As Scott Wong reports at Politico, California Republicans may be a minority, but we are also the “establishment.” Ha! I’m off now to bask in the reflected glory of Old California, which definitely believed in free enterprise as an agent of prosperity and a growing middle class. When I was in college, we used to sell bumper stickers here that proclaimed us to be “Reagan Country.” It’s true, but that was before we were stricken with intellectual cancer.
Marco Rubio courts establishment Republicans
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — It might look like tea party hero Marco Rubio waded into enemy territory with stops in San Francisco and Beverly Hills this week. But rubbing shoulders with a different crowd is the point of the freshman senator’s three-day swing through the Golden State.
The Florida Republican is out to prove he can appeal beyond the activist base, introducing himself to the state’s political and corporate elite, raising cash for his party from some of George W. Bush’s top donors and paying homage to one of Republicans’ most venerable icons — Ronald Reagan.
It’s the second act of a well-orchestrated national rollout that began this spring for Rubio, who insists he has no immediate national ambitions. But if the tea party favorite makes a strong debut and can win over establishment Republicans outside his home state, he could emerge an irresistible choice for the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket in 2012.
“Two words: vice president,” Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political science professor, said of Rubio’s visit. “On the one hand, he wants to remain a favorite of the tea party faction. On the other hand, he wants to reassure the party establishment that he isn’t the warm-weather version of Sarah Palin.”
Since his stunning victory last fall, Rubio’s stuck close to the script: He says he’s focusing on his job as U.S. senator and isn’t interested in making a run for the White House.
But his Tuesday night address here at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — his first major speech outside of Washington or his home state — was rife with symbolism. It cast him as a serious policymaker and fueled already rampant speculation that the young, charismatic senator is the hands-down favorite to win the vice presidential nod.
“Americans here in the 20th century built the richest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world,” Rubio told an enthusiastic crowd of 1,000. “And yet today we have built for ourselves a government that not even the richest and most prosperous nation in the face of the earth can fund or afford to pay for — an extraordinarily tragic accomplishment.”
GOP presidential front-runners are already courting the 40-year-old Rubio, whom Pitney calls “a computer-generated running mate.” He’s the son of working-class Cuban immigrants, a father of four, a gifted orator and a tea party star who hails from a key swing state that will play host to the Republican convention next year.
At a recent fundraiser, Mitt Romney said Rubio — along with Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia — would be on any nominee’s vice presidential short-list. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry placed a phone call to Rubio shortly before announcing his White House bid, the senator said.
“He is one of the fastest rising stars in the entire Republican firmament right now,” said Washington pollster Whit Ayers, chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants who counts Rubio, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman among his clients.
“Watching Marco Rubio in politics reminds me of watching Michael Jordan play basketball at North Carolina,” added Ayers, a UNC alum. “They are just playing at a different level than most other people in the game.”
The Reagan speech marks the midpoint in a fundraising tour that reveals Rubio, for all his tea-party talk, is a team player. He’s headlining five big-money events in roughly a 60-hour span, benefiting both his own Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP fundraising arm that initially backed Rubio’s rival, then-Gov. Charlie Crist, in the 2010 primary.
It must be noted, however, that Rubio does not appear to be seeking the VP nomination. At least, he’s issuing the usual disclaimers:
While Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has often been cited as a possible Republican vice presidential candidate for 2012, the freshman lawmaker sought to downplay his interest in the position in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Tuesday night.
“I have no interest in serving as vice president for anyone who could possibly live all eight years of the presidency,” Rubio said, drawing laughter from crowded room.
Rubio, the son of immigrants who fled Cuba under Fidel Castro, suggested that considering a run for higher office could impact his ability to do his job as Senator.
“What happens in politics is the minute you start thinking there’s something else out there for you, it starts affecting everything you do,” he said. “All of a sudden, maybe you’re afraid to take a position on a certain issue because it imperils your opportunity to do that something else.”
Rubio added, “So the reality of it is, I’m not going to be the vice presidential nominee. But I look forward to working for whoever our nominee is.”
Tina Korbe has more about whether Rubio might still be in play for the Veep slot, and what the “instant star” phenom means in politics. Sunshine State Sarah is thrilled about the speech, and touts Florida because it has Rubio, sunshine, and no income tax. Well, hey–right now, we have Rubio, sunshine, and . . . oh. Wait.
Listen to the whole speech; it’s 20 minutes well spent:
Also, here’s the video of Rubio catching Mrs. Reagan as she begins to fall:
Andrew Malcolm has the best writeup of Senator Rubio’s gallantry, and appears to have originated the phrase “West Coast coming-out party.”
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
Oh yes, here’s yet another Republican (see rick Perry) who has suckled at the government teat his entire adult life claiming to be a champion of free enterprise.
This is beginning to look like a feature, not a bug.
Do you like anyone who is running? (On the Republican side, that is.)
The last Republican candidate I liked (before he turned Full Metal Wingnut) was John Kasich…though I did vote for W the first time.
Hey, I only voted for W. once. The first four years of Compassionate Conservatism was enough to convince me that we didn’t need much more of it. Not that my voting for the Constitution Party did any good, but at least I can note for the record that I didn’t vote for W twice.
That does not, however, mean that I wouldn’t rather see a fiscally conservative Republican get the job next year.
Sure–let’s note, for the record, that Ponce is One of Us, and Very Concerned.
I was a solid Republican before the god botherers and racists took over the party.
If fringe right Desi gets aging wingnut women all tingly…good for him.
I doubt he plays well outside his rather limited demographic, though.
You are a liar, ponce-a-Rhama-peep-dong.
No one who holds all the Leftist principles in the handbook, without a single exception–all the talking points, memes–even the BS that gets floated out as a trial balloon that even Democrats never expect to float–like you do has ever voted Republican. Such a change would warrant a PET scan. Or a trip to an Exorcist.
Btw, you said (on LMA) that you never voted for Bush. You claim last time was that you voted for Reagan once. Get your lies straight.
I don’t suppose you’d have a link to back up your lies, Purrel?
How about when you first showed up at LMA (a couple of years ago) when you pretended to be a “real Republican” at that time and you were there to warn us that if we did not stop reading R. Stacy McCain’s blog, that we would lose “true believers” like you? Your charge? That he was a racist, of course. Which number is that again in your tricksters handbook?
You aren’t worth searching for links. Ask George Soros to go through your billings for a date.
“You aren’t worth searching for links.”
In other words, you lied and when I called you on it you can’t back up your accusations.
How typical of today’s Republicans.
No. In other words I’ve proved you wrong–and provided links–dozens of times.
As a typical Leftist, you ignore those and start all over from the beginning with your original incorrect premise and data. Groundhog Day reset. You aren’t worth the powder to blow you to Hell, either. Which is why I suspect that you are still breathing… in general.
I was a solid Republican before the god botherers and racists took over the party.
When? You lived before Lincoln?
How about in 1952 when Democrat operatives tried to conduct a smear campaign labeling Eisenhower as Jewish on one hand, while smearing him for overly Christian words in his writings and speeches. “A man’s personal religious beliefs,” Stevenson belched, “had no proper place in our political life, except as they may influence his public acts and thius affect the public welfare.”
Eisenhower countered by saying “that only by trusting in God could any President effectively carry out the responsibilities of the office and help the United States solve it’s problems.” Now in case you counter with more religious quotes that Steveson used during the debates, keep in mind that Democrat leaders let him know that his socialist slip was showing and he needed to counter his secular humanist image.
Now if Democrats had only done their homework and found out that Eisenhower was raised as a
Watchtower Jehovah’s Witness. Imagine the mileage they could have gotten about smearing him with belonging to a wacko cult, and with hypocrisy and sin for joining the military and engaging in war, in opposition to Watchtower JW doctrine. Just like they’d do today.
We are a religious nation today because in the Declaration of Independence they stated their full reliance on ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God’ and because they published before the world the self-evident truths: ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights ….’ In contrast with this concept of the sacredness of life, modern atheistic dictatorships treat men as nothing more than animals or educated mules. How many materialistic psychologists and smart-alec professors sneer that men invented God in a childly search for security; yet I have noticed that men in the foxholes or at the moment of death turn to some higher Power for comfort and courage…. although I have seldom displayed or discussed my religious philosophy with anyone, a deep Bible-centered faith has colored my life since childhood. Devout parents, who loved the Bible as dearly as life itself, made sure of that. Indeed, before I was eighteen, I had read through the entire Bible and discussed it, chapter by chapter, with my mother.