Posted on 04/01/2016 1:14:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
*This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison.
Many folks thought Marco Rubio was the most talented politician since Ronald Reagan. He shares with the Gipper that sunny outlook that distinguishes Reagan conservatism from the bitter and ugly populism of a Trump.
It should be clear in this dreary season, however, that Marco badly mishandled Trump. When he taunted Trump about the size of his hands, he descended into the sewer. It may have been necessary for Marco to mix it up with the Donald, but you cannot go into the sewer with him. Professional mud slingers always have a home field advantage there.
The origins of this shameful story show what Marco might have done differently. In 1988, liberal journalist Graydon Carter called Trump “a short-fingered vulgarian” in a Spy magazine profile. Nothing too surprising in that. Liberals don’t like billionaires—unless they’re of the George Soros or Bill Gates stripe.
What happened next is where this story should have led.
Graydon Carter reports here that Trump sent him photographs for the next twenty-five years. In his Vanity Fair follow-up article, Carter informs us that Trump would circle his hands with a gold sharpie as he fixated on proving his hands were normal size.
Was he trying out for the role of “Goldfinger” in a James Bond sequel? Who knows? But such conduct is what we should have focused on.
What normal man does such a thing? Twenty-five years of monomaniacal correspondence with a hostile reporter?
Ordinary Americans don’t do things like that. Well, some Americans might do something like that, we must admit. Howard Hughes was surely an American, and an “eccentric” billionaire.
Notice, if you are a billionaire, you get called eccentric. If, you are Howard Hughes, you hold up in a hotel. You might even buy it to avoid being evicted. You could let your hair grow down to your butt, and have your fingernails clipped only twice a year.
In doing this, you are not diagnosed as insane. You’re simply an eccentric. Oh, and don’t forget the hundreds of jars of his own liquid waste that Hughes stored.
Marco should have focused not on body parts but on the readily seen parts of Trump’s bizarre behavior. And he should have asked Americans: Do we want put into Trump’s hands the keys to our U.S. nuclear arsenal?
Mr. Trump has never been a Republican or a conservative. He claims he cares about the plight of the typical straphanger on the New York subway, those working stiffs. If that were true, Trump might have run for Mayor, for Governor, or even for U.S. Senator from his home state.
He could have joined the ranks of other wealthy New Yorkers—like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt—who made the workingman’s cause the foundation of their rise in politics.
Trump has never cared. He views most Americans as “losers” and threatens with lawsuits anyone who gets in his way. He backs eminent domain seizures of their homes if he wants to expand one of his casinos or strip clubs.
Here’s a guy who has never shoveled his own walk or flown in coach. And he tells us he loves those “less educated voters.” Give us a break!
Mitt Romney lost out 81-19 on the pollsters’ question: Does he care about people like me? No one can honestly say Trump cares about people who worry about how to pay the mortgage or put kids through college.
The enlisted men and women in our all-volunteer military are hard pressed these days. If only Marco had gone after Trump’s questionable fitness to command any of these loyal troops.
He is a man who dodged the draft in his youth by claiming he had “heel spurs.” Can Trump make the case he is worthy to order this young Marine into harm’s way.
He has said he would go after family members of ISIS. Trump has threatened recently to order our armed forces to commit war crimes—more My Lai massacres.
Such an order by Trump would violate our Constitution, our laws, our Uniform Code of Military Justice, our treaties, and three hundred years of America’s highest military tradition. No one can obey it. Lt. William Calley went to prison for his crimes at My Lai. He says he regrets every day of his life that he obeyed those orders.
The tragedy of Marco’s failed campaign is that he did not focus on the existential danger of putting nuclear weapons in the hands of a loose cannon like Trump.
President John F. Kennedy gave us this eloquent warning over half a century ago.
Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.
What Kennedy then called the slenderest of threads now is fraying daily. This is because of President Obama’s fatally flawed nuclear deal with Iran. Considering this, we must think hard about letting Mr. Trump run around with a large pair of scissors in his hands.
That nuclear sword of Damocles should have been the focus of our attention all winter. It must be our focus even more urgently now.
Well for one, penis envy wasn’t a good strategy.
All of this was probably done on Romney’s advice and direction. Dealing with Romney is always career ending.
Nonsense, Rubio does not embody sunny optimism, but Trump certainly does, in the same way that Reagan brought a withering light and heat against scumbags and nattering nabobs
No, what drives Trump’s candidacy is what did in Marco. And Jeb.
Borders.
I like Rubio, but he never was able to overcome his “gang of 8” betrayal. I’m not sure what he has to do to get past it, those things are hard to shed because people have long memories.
I notice that Fox likes to quote polls showing that people don’t care about borders, and yet their ace candidates bit the dust and Trump, for all his antics and defects, is forgiven everything because he is perceived as firm like granite on the border.
That is why Cruz is still in the race, he was the original borders guy before Trump ran away with that issue. Cruz has other things going for him as well, which is why I still see him as the better man between the two...
But the electorate cares about borders, and they have no patience for anyone likely to bring in another million jihadis and their families. So its Trump, or Cruz, or nobody.
Sour grapes, Ken Blackwell, on the pretense of mourning and scorning Marco Rubio.
IIRC, Ken Blackwell was also once thought to be a “rising star.”
Wrong Drinking Buddies?
Yes. I agree. He is confident, too, and people pick up on that.
Marco made his mistake when he joined the Gang of Eight Traitors.
He deserves his upcoming political banishment.
How quickly we forget that this incident came out of the disgraceful Cruz/Rubio tag-team against Trump in that debate. Rubio was vilified, and Cruz walked away unscathed. I figure it's because it will be easier to take Cruz down later in the game.
Rubio was doing quite well when he was being respectful of Trump.
“No one can honestly say Trump cares about people who worry about how to pay the mortgage or put kids through college. “
Really?
This is what passes for wisdom among the journalist class?
Terrible.
So terrible.
You’re fired.
Stopped reading right there. Rubio is nothing like Reagan, and never will be.
I recently heard Ken Blackwell on Steve Deace, by accident.
As all segments of the Steve Deace show do, the segment began with Deace asking: “Does Donald Trump have any virtues or redeeming qualities whatsoever, or do you agree with me that he is the most evil, wicked, despicable human being who has ever lived?”
No surprise then, that Ken Blackwell is continuing his campaign to warn us that Trump is a professional mud-slinger who wants to blow up the world!
I want Trump to have his fingers on the nuke buttons because I WANT HIM TO NUKE ISLAMIC STRONGHOLDS. REPEATEDLY AND WITH EXTREME ARDOR
Marco Rubio may go on to much more successful applications of his energy and talent in the future, but this lesson should be hammered home for all time - choose your enemies carefully, and when engaging in sparring, be sure you know the ground rules beforehand. There is no “safety word” in politics, calling a time out just because you are on the very short end of the stick. Just never allow the other person that much leverage in the first place.
The Donald, to his credit, is very good at finding and applying leverage on his opponents, and the degree he brings it to bear is entirely dependent on the rival’s ability to avoid the probability that a fulcrum for that lever may be established in your own words or responses.
Performing on a high wire without a net may be spectacular from the point of view of the audience, since the consequences of even the smallest of errors is greatly magnified. The real thrill is seeing the recovery from those errors before things cascade into a catastrophe.
First off, Marco can’t think for himself.
Secondly, Telling everyone he shouldn’t have gone there tells me he was already there.
Third, I’m glad he showed his true inner soul for the fake TEA Party guy he claimed to be.
Fourth and Final, thankfully he showed us when face to face with a real working man he is still only a child in a man’s body. Marco has no concept of the real world.
Cruz went to the border and handed out teddy bears and soccer balls to the invading swarms
“Marco made his mistake when he joined the Gang of Eight Traitors.
He deserves his upcoming political banishment.”
Ditto for Cruze! Because when you peel the onion, both of them are really La Raza Lite. They put their ethnicity ahead of their country’s best interests. Just look at what Cruze and his wife have been involved with with respect to this BS North American Alliance or whatever they call it at the moment. They both want to sublimate American soverignty for an EU-like Western Hemisphere.
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