Posted on 03/26/2012 8:23:14 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For a guy who keeps insisting he has no interest in being vice president, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be feverishly positioning himself for the job.
Rubio this month took the unusual step of asking the Florida Ethics Commission to close out a complaint that he misused Republican Party and campaign money "to subsidize his lifestyle" while in the Legislature.
His political committee has spent more than $40,000 for investigators to research for negative attacks that could surface against him.
And last week the Florida senator announced he is rushing publication of his memoir to June from February. That will help him frame his story before a presumably less-flattering unauthorized biography is released in July and will ensure him waves of publicity before the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August.
"Marco's saying all the right things, because nobody who wants to be vice president should admit it. But he's bound to be on the nominee's short list and he's smart to prepare for it now,'' said Ana Navarro, a Republican fundraiser and Rubio friend in Miami. "If he does get asked, it will be very hard to say no."
Rubio, 40, repeatedly dismisses the vice presidency chatter and insists he is not quietly angling for the spot or seeking publicity.
"My No. 1 job is not to be some media personality," he said in a recent interview from his office in Washington. "It's to be one of the two senators who represent Florida."
Still, the former state House speaker and his advisers have been nurturing his national image as a principled Republican superstar.
Rubio jumped to the forefront of the debate over White House-mandated rules on birth control, he visited the Mexico border in Texas and called on the GOP to tone down its rhetoric on immigration. After influential antitax activist Grover Norquist criticized the Restore Act dedicating 80 percent of BP oil spill fees to the Gulf Coast, Rubio became the only gulf state senator to vote against the bill. (He said the legislation had changed.)
Following a rousing Rubio speech loaded with anti-President Barack Obama lines at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Rubio adviser Todd Harris escorted a video crew through the crowd to tape activists gushing over Rubio.
"I don't think he's campaigning for vice president, but I think some of his handlers are,'' said Republican fundraiser Ann Herberger of Miami. "His advisers seem to be pushing the VP stuff, but Marco has said time and time again, 'I will not be on the ticket as vice president,' and I believe him."
Just the ticket
No one is mentioned more often as a strong choice for a Republican running mate than Rubio. Young, charismatic and Hispanic, he would add a wow factor to the ticket, but also bring the polish, substance and political savvy that Sarah Palin lacked in 2008.
"He is the best orator of American politics today, a good family man. He is not only a consistent conservative, but he has managed to find a way to communicate a conservative message full of hope and optimism," Jeb Bush told a Pittsburgh reporter last week, calling Rubio the best pick for vice president.
The comments came on the same day Bush said it was time for Republicans to rally around front-runner Mitt Romney. Rubio has not yet endorsed, a reticence that some in Washington view as tied to his political ambitions.
Rubio's moves sometimes seem to be taken, literally, from the influential opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.
Columnist Paul Gigot last month wrote that Rubio would be wise to move up publication of his book to June, which Rubio then did. Gigot wrote that Rubio needed to expose any skeletons lest he become the next Palin or Dan Quayle, vice presidential candidates whose past were a rich well of material for opponents. Three days later, Rubio asked the Florida Ethics Commission to close out a complaint filed during the 2010 Senate race.
"There's no question he's positioning himself. He wants to have this rock out of his knapsack,'' said Tampa attorney and Obama fundraiser Tom Scarritt, a former chairman of the ethics commission who called Rubio's request highly unusual.
Advisers say Rubio has faced intense, sometimes unfair scrutiny, including recent revelations that he was Mormon while his family lived in Las Vegas. Some stories breathlessly speculated whether voters would accept two Mormons on the ticket (Romney is one), ignoring that Rubio was a member of the faith for only a few years as a kid. Given the intense attention on Rubio, advisers say it's only prudent to take such steps as hiring a researcher.
"You make it sound a lot more exciting than it really is," said Rubio. "I think any time you're involved in a political endeavor … it's an ongoing process and you clearly want to be up to date on everything.
"The main thing is you don't ever want to say something that's not true, or be inaccurate, because the way words today are parsed in politics. Everything you say is going to be analyzed very carefully, so you want to make sure everything you say and do is 100 percent accurate."
Rubio says the scrutiny he's enduring is part of the job. But his allies have trumped it up, saying he's being attacked by Democrats out of fear. "Marco makes President Obama and his liberal allies nervous because they know he's different," his political committee says in a fundraising appeal.
Rubio's team zealously guards his image, aggressively pushing back on even mildly negative reports, including the revelation last year that, contrary to his Senate official biography, his parents left Cuba before Fidel Castro took power, not after.
The road ahead
Legislatively, Rubio has little to show after 13 months in office. Asked what he has accomplished, Rubio noted he is in the minority party in the Senate and said he has helped the GOP define its message against Obama's policies.
"I think I've been able to have some influence on it for someone who just got here," he said. "I ran on a very clear platform and that was I believe this president isn't taking us in the right direction."
There's little doubt Rubio would help.
A Fox News poll this month showed almost one-quarter of Latinos say they would be more willing to vote for a Republican if Rubio was on the ticket. His support increased to almost four in 10 in Florida, which is critical to GOP hopes of defeating Obama.
Navarro said Democrats constantly ask her whether she thinks Bush or Rubio would accept a vice presidential nod. For Bush, she gives an emphatic no. Rubio is less clear.
"It's hard enough to say no to a presidential nominee. In this case, Marco would also be saying no to the chance of going down in U.S. history as the first Hispanic on a presidential ticket. I can't imagine him passing that up. Also, Marco is a risk-taker. If he wasn't, he would not have waged a challenge to the heavily favored sitting governor of Florida,'' she said.
"You get the feeling with Marco, he's not planning on growing old in the U.S. Senate."
I’ll say by post #4 they’ll arrive
Lord, I hope so!
Ok, it’s up to me then. Eligible?
Not a Natural Born Citizen!
He is as eligible as anyone whose parents are from another country.
No
I fell for it in 08...
I won’t fall for it again.
There are probably a few anchor babies around who are spoiling to get into a position for POTUSA or VP; and there will be some in the future who want to bend the concept of ‘natural born citizen’. When any of these anchor babies come back to the USA from their native countries, no matter where, there will be plenty of support for their intentions.
I thought the nation was unhappy with white HIspanics?
Suggestion: Let’s dump the dweeb and go straight for Rubio. Sure, he is young, but the R man is a loser that nobody really wants as our leader. Draft Marko!
Otherwise, running Rubio would be proof it is time to and provide strong motivation to abandon the Republican party.
His accepting the nomination would be proof to me he isn't what his PR claims he is. He would go from being a conservative godsend in the Senate to just another political sellout.
Where does it say that Rubio would be ineligible in the Constitution?
The birther view is that to be a natural born citizen, both of your parents must be American citizens at the time of your birth. They disqualify Obama based on his father being Kenyan, even though Obama was born in Hawaii.
The birther view is that Marco Rubio is not eligible because his parents became naturalized U.S. citizens after he was born.
The birther view is also that Santorum may not be eligible, because his late father may have been naturalized after Santorum was born. Birthers are asking for Santorum to produce his late father’s records on that.
Ditto. Just thinking the same thing although I respect him. How can he be VP is he’s ineligible to be President? Isn’t the requirement that both parents be born citizens?
You aren't serious? Since there was no smiley face, and there are doubtless many who haven't gone beyond our cornered pundits, lets go straight for the precedent, and ignore the fascinating history and dozens of Supreme Court cases which stated the common-law definition, but didn't require that definition to prove the case. Precedent was established by Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875). Only one case can establish precedent. Here is key statement:
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar,it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Many of us have seen all the attempts at misdirection, such as claiming that the 14th Amendment superseded Minor. If you don't know, please ask. There are answers to every objection or twenty five subsequent Supreme Court cases would not have cited Minor as precedent for the definition of NBC.
The latest indication that Congress always understood that definition may be in Senate Res. 511, Apr 2008, sponsored by Leahy and McCaskill (Obama’s campaign committee chair), in which Senate Judiciary hearings you will find the following statement, accompanied by some weasel words:
“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied. “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.”
A typical Obot comment will be “But SR 511 dealt with McCain's legitimacy.” Would anyone assume that requirements for McCain are any different from those for Obama? In truth, they both have Constitutional eligibility problems, but at least the Democrats conducted hearings to vet McCain, though they never concluded legally that McCain was eligible. McCain was born on technically unincorporated territory. Resolution 511 said, in effect, “we really think John Jay and Marshall and Washington would have wanted McCain, who satisfied jus sanguinis - born to U.S. citizens - even if he wasn't born on sovereign soil, to be deemed eligible. But we have a Constitution that includes an amendment provision. In twenty six attempts at amendment, no amendment ever left Congress for approval by 3/4 of the states. John Conyers appears to have tried twice to make Obama eligible between 2003 and 2007 - unsuccessfully.
The facts are there. Powers that be don't want to talk about it, but we must, or they will continue to ignore any provision they don't like. Article II Section 1 is eminently sensible, reflecting accepted natural law for more than two millennia. Natural-law is the source of vitrually every term used in the Constitution, and the one exception, "treason," is certainly defined by natural law, but our framers clearly felt a need to narrow its scope.
RE: he and they should address the Constitutional issue of his and obama’s ineligibility and amend the Constitution accordingly.
______________
Rubio was born in Florida. His parents were LEGAL residents of America when he was born. They became American citizens later. I don’t believe that he or his parents hold allegiance to any other country. Does not that qualify him to be native born?
Native born is not the same as natural born.
I am native born, but not natural born.
If Rubio’s parents were not naturalized at the time of his birth, they could not have been “legal” citizens. They were legal resident aliens.
They became legal citizens of America when they were naturalized. Until then they were citizens of another nation. Therefore , their allegiance was elsewhere until, by their own actions and the act of law, they willingly became citizens of the United States.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.