Showing posts with label Marco Rubio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marco Rubio. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Opening remarks of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Vice Chair of U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during Comm.'s annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing. Also have video of entire hearing. #China #Iran #Putin #Russia #TikTok #Xi #ByteDance


NB: Full hearing of U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats is at bottom of page!

https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-delivers-opening-remarks-at-worldwide-threats-hearing-2/

Press Release via Senator Marco Rubio's Office
RUBIO DELIVERS OPENING REMARKS AT WORLDWIDE THREATS HEARING
MARCH 11, 2024

Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delivered opening remarks during the annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing.

“I still think America, by every measure you can imagine – economically, culturally, militarily – remains the world’s strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable future if we make the right choices. But that order that I just described is being challenged. It’s being challenged by nation-states that don’t like the way the world looks now. At least, they think it benefits America and hurts them. And they want to [sideline] America and our democratic allies with an alternative, if not a replacement.” – Senator Rubio


“Thank you all for coming here today. I also extend my thanks to the men and women who work underneath you that do the important work of keeping our country safe at what I think you could describe as one of those pivot moments in history, where what life will be like for a generation is being determined by what’s happening now and in the near future.

“While events are changing perhaps faster than any other time in human history, I think we have to remind ourselves of the why – the bigger outlined picture of why things are happening the way they are happening. Because I do think that they are all interrelated.

“From the end of the Cold War to the late 2000s, we lived in a unipolar world. The United States was basically the only country in the world that could project power everywhere at every time. And we were called upon to do many things in regard to that. But other nation states progressed during that stage.

“I still think America, by every measure you can imagine – economically, culturally, militarily – remains the world’s strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable future if we make the right choices. But that order that I just described is being challenged. It’s being challenged by nation states that don’t like the way the world looks now. At least, they think it benefits America and hurts them. And they want to [sideline] America and our democratic allies with an alternative, if not a replacement.

“The Chinese believe we’re in inevitable decline and that their rise is inevitable. They don’t like the rules of the world as they believe were written by America and our allies, and so they increasingly are taking it upon themselves, at every opportunity, to challenge them in every domain. They steal our ideas on innovation and so forth, so that their companies can do the things that we do, but do it cheaper and flood markets with those products.

“I don’t need to tell this panel or the members of this committee and the general public that they’re expanding their military capabilities in an extraordinary way to include, not simply projecting power in the Indo-Pacific, but around the world. By the way, they manipulate loopholes in our laws and in our systems in this country to buy up land, buy up companies, gain strategic advantage in industries, and undermine our industries in return.

“They are a major part of flooding this country with deadly drugs that are destroying communities and ravaging entire families. And they’ve also gotten very good at hiring lobbyists and even deputizing corporate America to come up here and lobby us for things that are beneficial to Chinese goals at the expense of this country, long term.

“I think it’s important to mention here today, they also happen to control [ByteDance]. Anybody who says they don’t doesn’t know what they’re talking about, because every company in China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. They happen to control a company that owns one of the world’s best artificial intelligence algorithms. It’s the one that’s used in this country by TikTok, and it uses the data of Americans to basically read your mind and predict what videos you want to see.

“The reason why TikTok is so successful, the reason why it’s so attractive, is because it knows you better than you know yourself, and the more you use it, the more it learns. The problem is not TikTok or the videos. The problem is the algorithm that powers it is controlled by a company in China that must do whatever the Chinese Communist Party tells them to do.

“And the only way that that algorithm works is if that company in China, under the control of the Chinese government, is given access to the data that TikTok collects. TikTok does not work without that algorithm. And that algorithm is controlled by a company that’s controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, under the law of China.

“In the case of Putin, he also sees America as decadent and in decline. He views China and Russia as resilient. They view themselves as great powers. And he believes that great powers have a right to buffer states. He believes that great powers have a right, not just to have their own borders, but to control the countries around their borders as buffer states. They already have that in Belarus. It is one of the reasons why he invaded Ukraine.

“In the case of Iran, they want to export their Shia Islamic revolution to the entire Middle East. The problem with this is, two things stand in their way – the state of Israel and the United States of America. That is why they have proxy groups in places like Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Gaza, whom they use for their purposes.

“One of their purposes is to use these groups to attack Americans, so that we will say, ‘It’s not worth the trouble. We need to get out of there.’ And once we leave, then they’ll move on to Jordan and Bahrain. Then they’ll make Israel an unlivable place. Ultimately, their ambitions are the entire region and most of the Gulf kingdoms.

“That’s why I think it’s a mistake to view the horrific events of October 7th as simply the latest iteration of a longstanding Israeli-Palestinian problem. It is deeply tied to the head of this snake, and the head of this snake is in Iran and in Tehran.

“Add to these three countries North Korea. We haven’t heard a lot about it yet, but they have become increasingly aggressive. In fact, I would argue that we perhaps are closer to some armed hostilities than we’ve been in a decade or longer.

“Why have they become so aggressive? They feel empowered. They feel empowered because Putin is buying things from them and helping them to break their international isolation. And also because – I don’t know what percentage of their economy is powered by ransomware attacks and cyber hacking, but it’s substantial. They generate a lot of money from that.

“Then add to this parade of horribles the fact that terror is still a threat. Iran, as has been publicly reported, is still trying to kill former government officials that live in the United States of America. There are former government officials in this country, no longer in office, who require 24 hours a day security because Iran is trying to kill them inside the United States.

“Hezbollah, an agent of Iran, is also looking for ways to conduct terrorist attacks against American interests and Israeli and Jewish interests all over the world and here in the homeland as well. By the way, ISIS and al Qaeda are not out of business. They are still involved with Al-Shabab. They also want to kill Americans. If they could do it in the homeland, they would love that.

“And all of that is happening at a time in which perhaps the single largest, most eventful migration corridor in history is operating right off of our border.

“I think it’s a mistake sometimes to divide all of these problems geographically, because in some ways, they’re all interrelated. Yes, these individual states all have different ambitions, but they share a common goal. And the common goal is a world friendlier and better for them and their interests and a world in which America is weakened and less able to act.

“All of these crises begin to interlock in a way that helps them. For example, the Chinese and the Russians see great benefit in what’s happening in the Middle East, because they figure every dollar and every second of our attention that’s paid there is not paid to what’s happening with Ukraine or the Indo-Pacific. The Chinese see great benefit in Ukraine as well, because they view it as the more time and money we spend there, the less time and money and focus we have on them.

“In fact, I know the Chinese hope for one of two things – we deplete ourselves in Ukraine and/or the Middle East, particularly Ukraine, or we cut and run. Then they can go around the world and say, ‘See, I told you, America’s weak. I told you America is unreliable.’ They have a plan for either outcome, which makes it challenging for us as we decide what to do here.

“These things all come together…. The goals that Russia has, the goals that Iran has, the goals that North Korea has, the goals that the Chinese have, may be different goals, but one of the real developments that threatens the security of our country is that they are increasingly partnering with one another. It’s not a NATO alliance, not the sort of formal alliance that’s written out. But they are increasingly partnering with each other.

“It’s on selected topics, and it’s on selected opportunities, because they all share one goal, and that is, they want to weaken America, weaken our alliances, weaken our standing and our capability and our will. Because it helps them to achieve the world as they envision it, the world that they want. But it comes at our expense and at the expense of all that’s been built over the last 20 or 30 years.

“I think that one of the greatest dangers we face is the inability to see how all these things are interconnected. And I think one of the greatest challenges we face is to deal with them as if they are interconnected. I think that what life will be like on this planet for the next generation will be determined very much by what we do or fail to do here, over the next two to three years, with the issues that are before us today.”


Full hearing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHQ18Wx8RM

2 hours, 27 minutes, 25 seconds





Dave

Monday, August 8, 2022

Breakdown of Broward County's registered voters two weeks before 2022 primary elections. As usual, voter apathy leads voter passion during the hot, humid summer months of South Florida


Breakdown of Broward County's registered voters two weeks before 2022 primary elections. As usual, voter apathy leads voter passion during the hot, humid summer months of South Florida.

As of today, two weeks before the 2022 Florida Primary election, with Early Voting scheduled to begin in Broward on Saturday the 13th, and with mail-in voting already taking place statewide, according to the Broward Superintendent of Elections office, while Democratic Party registered voters still outnumber Republicans in blue Broward County -where no Republicans serve on the nine-member Broward County Commission- a majority of the county's registered voters are NOT Democrats:

DEMOCRAT: 597,176
REPUBLICAN: 262,386
NPA: 361,595
OTHER: 19,626
TOTAL: 1,240,783
262,386 + 361,595 + 19,626 = 643,607

Compared to SOE figures of one year ago, August 7, 2021, below, this represents changes in the following:

Despite having competitive inter-party races for Governor and Senator, Democrats have lost 34,834 voters, roughly the population of Hallandale Beach.

For their part, Republicans have lost 5,954 voters in the 12 months before an election year with very strong GOP incumbents like Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio, and no contested primary competition for either man to drum-up voter registration/turnout before November's general election.

NPA has gained 2,109 voters, many likely new Florida residents who have abandoned Northern blue lockdown states like New York and Illinois, as seems self-evident anywhere you go in Broward, judging by the number of out-of-state license plates from those states this time of the year, as opposed to The Season in a few months.

Voters registered as OTHER, yes, OTHER, has gained 950 voters.

The total of registered voters in Broward County has decreased by 37,729 voters in the last year.

Active Registered Voters in #Broward County #FL as of 8/7/21,
DEMOCRAT: 632,010
REPUBLICAN: 268,340
NPA: 359,486
OTHER: 18,676
TOTAL: 1,278,512

https://browardvotes.gov

Dave

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Some quick thoughts re Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report, his unique role in D.C., his feelings about tonight's GOP debate in Las Vegas, and the 2016 presidential campaign thus far... @CharlieCookDC






The National Journal
What’s on the Line in Las Vegas - For some of the Republican wannabes, Tuesday’s debate could matter a lot.
Charlie Cook, December 14, 2015

As we get older, some of us ac­cu­mu­late pet peeves. For me, this is one: when journ­al­ists write of an up­com­ing event as tan­tamount to a turn­ing point in the his­tory of civil­iz­a­tion, or at least since the in­ven­tion of sliced bread. In polit­ics, many im­port­ant events shape elec­tions, and a suc­ces­sion of events big and small make up what we call the cam­paign. For some of the can­did­ates, Tues­day night’s Re­pub­lic­an de­bate in Las Ve­gas, sponsored by CNN and Face­book, is crit­ic­ally im­port­ant; for oth­ers, even a strong per­form­ance would likely be too little, too late. There are likely to be no ad­di­tion­al events between now and the first week of Janu­ary—noth­ing that’s planned, any­way—that can change the dy­nam­ics of this race.


Read the rest of the article at http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/126039













I first met Charlie Cook of the eponymous Cook Political Report in 1992, when I had a 5-6 month gig at Roll Call newspaper in DC in-between some interviews I was having for some fulltime jobs at trade associations and law/lobbying firms, starting in the spring before the 1992 General Election that Bill Clinton won. 

This was in the pre-Internet era when Doug Bailey's The Hotline was faxed daily to eager subscribers aroung the Beltway and the country, and their most-eagerly anticipated 'coverage' in the 15-20 pages we'd print out were whatever crazy smart or crazy cruel thing that Mary Matalin had said in defense of President Bush or against Bill Clinton and the Democrats, and she pulled no punches, much to everyone's delight and constant amazement in the office. 
(If only Twitter had existed then!)

This was back when Roll Call was co-owned by Arthur Levitt before President Clinton nominated him to be SEC Chairman, and the paper was edited by James "Jim' Glassman
Which is to say, before it was owned by The Economist, and before The Hill existed.

Charlie's then-independent Cook Political Report was then-located in the same office around the corner from DC's Union Station as us, a few blocks north of the Senate side of Capitol Hill. 
It's while there that among other things, that I first met future Washington state's U.S. Senator Patty Murray months before she won her Senate primary and before her consultant's "mom in tennis shoes" ad campaign became a bit of a national thing via CNN.

That came about because a colleague in the Washington state Senate had once, foolishly, said she was “just a mom in tennis shoes. Go home. You can’t make a difference.”
Then as well as now, sometimes, left to their own devices, your opponents create your golden opportunity.

So, naturally, given all this, we were all VERY curious what Murray would wear for her first appointment with Charlie, which we all knew in advance would be crucial to her, and if positive,would likely have a tidal wave effect on DC PACs and the Beltway Dem money crowd IF she impressed him and his staff.

Surprise! She made a point of wearing sneakers with her smart professional outfit, looking like most of the women I'd just seen on the Metro train a few minutes before, wearing some sort of Anne Klein II thing. 
Murray's now the highest-ranking woman in the Senate.

In large part because of his amiable personality and disposition towards fairness -and his remarkable lack of a large ego despite his renown- as well as his zeal for facts and analytics, and his crazy memory for arcane facts, Charlie is probably the most-universally respected person I ever met in my 15 years in DC from 1988-2003.

Dave 


Monday, July 6, 2015

From political cipher and unknown to possible successor to Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate in no time at all, there are a myriad of legal & political choices confronting Florida Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera, as he seeks to define himself to Floridians before rivals pounce and do it for him. @LopezCantera





Tampa Bay Times

Eyeing Senate bid, Lt. Gov. Lopez-Cantera must decide whether to stay or go
By Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Saturday, July 4, 2015 6:00am

TALLAHASSEE — After 18 months in Gov. Rick Scott's shadow, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera has to make his first big decision.


Before he enters Florida's wide-open race for the U.S. Senate, he'll reach a political crossroads as the state's No. 2 executive: Should he stay or go?


Lopez-Cantera won't say, and the public probably would not notice the difference


Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/eyeing-senate-bid-lt-gov-lopez-canteras-must-decide-whether-to-stay-or-go/2236092

Roll Call
The Mystery of a Possible Florida Senate Candidate
By Stuart Rothenberg

Posted at 4 p.m. on April 21


A handful of Republicans are currently being mentioned as possible Senate candidates for the Florida seat being vacated by Marco Rubio, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination.

Former Rep. Bill McCollum, who has run repeatedly (and often unsuccessfully) for statewide office, is mentioned, as are a handful of House members, including Rep. Ron DeSantis, a tea party favorite.

Perhaps the most interesting, or at least unusual, candidate for the Republican nomination is the state’s current lieutenant governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a former Florida House member (and majority leader) and Miami-Dade County property appraiser.

What makes Lopez-Cantera, who was appointed to his current post in January 2014 by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, so unusual is that he is a Cuban-American Jew who was born in Madrid

Read the rest of the article at:

Nearly everyone I know and respect in South Florida who knew Carlos Lopez-Cantera when he first decided to run for the not-exactly-sexy position of Miami-Dade Appraiser -in an area of the country we know from experience is NOT exactly known for accuracy and truthfulness about tax dollars or numbers- told me that their take was that he was merely biding his time, waiting for a larger opportunity.


According to them, perhaps a run for the position of Miami-Dade County Mayor AFTER he'd been in office as Appraiser for about 6-10 years, and had actually acquired some reasonable amount of name recognition and power, to say nothing of perhaps even making some tangible improvements in his office that he could tout to what would surely be legions of skeptics.

Well, they're just as surprised as anyone that someone whom just three years ago, most South Florida political junkies and reporters had either never heard of or ever met him before in person, might now be 1 of 100 votes in Washington in just 18 months time.
I know because I'm one of those surprised people.


There's no higher-ranking politician in Florida whom I -and most people I know- actually know less about. than Carlos Lopez-Cantera.
That fact is abetted by South Florida's current lackluster crop of print/TV reporters and columnists, most of whom can be charitably described as apathetic and sleepwalking zombies in the best of times. And this is clearly NOT the best of times for serious new consumers in Florida.

Dave
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Friday, September 20, 2013

Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post combs thru the mountain of evidence -and self-inflicted wounds- that is Marco Rubio's disastrous 2013 and asks the logical question, "Who is Marco Rubio?" (¿Quién es Marco Rubio?) But maybe the real question is what is Rubio? Someone to be trusted and counted upon, or someone to be leery of because of his penchant for conflating his own role and ego?; Just as I predicted months ago, no?; #Rubio, #gangofeight, #RubiosFolly




Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post combs thru the mountain of evidence -and self-inflicted wounds- that is Marco Rubio's disastrous 2013 and asks the logical question, "Who is Marco Rubio?" (¿Quién es Marco Rubio?) But maybe the real question is what is Rubio? Someone to be trusted and counted upon, or someone to be leery of because of his penchant for conflating his own role and ego?; Just as I predicted months ago, no?; #Rubio, #gangofeight, #RubiosFolly
I need hardly remind you regular readers of this blog that I predicted all of this very intense scrutiny, personal criticism and second-guessing of Marco Rubio's character many months ago in this space, in a series of posts re immigration comparing what Rubio had said and promised at one point in time with what he actually did and said when it counted, and behind-the-scenes.
This, even while Florida's Mainstream Media -and especially the reporters at The Miami Herald- were predicting clear sailing ahead, even as they scrubbed their own newspapers and websites of anything or anyone critical of Rubio's pro-amnesty approach to immigration reform that put amnesty first and border security second, in keeping consistent with the Editorial Board policies set forth and the personal opinions of many reporters, columnists and editors or news room producers.

Now we'll all get to see how Rubio handles adversity and very strong personal criticism about his integrity and trust-worthiness, and whether he is destined to learn from the experience or simply going to become just the latest one-term Much-Ado-about-nothing Senator in Washington.
As a voter who supported him early on in 2009 and voted for him twice in 2010, this is far from being a settled question right now.
Without the support of voters like me, former Democrats, Rubio's political future is very much in doubt -and completely forget about 2016

The Washington Post
Who is Marco Rubio?
By Jennifer Rubin, 
Updated: September 19, 2013
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is young and eloquent. But he has baffled conservatives who have no idea who the real Rubio is.
Is he the Rubio who embraced immigration reform in the Senate or the Rubio who’s dropped the issue entirely?
Is he the Rubio who talks about a positive agenda including higher education reform or is he the know-nothing who follows Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in the shutdown cul-de-sac? 
Read the rest of the piece at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/09/19/who-is-marco-rubio/

-----
See also my June 12, 2013 post titled,
When Rush Limbaugh admits he's disappointed in Marco Rubio's flip-flop on immigration, it's only going to get worse for Rubio. Only positive of S.744, the Schumer-Rubio “comprehensive” immigration amnesty bill, i.e the #setup4sellout, IF it passes, is that Rubio gets properly 'schooled' and roughed-up a bit to wear off his new car smell and conservatives see his true faults for what they are -he's still too gullible. Consider that Mission (already) Accomplished; Mickey Kaus is masterfully connecting-the-dots on why defeating this is more important to U.S. long-term than getting more info re Benghazi, IRS, NSA snooping scandals
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/mickey-kaus-is-masterfully-connecting.html

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Video: Michelle Malkin hammers Marco Rubio over his duplicity, pandering and condescension this year in crafting the ill-advised Schumer-Rubio immigration bill that puts Amnesty first and Border Security and everything else second, in an effort to appease the GOP Establishment, agribusiness interests, Hispanic voters and the Mainstream Media. In doing so, she lambastes him in a way that no prominent person in Florida has been willing to do publicly, though Mickey Kaus has been doing what he can to inform & educate from The Left Coast; @michellemalkin, @kausmickey, @TwitchyTeam, #marcorubio, @powerlineUS


Thesharktank1 YouTube Channel video: Michelle Malkin Talks About Rubio's Immigration Position with blogger Javier Manjarres. Recorded at the Defending the American Dream Summit  in Orlando, Florida. Uploaded September 1, 2013. http://youtu.be/PDG-LAra9io

Video: Michelle Malkin hammers Marco Rubio over his duplicity, pandering and condescension this year in crafting the ill-advised Schumer-Rubio immigration bill that puts amnesty first and border security and everything else second, in an effort to appease the GOP Establishment, agribusiness interests, Hispanic voters and the Mainstream Media. In doing so, she lambastes him in a way that no prominent person in Florida has been willing to do publicly, though Mickey Kaus has been doing what he can to inform & educate from The Left Coast; @michellemalkin, @kausmickey, @TwitchyTeam, #marcorubio, @powerlineUS

And boom goes the dynamite! :) 
In my opinion, conservative writer, pundit and Twitchy head honcho Michelle Malkin's 100% right about everything she says in this video, which I saw early Sunday morning before going to sleep, when it then only had about 5 views.

It's funny -no, not really- that a relative outsider to Florida politics like her can so easily size-up this whole episode for what it really is and has been, but the supposedly better-informed (re Rubio) Florida press corps that has largely carried Rubio's luggage has avoided -even while finally starting to acknowledge some faults and mis-steps, NOT that they ever did during the policy debate, esp. in the pages of the Miami Herald, which censored any and all anti-amnesty points-of-view!

Something that regular readers of this blog have known from the very start as I've endeavored to point out one instance after another of the Florida press corps going out of their way to NOT see things that were contrary to their Editorial Board's pro-amnesty positions, or reporting on honest fact-based disagreements with Rubio.

By contrast to their soft, gentle and sycophantic touch, almost acting as a Rubio protective cordon, Michelle Malkin just walks up and pulls the Band-aid off without any warning!

It's almost like she's reading my mind -and has been reading my blog posts- and is applying just the right amount of honesty, anger and sarcasm to really make the point crystal clear. :)

TwitchyTeam  @TwitchyTeam, https://twitter.com/TwitchyTeam
http://twitchy.com/

-----
Mickey Kaus continues connecting-the-dots on Marco Rubio and the realities of Schumer-Rubio that the Mainstream Media and Beltway Dems like our own DWS are trying very hard not to reveal. 
Mickey wants everyone properly informed, MSM and Dems want everyone sleeping, sleeping, sleeping... like babies 



I sent that odd Thomas B. Edsall piece in the NY Times from a month ago on Rubio and his latest K Street contributions to Mickey in LA on Tuesday and was pleased to see that he ran a few tweets on both of them. 
I'll have more original thoughts on Rubio's fall-from-grace soon on the blog.

http://dailycaller.com/author/mickeykaus/

Rubio Doubles Down into Disaster 
6:26 PM 06/17/2013  
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/17/rubio-doubles-down-into-disaster/#

Mickey Kaus @kausmickey https://twitter.com/kausmickey www.kausfiles.com

Michelle Malkin  @michellemalkin https://twitter.com/michellemalkin
www.michellemalkin.com

See also:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/schumer-rubio-gives-pandering-a-bad-name.php
SCHUMER-RUBIO TAKES PANDERING TO A NEW LEVEL
PAUL MIRENGOFF
JULY 9, 2013 

Monday, July 15, 2013

More bad MSM analysis of Marco Rubio 2016 and immigration reform that includes the usual convenient forgetting of facts/polls that disagree with the central thesis of both La Raza and the GOP Consulting Class. Wow, this is getting tiresome! Jill Lawrence in National Journal: The Myth of Marco Rubio’s Immigration Problem; what's NOT a myth is Miami Herald's recent censorship of criticism of Rubio over immigration reform, esp. Ryan Lizza essay






My comments are after the frustrating column in Beltway Conventional Wisdom at bottom.

I know I can't be the only former Democrat who voted for Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate
in the 2010 Florida primary and general election who will publicly admit that he's unqualified
to be President or Veep in 2016, and who also think he's wrong on immigration.
The one thing I know that GOP pollster Whit Ayres can't seem to accept is that Marco Rubio can't possibly do anything in the future politically without votes from voters like me.
If voters like me ever turn on him for good...

-----
The National Journal
The Myth of Marco Rubio’s Immigration Problem
He’s taking heat for supporting a path to citizenship. 
But almost every other GOP 2016 prospect does too.
By Jill Lawrence
July 15, 2013 | 6:00 a.m.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is losing altitude with some conservatives because he’s the Republican face of immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Yet he’ll have a lot of company in the 2016 field if he runs for the GOP presidential nomination.
In fact almost every Republican weighing a 2016 race – from Jeb Bush and Chris Christie to Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal – favors some path to citizenship like the one in the comprehensive reform bill passed by the Senate, or is open to a variation of it.
Read the rest of the column at:

This is unintentionally funny, that is, if you think biased or uneven reporting is funny, given  that like a 1,001 of these media pieces on Marco Rubio the last few weeks,  The  National Journal's Jill Lawrence never actually talks to a serious and articulate person who is actually against Schumer-Rubio and who can make the case that there is a lot everyone can agree on and it's precisely THOSE policies of agreement that should be done FIRST on immigration 
reform, and the Gang of Eight prescription of a path to citizenship is NOT one of things that a majority of Americans agree.

But when confronted with that fact and numerous polls in all parts of the country showing this,
Rubio and the rest of the Gang, along with their various sycophants and proxies in the news media, Think Tanks and the Beltway GOP Consulting Establishment, esp. those with a tie to big-time corporate Agribusiness, want to grab their football and run home -and sulk.

And send email to supposedly-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks about how unfair it all is that some voters in the country, especially the active GOP grassroots, are openly resistant to the demands of the GOP Beltway Crowd that this should be rammed thru or swallowed whole, despite the fact that its own supporters clearly haven't read it all and even now still can't explain all its ramifications to well-prepped reporters with a straight face.
Which, last time I checked, is what one of the public's principal criticisms of Obamacare were.
Correctly as we all know now.

Of course, like all those other pieces on Marco Rubio that have run the past few weeks that are almost always largely pro-Rubio -even if they do feel the occasional need for PR purposes to rap his knuckles or take him to task for some element of his amnesty position that doesn't please La Raza, Univision or the Democratic left- Jill Lawrence's 
conscious choice to NOT speak to someone smart and knowledgeable about what's going-on like Mickey Kaus, who can make that logical and persuasive counter-argument that includes Border protection, and do it in an interesting and informative way, Lawrence makes it much-easier for her to write her column.
And in the end, isn't that what's really most important to her?!











The one person she does quote a lot, GOP consultant Whit Ayres, seems to me to be laboring under one very large false illusion, and it's a sign of how disconnected so much of the GOP Consulting Class is that this can happen without someone who knows him grabbing him by the lapels and snapping him out of zombie-like trance chanting counter-intuitive nostrums about why it's correct for this bad piece of legislation to get passed the way he and the GOP Establishment want -expecting any new-ish group of voters in the future to be "thankful" to the GOP for passing it is preposterous and shows no understanding of either human or voting behavior in this country.

But then what are we to make of this?
It’s not a given that Republicans will lose if they stay the course. Those who are well funded, strong in their convictions, and persuasive on the stump might just prevail. Defiance might be worth a try, since the stakes are kind of big: constructive governance and the future of the Republican Party.
Funny, Jill Lawrence herself wrote that.
But she didn't write it within the context of the immigration story, even though it would be true, perhaps more so than any other issue.

Nope, she wrote this back in March, and the title that The National Journal came up for that tells you everything you need to know about the way she views the world, making her piece today seem all the more predictable:

Republicans Need to Think for Themselves, Even in Election Years
The GOP will never get fixed if its candidates keep running scared from primary challenges
By Jill Lawrence
Updated: May 30, 2013 | 12:31 a.m., March 4, 2013 | 11:22 a.m.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/republicans-need-to-think-for-themselves-even-in-election-years-20130304

Call me crazy but my intuition based on actually paying attention to what happens in this country is that those future new permanent residents-turned voters will walk into the voting booth in their town's city hall or rec center or Senior's Center and calmly vote against Ayres' GOP candidates and not think about it twice.

Meanwhile, Ayres will still be trying to talk his failed candidates off a ledge by rationalizing the bad decision he made, as if that will do any good to his defeated candidates, after-the-fact, like they were sacrifices to appease the PC media gods.
And the candidates will remind him that he never said anything BEFORE th election about them being sacrifices, since they were paying him full-price.

It's all so very predictable, even without benefit of my handy Time Machine, but as usual, instead of someone with moxie like Kaus, who isn't afraid to fire back, it's pro-amnesty Establishment GOP Ayres whom Lawrence decides to make the conscience of her piece, which is why he'll still keep getting quoted in the future, no matter how wrong he is and illogical his analysis proves to be for years in retrospect.

This situation with Ayres is the precisely the sort of thing that, whatever else is wrong with American sports and the sports media punditocracy these days, and there's a lot, it shows that it is much more self-correcting than the world of political consulting and broadcast/print punditry.

Sometime, like a MLB pitcher with an un-hittable fastball who never learned to adapt and develop any other consistent pitches in crucial situations that could get strikes and not be hit in the air, a pundit just loses their honed intuition.
That's it -the end. 

An Ayres could not last for very long on Fox Sports game day coverage of the NFL or even ESPN/ABC's stranglehold of college football game day coverage, by consistently being wrong about what happened and what will happen next.
But because Ayres has been inoculated by a member in good standing of the MSM, he'll continue to be able to sound-off on politics with reporters from outlets all over the country with no idea of his poor judgment and analysis.
It's our New Normal.

And if you still haven't read the great Ryan Lizza essay on Rubio and the Gang of Eight's bill that the Miami Herald consciously prevented from ever being publicly mentioned in print by their reporters or in their blogs, as I wrote about last month a few times, see:

The New Yorker
GETTING TO MAYBE
Inside the Gang of Eight’s immigration deal.
BY RYAN LIZZA
JUNE 24, 2013