Posted on 07/27/2013 7:54:16 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
Since he became the face of the hated S. 744 – the Senate’s Gang of Eight amnesty for illegal immigrants bill – Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Rubio has experienced one of the most precipitous falls from grace we can recall in our over 50-years of involvement in conservative politics at the national level.
A year ago Rubio was at the top, or running second, in pretty much every important measure of Republican preference for the Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
Today, he isn’t even in the top ten in our CHQ straw poll [22] and stands at number five in a recent Iowa poll.
Many conservatives have asked how could Rubio, whose political instincts and conservative positions helped him defeat Florida’s incumbent Republican Governor to claim the GOP Senate nomination and general election victory get sucked-in to being the face of the corrupt, pork-barrel ridden, amnesty for illegal immigrants bill that S. 744 became.
Marco Rubio should have been smart enough to see that any “comprehensive” immigration bill, like S. 744 that gets the enthusiastic support of partisan Democrats, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, New York Senator Charles Schumer, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin and President Barack Obama is almost by definition bad for Republicans and contrary to conservative principles.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be supported by Obama, Reid, Schumer, Durbin and the like – for evidence of the truth of that analysis witness the common sense amendments sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions that were shot down in the Democratic controlled Senate because they took a principled conservative approach to solving our nation’s illegal immigration problem.
Rubio could have and should have broken ranks with the Gang of Eight to support those amendments – but he didn’t.
And there’s a one word answer for the big question why he didn’t.
Staff.
Rubio’s senior staff, particularly in Washington, is a bunch of establishment Republican insiders, with long-established ties to radical Hispanic organizations, not the boat-rocking Tea Partiers that provided the manpower for Rubio’s upstart campaign against Governor Charlie Crist.
Chief of Staff Cesar Conda was a Romney operative and it is worth noting has long-time ties to Congressman Paul Ryan, too. Conda is no movement conservative, having worked for a series of moderate Republicans and cheap-labor-loving lobbies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Conda also has longstanding ties to Hispanic Leadership Fund (HLF) president Mario Lopez, who regularly trashes those who question the Gang of Eight approach as “nativist.”
Lopez, while not on Rubio’s Senate staff, has been regularly brought to meetings by Rubio and his staff to discredit groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Communications Director Alex Burgos, a longtime amnesty proponent, is also particularly influential with his Boss on the issue of illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens.
Burgos is no conservative (he’s a former Romney staffer) and his vitriolic attacks on conservatives are straight out of the Republican establishment’s playbook on how to alienate the GOP base.
Indeed if you sift through Senator’s Rubio’s staff and consultants you’d be hard pressed to find many who have strong roots in the Tea Party or conservative movement – from consultant Todd Harris, formerly of the McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger operations, to a long list of staffers who are George W. Bush alumni, like Brian Walsh and Victor Cervino.
Who you walk with tells me a lot about who you are, and who Marco Rubio walks with every day in his Capitol Hill office explains a lot about who he has become since reaching Washington DC.
Looks like he's not dancing with the ones that brung him.
The Tea Party giveth...the Tea Party taketh away.
Forget Reid and Schumer. How could any sensible conservative be sucked in by Juan McCain and Linseed Graham? When these two approached him, he should have fled as from Satan himself.
The co-option process begins when a newly elected member of Congress arrives in Washington. The party leaders are more than happy to provide her/him with the experienced staff members she/he will need to navigate the legislative process. Those who accept are like flies on flypaper.
And I didn't even have time for a smoke afterwards.
Rubio you have about one more good chance.
Do not blow it.
Walk away from your immigration mess. Quit the “gang of eight’.
I’m series. You have turned on your BASE.
You have about one more good chance left. Your only chance lies, in quitting your establishment coddling of the leftwing which you are currently doing.
Completely.
I do not mean pull back. Walk away from it. Now.
America is under attack, from the right and the left.
The right wants to make stuff overseas - unfortunately that means selling out all America’s business to China, which does not hold anything back.
And has 4 or 5 times our population.
The left meanwhile wants to sell America out to immigrants and the latino culture.
If you want to support that, then do it. But you will not be conservative and will not be supported by conservatives.
America currently has the single most welcoming immigration on Earth.
Quit trying to make our immigration even more welcoming.
Rubio if you want to do what is right, then do this:
PROTECT AND DEFEND AMERICA.
Simple.
In a few more years he won't even be a senator.
Marco quit dancing with the ones who brung him 2 weeks after the election. I remember one of his first interviews where he said he didn’t know if he was really a tea partier. I knew then that he was already distancing himself from conservatives. I hope Fl has the sense not to re-elect him to the Senate.
Good points.
No, he doesn’t deserve one more chance. That was not a mere “mistake” or a minor error. He knew damned well what he was doing, and who he was working with. And he did it. And he lied about it, repeatedly.
He has proven that he CANNOT BE TRUSTED. HE HAS NO PRINCIPLES. He will say one thing in the campaign, and do the opposite once he has been elected. No way that he trusted not to do the same kind of thing again. Maybe next time it will be killing babies, or gay marriage, or who knows what?
Stopped reading as soon as I hit the word "series", as it was obvious the rest would be only more tongue-in-cheek blatherings.
Absolutely agree! Besides that if he’s not smart enough to decide his own positions on issues and instead does what his staff decides then we don’t want him as President anyway!
Actually I was completely series.
That is nothing more than a FReeperism.
Try again.
Rush likes to remind his audience that the media didn't make him, so they can't break him. It's his audience that is responsible for Rush's success.
Rubio, on the other hand, is a creation, in many ways the same as obama is a creation.
With the GOPe's influence paving the way, Marco Rubio was injected into the national dialog with their pre-casting him in the role of young gun "GOP Conservative", including talk radio personalities' cred backing up that manufactured perception from the beginning.
Actions usually determine whether perception is fact or fiction.
Rubio's actions reveal his truth and the GOPe's truth. May his fall from grace continue until his character finally lands on something that can support his weight.
You must genuflect when you mention the greatest FReeper of us all, Hugh Series.
Humbly gestures, touching heart once.
(now, where were we?)
You would think that Ryan and all the other idiots in the house would learn from Rubio’s mistake.
I was supporting a candidate in OR who suddenly had a Hispanic from SEIU on his staff.
We asked him why and never got a believable response.
He cratered during the debates from poor prep.
It made you think afterwards....
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