Why do you think so many of the TeaParty are going for Trump or even Carson over these two senators? To them, Rubio and Cruz are symbolic of an out-of-control immigration policy. Neither of these guys are appealing to the rank and file GOP base. They just aren’t what conservatives think a Republican should look like. That they are Cuban like Castro leaves another bad feeling.
When Trump talks about putting up a fence, Rubio and Cruz are the kind of people Republicans are thinking about keeping out of the country.
There is nothing positive about them running on the GOP ticket. Dems don’t have to get ugly. It already angers so many bigots in this country that Rubio and Cruz are senators when a real white American should be holding those jobs. You hear it all the time at VFW and American Legion halls.
“At least a black worked his way up. These Cubans are just taking whatever they want.”
Mark my words, there will be backlash against the GOP by its own members if they push Rubio onto their base as the nominee. Cruz is his own worst enemy…a really sleazy individual that personifies the worst Latino stereotype characteristics. I really don’t think Ted has a chance but his negative rhetoric is welcome in the Republican Party all the same.
Rubio has already embraced the same positions that Cruz is touting. There are only two things distinguishing them…Cruz is more willing to use stronger language to condemn immigrants (except his Dad, of course), and Rubio actually became the poster child for a bi partisan bill in 2013. Which he quickly ran away with once the right starting beating the hell out of him. Today, Rubio’s stances are at complete odds with the bill he helped pass in the Senate…180 degrees the the other way. No path to citizenship, undocumented immigrants need to be kicked out, and nothing can happen until the border is completely secure (what that means is intentionally vague) for 10 years…so beyond the time frame of any fictional Rubio Presidency.
He’s never been a spark plug that ignites the GOP base. Rubio tends to blend into a crowd and people forget why he’s running.
He’s the classic Boy Band invention candidate…too good to be true and not really talented enough to go it on his own. It might have helped if he had started out as a Disney kid and dated one of its tween girl idols.
But can you really imagine either Brittany Spears or Miley Cyrus giving him the time of day…much less NASCAR dads or Reagan Democrats who served in the WW II? His financial association with shady Cuban supporters and failed attempts to frame an immigration policy that the GOP could advance drag him down even further.
The Bushies just have to bring up his Koch Brother connections during the FL primary and he’s tainted completely for the general election among Independents. Dems couldn’t wish for an easier target.
Honestly, I can’t decide yet. I just don’t know. Well, true, he doesn’t have what it takes. Utterly lightweight, out of depth, lying liar spewing stupid comments indicating he’s not ready for primetime, fucked up personal finance, too much sweating for no hard work, no accomplishment in Congress…and yeah it’s been quite a while since people started talking about the establishment coalescing behind him. Where’s he? Like, moving up from 10 to 12 or 13%? Even in his home state he’s trailing.
But just because he doesn’t have what it takes, even if he’s hovering just about 10%, doesn’t mean he won’t pull ahead…
Jeb is still there. Kasich is still there. Christie is still there… once they are gone, perhaps people on the fence, if reluctantly, may jump off and back him. And If it comes down to a race between these two Cubans, more like their Congress pals, governors etc may endorse Rubio (Cruz is hated by nearly everyone!).
Then again, there’s still Trump (he, by the way, doesn’t have what it takes, either, he instead has everything you shouldn’t have as president, but he’s leading).
So, I don’t know. I just don’t have a crystal ball.
There is some really thick irony to have Cruz go high dudgeon about needing to protect the right to privacy since that is the very legal foundation of Roe v. Wade along with the simultaneous Doe v. Bolton ruling.
The GOP is really in a pickle. If Christie just hadn’t stopped traffic on that bridge, he’s just the kind of candidate the red meat bigots of the GOP would have enjoyed backing. But he now has that scandal hovering over his candidacy as well as an image of a NJ mobster which Southerns love to point to in showing their superiority over Northern candidates.
I still think Jeb ! still has a chance because of the Bush Crime Family organization and connections in all states to get out their vote. if someone finds as way to trip up Trump (and they are all working on just that) an Establishment candidate will be in a position to take over.
It contains some of the pathos of both of these men. An older Anglo lady I know assured me that “America was not ready for a Mexican President”. I asked her to whom she was referring. She spat out, “Cruz and Rubio! Who do you think!?”
Both men are trying to do in one generation what Tony Romo did in two generations. There are millions of people with Latino and Anglo parents who are now, for all intents and purposes, Anglo. For those with Latina mothers, they can also possess non-Spanish names.
Their identities are easily and comfortably Anglo American…and many do not speak Spanish at all.
Cruz and Rubio are both interesting in HOW they are grifting the American public. Rubio is following the well-grooved “I-came-for-freedom-from-Cuba” theme common to many in South Florida. Cruz, on the other hand, has a different strategy entirely, tipped-off by the state (Texas) where he started his real hustle…
Cruz has very little support outside of a base of self-described “very conservative” voters. He has the support of 14 percent of “somewhat conservative” voters and just 6 percent of self-described moderate or liberal Republicans. The most recent national Quinnipiac survey showed the same basic breakdown in support for him. Cruz is also 44, but doesn’t talk about his relative youth
Rubio who’s 44 tries to emphasis his youth in his speeches but the party has older voters who value experience over youth, and Clinton beats him in a direct matchup. Other candidates including Trump, Carson and Jeb! are in their 60s, so Rube thinks he’s the antidote to the perception of aging candidates. He’s not. He comes off as callow and we know he doesn’t like his day job.
I think Carnival is the better strategist, but I don’t think he is electable because – well, because he’s Carnival Cruz. I can’t imagine his schtick playing well with the so-called independents.
Rubio is the better retail politician: he’s more likable and disguises his pretty hard-right agenda in nonsense like “middle class tax relief”. Middle class (and lower class for that matter) tax relief is actually pretty easy: raise rates and increase exemptions and exclusions. If you want to relieve the middle and lower classes from the glut of other taxes they pay, the Earned Income Tax Credit can be expanded. But Rubio is talking about tinkering with rates and revamping deductions, exemptions and exclusions. As we saw under Bush Fils, this benefits the wealthy more than the poor and middle class.
Frankly, I think Rubio is the more dangerous of the two because he is electable.
On the one hand, if we assume (as we must) that neither Carson nor Trump will be around for long once primaries get underway, I get why moving the horse-race coverage to the #3 and #4 in the polls makes sense.
On the other hand, and I’m not really blaming the reporter for this, somehow talking about Cruz and Rubio sniping at one another feels no more significant than talking about the Jim Gilmore/George Pataki feud. (I assume one exists.)
60% of the Electorate is asleep. They will not vote. They are determined not to do so. This is not the same thing as countries in which one legally CAN’T vote. Or countries where it is so difficult that it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible.
Rather, these are Americans who have it within their physical power to register and vote. The fact that this state of affairs is so common means the obvious reaction:
NORMALCY.
They do not believe that voting in any way has an effect on their lives.
And they believe this with the choices between these Republicans and who we have to offer.
Therefore, they do not differentiate between what the two parties offer in how national emergencies would be handled.
There is no English at my command which can encapsulate the sheer idiocy of that mentality.
Among tens and tens and tens of millions of people…
Well, he’s talking about 4th Amendment privacy, not the right to privacy that protects things like the right to use contraceptives and the like, that was derived from the 14th Amendment’s liberty clause or from the 1st Amendment.
Not to mention that the Doe v. Bolton (which was handed down with the Roe ruling) stated in the ruling itself:
“This was a violation of rights guaranteed her by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.”
And from the Roe ruling itself:
In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. at 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id. at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. .
They’re sort of the second tier, and possibly more dangerous than Trump or Carson because they’ll actually be taken seriously in the general election. Rubio seems to be a bit of a media darling right now as if he’s what passes for a serious Republican. He’s actually an ideologue with some social skills, while Cruz is a demagogue whose only skill is kicking dirt on the other players.
I read a great piece last week that essentially, Rubio is an old guy’s version of what younger voters will like. There is nothing in his rhetoric, policy or polling numbers to indicate he is building up some youth vote coalition.
