though he had already accumulated a more substantive resume), but he needs to take the risk.

Another alternative would be to angle for a cabinet position—something far away from immigration—like Secretary of Education or Secretary of Transportation.  A university presidency would not be as beneficial, but if he governs like Mitch Daniels, then it could be a step in the right direction.

Of course he should repudiate his actions as part of the “Gang of Eight.”  We don’t think that this will be a major challenge, as President Trump will provide cover by, in concert with Congress, completely changing the way that the U.S. implements immigration policy.  (If Hillary Clinton wins, then no one as conservative as Marco Rubio is ever likely to be elected president again, so this whole discussion would be moot.)

A Fox News gig in the meantime would be OK.  We hope that he doesn’t sit out the political debate and then come riding back onto the scene out of nowhere.  We hope that he does not take the petulant step of resigning from the Senate early.  Though it would give the Republicans the benefit of incumbency following an appointment by Gov. Scott, such a move is not statesman-like.

What he especially should not do is to trod the familiar path of retired establishment politicians and take a high-paying, non-work job in a law or lobbying firm, investment bank, or private equity firm—and then present himself to us again in eight or twelve or sixteen years’ time with only that additional resume item.  Such an occupation would do nothing but reinforce his lack of executive credentials and his membership in the D.C. establishment.  Spending his prime years as a high-class Republican community organizer wouldn’t mitigate the perception of him as another Barack Obama.

No doubt Rubio, who has suffered financial challenges, wants to cash in—and we never begrudge someone that—but if he’s serious about mounting another presidential campaign, he’s going to have to find a way to do more than that.

Though conservatives have, with good reason, feared the prospect of Donald Trump’s judicial appointments should be become President, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia has brought this issue to the forefront.

We can rationalize a cautious optimism.  Donald Trump has not spent a lifetime pondering Constitutional issues, as Ted Cruz (and probably even Jeb Bush) have, so we hope that a President Trump would mitigate his weakness in this area by deferring to the conservative movement, especially opinion leaders like Hannity and Coulter (we suppose that Mark Levin is now off of this list) who have praised Trump.

Recall the furor by which the right successfully scuppered President George W. Bush’s attempted nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in 2005.  President Trump, smart leader that he is, would delegate to avoid such a train-wreck.  Attorney General Ted Cruz would be the point person, assisted by White House Counsel John Yoo, in choosing candidates for federal judgeships.

We request you, conservative luminaries who will have influence with the Trump Administration, to guide him on this issue on which you are so focused and right-minded and on which he will welcome your insight.

Perhaps Vice President Biden is among us who are hoping for Hillary Clinton to be indicted over her mishandling of classified e-mails while she was Secretary of State.  With the latest revelation that Secretary Clinton instructed Jake Sullivan to delete the classified markings on a document and send it over an unsecured communications medium, we might get our wish.  Such brazen and reckless conduct would condemn anyone else to criminal punishment.

Meanwhile, Biden is reminding everyone, I’m still here!

When he decided not to run for president, he probably figured that he had a small—much less than 50%—chance of defeating Clinton in the primary.  Maybe he figured, if Clinton gets indicted, then I can enter the race as “elder statesman/savior who has been coaxed into service out of necessity” rather than “also-ran who has been getting trounced in the primary but is the last viable man standing.”  He can keep the non-candidate glow aflame until it’s too late.

It may yet work out for him.  Though he might do better to cue Maureen Dowd to prepare a column about how reluctant he is in carrying this burden instead of seeming too eager.  Then again, we are not qualified to question Biden’s political savvy.

Will the Republican establishment connect the dots between the Donald Trump phenomenon and Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Ca.) failure to step-up to the speakership?  (That’s a rhetorical question.)

We asserted a few weeks ago that Donald Trump would not be the Republican presidential front-runner were it not for Jeb Bush.  (Nor would the delightful “cuckservative” meme have emerged without Trump on the scene.)

Now Trumpism can add McCarthy’s political obituary to those of Scott Walker and Rick Perry, and eventually of Jeb Bush*, to its resume.  McCarthy was undone thanks to the emboldened House Freedom Caucus, which has been fueled alongside Trump’s disruption of the Republican landscape.  Trump continues to give cover to the dissident, hope to the disaffected, and an outlet to the angry.

McCarthy and his ilk—most Republicans in Congress, actually—made it easy for Trump by basically ignoring the voters’ ire about immigration that was a major reason for their victory in the 2014 mid-terms.  Were it not for Trump, there would be little movement to punish Republicans for ignoring the issue and allowing President Obama to implement amnesty by executive action after the elections.

* Hopefully, anyway.  We do not rule out the possibility of the Republican establishment using whatever dirty tricks it can muster from its formidable arsenal to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention, against the will of the majority of delegates elected through primaries and caucuses.