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Speaker Ryan dropped a bombshell on every person who has ever voted Republican since 2010 because of the chance to repeal Obamacare: Follow POLITICO ✔ @politico .@SpeakerRyan: “This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare” http://politi.co/2lITgKG 6:40 PM - 9 Mar 2017 32 32 Retweets 35 35 likes Wow. Their steaming pile of crap, Obamacare Lite, (NON-REPEAL), “World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017” — No, I’m not even joking with that moniker — is apparently the best thing Republicans can offer after years of promising to repeal Obamacare. Thank you, Republicans. Thank you for proving...

Republicans in the House of Representatives are inadvertently setting a nasty political and economic trap for Donald Trump. Yes, it’s the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are ready to administer an unnecessary black eye to the new President. That’s not their intention, but it manifestly will be the result. There has been virtually no debate or public discussion about this new, horrible tax. The vehicle for this unwitting GOP punch is a new exaction called the border adjustability tax. This levy will cost American consumers at least a trillion dollars over the next ten years. Knowing how Washington politicians calculate...

For another thing, conservatives will almost surely see this as a betrayal. The administration came up with the idea of sequestration, and it turned out to be only tangible victory Republicans could claim on spending. You might remember the 2010 Pledge to America that promised to roll back government spending to pre-stimulus/bailout levels, cutting at least $100 billion in the first year after taking power. Republicans failed to achieve this improbable goal. And almost every year since, government spending has gone up, though the GOP keeps adding seats by promising to achieve the opposite. So the central question is: how...

People are an asset, not a liability. The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant-friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous, and certainly less American. Today, some 11 million "undocumented workers" live in the shadows in the United States. Sixty percent of them crossed the Mexican border or the Canadian border without government approval and 40% arrived by plane and overstayed their visas. The 844-page immigration reform bill submitted to the Senate by the "Gang of...

. . . . . . “I thought about that issue a lot and [went] back and forth on it before I signed on to my principles and I just concluded that it’s not good for the country in the long term to have millions and millions of people who are forever prohibited from becoming citizens,” Rubio told reporters on his way to a Senate vote. “That hasn’t worked out well for Europe.” Responding to a question from TPM, Rubio said he did not think Bush’s surprise move would make it harder to convince conservatives to accept an eventual path...

NEW YORK — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is moving swiftly behind the scenes to lock down some of Wall Street’s biggest donors ahead of the 2016 presidential race. In recent weeks, the rising GOP star and possible 2016 hopeful has quietly met with some of the most powerful GOP backers in the world of high finance. The roster includes Blackstone Group Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. CEO Henry Kravis and senior executives at Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital among others. Rubio has gotten backing from big Wall Street titans before, notably hedge fund manager and...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Saturday panned a reported immigration reform proposal from President Obama, saying it would be “dead on arrival” in Congress. “If actually proposed, the President’s bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come,” said Rubio in a statement. His response followed a report in USA Today on Saturday which said the Obama administration has prepared a draft plan that includes a provision to allow illegal immigrants to obtain green cards within eight years. The proposal would create a “Lawful Prospective Immigrant”...

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio's pause to take a drink of water during his rebuttal to President Obama's State-of-the-Union speech was declared “a possible career ender” by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. “Voters may tolerate a lot from their prospective leaders,” Blitzer observed. “We've learned that diddling interns is okay. A bogus birth certificate may be worth a few snickers, but does not seem to undermine our confidence in a man's leadership capabilities. However, the jarring interruption of a high-profile speech by a moment of thirst would appear to be the type of thing that raises serious questions about fitness to serve.”...

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams proclaimed that Florida Senator Marco Rubio taking a sip of water during his response to the State of the Union was "the televised moment from last night that just might live on forever." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Williams expounded: "Well, it's one of the cruelest aspects of politics in the television age. No matter how well-crafted the content, no matter how thoughtful a person you are, it's the television moments, the superficial, purely visual moments that are often remembered forever instead. And that will certainly...

Sen. Marco Rubio’s delivery of the GOP response to the State of the Union shows he’s a force the Democrats must reckon with, says former White House advisor Van Jones. The Florida Republican poses a “dangerous” political threat to Democrats because of his keen ability to emotionally connect with voters, Jones said.

The liberal hosts on MSNBC just couldn't get enough of watching U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reach for a glass of water and take a sip during his rebuttal of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, airing the snippet a staggering 155 times during the Wednesday broadcast schedule. Other cable news networks showed the footage far less often. CNN aired it 34 times, and Fox News Channel played it just 12 times -- all of which took place on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” while the hosts discussed the media's obsession with the Florida Republican's “watergate” incident. MSNBC's total...

<p>A parched Marco Rubio's awkward reach for a drink of Poland Spring water during his Republican rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night became an instant online sensation. Predictably, the video clips, jokes and Twitter hashtags that have become so familiar in such situations took the social Internet by storm.</p>

This a darn good idea. I like that Rubio is hitting right back at the media.

Freepers! Marco Rubio is just great and what a sense of humor. This is exactly how to respond to liberal hubris and their synthetic, hibrow, intellect. You need this water bottle if only to get Marco notice from now on. He is going to be Yuge and you need to support him.

Marco Rubio’s softening stance toward immigration reform boils down to his mom, a new profile of the fast-rising Florida senator reveals. “Don’t mess with the immigrants, my son,” Oriales Garcia Rubio told her youngest son during a Dec. 21 phone call, Time magazine reports. Illegal immigrants, she said, are “human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we came. To work. To improve their lives.” Rubio took his mother’s words to heart, and says they are shaping his work on immigration. “I have to balance that humanity with reality,” he said. “We have immigration laws. They...

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) ripped into the new Arizona immigration law today, comparing it to Nazy Germany. "This law of 'frontier justice' – where law enforcement officials are required to stop anyone based on 'reasonable suspicion' that they may be in the country illegally – is reminiscent of a time during World War II when the Gestapo in Germany stopped people on the street and asked for their papers without probable cause," Mack said in a statement. "This is not the America I grew up in and believe in, and it’s not the America I want my children to grow...

Could it be the latest sign that Mitt Romney is preparing to run for president again? Hotline is reporting that Romney is making moves to establish his legal residency in New Hampshire -- site of the first-in-the-nation primary. The former Massachusetts governor is selling homes in Belmont, Mass., and in Utah, and plans to spend time at his summer home on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in the Granite State, notes Hotline, the political blog of the National Journal.

Giuliani Nabs Key Endorsement "Rudy Giuliani, fresh off a weekend visit to California, is set to nab the support of one of the Golden State’s most influential lawmakers as sources confirmed that" Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) "is expected to endorse the former New York mayor’s 2008 GOP presidential bid," according to Roll Call. "Dreier, the ranking member on the Rules Committee, is chairman of the state’s GOP delegation and his extensive ties to California’s lucrative business community make him one of his party’s leading fundraisers. He also is extremely close to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)."

Tomorrow President Bush will meet with Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton to discuss the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. The group's report will be issued next month, but presumably its conclusions have more or less taken shape. Based on the leaking that is currently going on, the news could hardly be worse: A top U.S. intelligence official has been meeting with Middle East counterparts to discuss proposals expected from the Baker commission on Iraq, Middle East sources have told Newsday. How's that for multilateralism? The report's conclusions apparently are being cleared in advance by Middle Eastern intelligence officials. The...

Mexicans cheered the proposal approved yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee to legalize undocumented migrants and provide temporary work visas, and credited huge marches of migrants across the United States as the decisive factor behind the vote. Mexican President Vicente Fox said the vote was the result of five years of work dating to the start of his presidential term in 2000, and puts Mexico one step closer toward the government’s goal of “legalization for everyone” who works in the United States. “My recognition and respect for all the Hispanics and all the Mexicans who have made their voice heard,”...