*Written by Rob Rimes.
1. Introduction:
Nothing in politics as of late has been as disappointing and disheartening as the performance of Senator Marco Rubio. Being a Floridian, I paid close attention to Marco while he was on the campaign trail last year. He made big promises and ran on several issues I truly agreed with. However, as is always the case with Republican candidates, something about him just didn’t sit right with me.
I didn’t vote for Rubio, even though he was seemingly the best of the big three candidates, the other two being Charlie “Carrot Cake” Crist and Kendrick Meek. I voted for the guy under the radar, a representative of my political party, Alexander Snitker of the Libertarian Party. I knew, with Snitker, I was truly going to get a guy who pushed for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, free markets and the FairTax. Too bad he wasn’t invited to the debates. At least then a real pro-liberty candidate could’ve challenged Rubio face-to-face.
Rubio ran on many of the same key issues as Snitker. However, Rubio is a Republican and if history is any indicator, that means he is just saying what he needs to say to get elected. Rubio is an establishment guy, no matter how badly the conservatives and Tea Partiers want to think differently. His actions thus far have been deplorable in my opinion and I cannot wait till the day I can vote against him again.
2. Revisiting the Issue of the FairTax:
Marco Rubio has not lived up to his promises. He has abandoned the FairTax issue, which I talked about in the predecessor to this article: “Tea Flavored Kool-Aid, Part I: The Beginning of the Revolution“. Since writing that, I have learned that due to Marco Rubio’s involvement with the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, ran by Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, he has dropped the idea of the FairTax in favor of the Flat Tax, or so it would seem. Although he hasn’t publicly announced his support to the lesser of the two tax solutions, he is strongly aligned with the Flat Tax pimps.
See, FreedomWorks is a huge Flat Tax supporter and since they have contributed heavily to Rubio’s 2010 senatorial campaign and were instrumental in getting him elected, Mr. Rubio has backtracked on the tax solution he was once incredibly passionate about. You can hear his knowledge on the subject of the FairTax in a video I made. The video has an audio clip from a radio interview from February of 2010 where Rubio states that he supports the FairTax and by his description of it, truly understands it. It’s on YouTube on TheSwashTV channel (or watch it here).
With Rubio’s abandonment of the issue, it clearly shows that he has been bought and paid for by the FreedomWorks group. What else is one supposed to think? I know dozens of people that have contacted his office, myself included – multiple times, and have asked why he has not co-sponsored the bill, as promised. These inquiries have been met with annoying interns trying to skirt around giving a real answer. That alone tells anyone with their wits together, that Rubio is no longer onboard. If he has lied about this, which was a large part of his platform, what else has he or will he lie about or switch on?
3. The Issue of the Libyan War:
Yes, I call it the Libyan War because that is what it is: a fucking war. To kid yourself that it is anything else is ludicrous. The liberal hacks are of course blindly supporting President Obama because that’s what they do. Never mind the fact that they were incredibly outspoken against Bush for years. Hell, the anti-war movement was massive. Then the anti-war POTUS was elected and the anti-war movement died. Even when Obama hypocritically started this Libyan war, the anti-war movement didn’t really resurface. The left supported the war. The right however, at least the media portion, were now suddenly against war. Well, not really since they were still claiming that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are justified. However, in their eyes, this lefty-led war was tyrannical and unconstitutional. Ah, the hypocrisy.
One man on the Republican side did not have a problem with Obama’s war however. That man was Marco Rubio. In fact, Rubio completely supports the war! That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise since the Right loves the military industrial complex, so maybe Rubio is a Republican in the truest sense and the conservative media is just comprised of partisan hacks like the anti-war movement of the Bush era.
I don’t even care what Rubio’s reason is for supporting Obama’s war. The fact that he does support it proves one major thing: that he isn’t truly the constitutional conservative that he has made himself out to be. What do I mean by that? It’s pretty simple; according to the Constitution, it is Congress and Congress alone that has the power to declare war. Congress wasn’t even consulted about the Libyan war. Therefore, if Rubio supports it, he doesn’t support the Constitution.
What else about this makes Rubio not a constitutional conservative? Well, the military’s only purpose is for defense. What exactly are we defending by intervening in Libya? I know there is no real answer for that question. Well, at least not an answer that makes a lick of sense. If the excuse is that we are “defending” the Libyan rebels from a tyrant, I must remind you of the fact the the authors of the Constitution warned against the United States getting wrapped up in foreign entanglements. Through free trade and a non-interventionist foreign policy, we would achieve and maintain peace with all other nations. Through this formula, we would create a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the world. Apparently, Marco Rubio is unable to wrap his little brain around this idea.
Not only does his support of this war call into question his constitutional principles but it also goes against his promise to strive for fiscal responsibility. The Tea Party claims that they are all for cutting spending, limiting taxes and being fiscally efficient. However, war is expensive. I understand the conservatives love of the War on Terror (a battle for another article) but a war that has been created that we should have never been involved in, makes one have to wonder exactly how Marco Rubio is a fiscally responsible politician. Truth is, he’s not. He can’t be when he is supporting this massive waste of funds that have nothing to do with our own defense. Once again, he has proven that Senator Rubio is not candidate Rubio.
4. The Issue of the First Amendment:
Nothing about Marco Rubio is more shocking than his attack on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What? Really? Yes, really. You see, self-proclaimed constitutional conservative Senator Rubio has it out for the First Amendment. For those of you not sure which one that is, it’s the one that gives us freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Marco Rubio, is attacking free speech. That certainly doesn’t sound like a constitutional conservative or a Tea Partier, does it? No, it sounds an awful lot like a fucking liberal or a neocon. Is that what we are dealing with? Is that who we got as a candidate? It would seem so.
The specific example I am talking about here has to do with Rubio’s co-sponsorship of a new “bipartisan” bill, the Serve Act (video here). An act that limits the use of free speech at the funerals of soldiers. The bill specifically attacks the fucksack parasite assholes the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas. Yes, these people are shittier than shit but creating a law that limits their free speech is a horrible attack against freedom and liberty! Remember, laws create force against those who do not abide by them. Apparently Marco Rubio doesn’t see this as an attack against the Constitution. Because of that, many of you may not see a problem with this either, as many of you are drinking the Rubio juice like fiends.
The problem is, if you limit free speech in this case, against these people, what’s to stop you from limiting it against another group, and then another, and then another, etc. etc. et-fucking-cetera? Everyone knows that once you give politicians an inch, they’ll take 5,000 miles. To implement this, will cause the First Amendment to decay and wither away, leaving us with a crooked police state run by hip young bright-eyed fancy-haired tyrants like Senator Rubio. I guess, tyranny is okay when it is your agenda that exercises it.
While Rubio is seemingly painting himself as a savior to the families of deceased soldiers, he should really be their hero and speak out against our new war. Fuck it, he should man up and speak up against all of our goddamned unconstitutional wars. He will never do that though, it’s not the type of man he is.
5. Conclusion:
Maybe I’m being hard on the new guy. Maybe I should give him time? Fuck that, time is of the essence and this country is in a place where the more time we give, the more long-term damage we will have to try and fix. Besides, in his short time, there are already three issues where Rubio has faltered from the image he sold us. Unfortunately, there are way too many people still riding the Rubio train.
There is a big group of Republicans and a slew of Facebook fan pages that are entertaining the idea that Marco Rubio should run for president in 2012. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you people even aware of the political landscape and how things work. You want to back a guy who hasn’t even had time to prove himself yet? And the time he has had, he’s gone against his projected principles. Between the supporters of Rubio and Trump for the highest office in the land, I have to wonder if the Tea Partiers and GOPers themselves are just full of shit and not as principled as they have claimed to be. Shit like this is why I could never be a Republican. Supporting guys like this and being blind to their bullshit is also why I can no longer take Mark Levin serious.
Maybe Marco Rubio can turn this around. I doubt that that will happen though, just as I doubt that the vast majority of these Tea Party candidates aren’t establishment neocons wearing whatever coat best fits at the moment. We’ve got a bunch of McCain and Boehner clones running around out there and apparently, Rubio is leading the pack. Well, I guess he’s got to be good at something. Too bad that something is comprised of complete and utter hypocrisy.
9 Comments
Might have to argue with you a bit on this one – not about Rubio, I could care less about him, he is way too much of a politician for my tastes – more on your libertarian stance. I consider myself a libertarian in every aspect except the military and the defence of our country, which is one reason why I can not vote for Ron Paul. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your statement, “Through free trade and a non-interventionist foreign policy, we would achieve and maintain peace with all other nations. ” is naivete at its best. While I think both of those goals are necessary, especially free-trade, I don’t think they would produce the lofty results you so wish. For example, Islam is totally at war with the West (and has always been) no amount of isolationism would stop them from their Allah appointed mission (see Switzerland). That does not mean we should willy-nilly start wars with Middle Eastern countries like we have over the last decade, but it does mean that isolationism is a very dangerous policy when people don’t respect your wishes to remain “out of the situation”.
As far as Obama’s Libya endeavor being unconstitutional, I will have to respectfully disagree with that. The Constitution definitely grants the Congress the power to declare war, but it puts the President in charge of our military? Why the odd separation? Many would wrongly claim it is just another aspect of the separation of powers, they would most definitely be wrong. The reason the Pres is Commander in Chief, is totally because of Washington’s experience with the various politically motivated state senates during the Revolution. He basically had to beg, barter and steal everything he needed, including pay for his troops, from each state. And the favors he had to do to get support from “The Congress’ was laughable at best, appointing worthless political generals to jobs just to please their benefactors back home. It was a total mess which a lesser man than Washington would have let cause our demise as a country before it even started. Washington knew, if we were going to have a military that was going to be able to effectively defend this country, it needed leadership separate from Congress. Congress controls the purse strings, but it doesn’t control the direction and in some cases, the implementation of said forces. As Commander in Chief, the President has full power to use the military in any way he so chooses, including overseas operations. Congress’ resolve is to cut the funding, that is their one and only “check” to his power to use our military. Our job, as the true holders of power over our government, is to ensure we do not elect a man who would use our military in a fashion with which we would disagree, obviously we have failed in that over the last couple of years. The truth is, the Congress has not declared war in over half a century, relegating any imagined authority they had to the President through implied consent.
Now, all that being said, I don’t agree with the Libya thing, and I stopped agreeing with the Iraq thing sometime in 2003 or 2004, Afghanistan before then. I am most definitely a hawkish person, but I base my hawkishness on strategic protection.
Obviously, we can disagree on each of these points and it doesn’t change the point of your post, Rubio is a douche. Of that we can’t definitely agree.
I feel that a big part of the Middle East’s beef with the rest of the world is due to meddling on our part as well as the UN, NATO, etc. Switzerland being a place where lots of these countries keep there money, makes them a target in my opinion. However, I don’t know enough about the beef between Jihadists and the Swiss.
I feel that the military is for defense only and after 9/11, I supported the War on Terror. However, ten years later, it’s pretty clear that “terror” isn’t why we are there. For that, I don’t support the war. As far as battling muslim extremists, setting up camp in their countries and pushing our weight around is ridiculous and solves nothing. It is obviously a threat but trying to stop it at its source will never work. It hasn’t yet and we haven’t even come close to solving the problem. If anything, our Middle East meddling is only adding more fuel to the fire. So what do we do? Sit around and wait for them to make a move? Or do we go to them and cut the head off of the beast? Personally, I hate waiting but our military seems unable to even touch the beast. There is no right answer but due to the cost of money and lives, I say take the road of less waste.
“The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raisingand regulating of fleets and armies — all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.” – Alexander Hamilton
However things have changed from the days of Hamilton I do not know. Mark Levin and Thomas Woods (of the Mises Institute) debated this pretty intensely about a month ago and I take Woods side, which is also the side of Judge Napolitano, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, John Stossel and pretty much everyone else on the side of the fence I find myself on (minus Kucinich). Woods asked Levin for an official debate after it went back and forth for awhile and Levin has since dropped the subject and ignored the request.
Also, here’s what Obama said about Bush’s wars: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
So from his understanding, it is unconstitutional. Although, he’s not that bright and he lies all the time.
In any event, Congress sucks, simply for the fact that they are doing nothing to stop the war apart from bitching about it.
And yes, Rubio is a douche. When I met him he had wet hands. Was kinda weird. It definitely put up a red flag.
I am a big fan of Hamilton, but I think he has only got it half right. The Congress is supposed to be deliberative, such things as one week to pass TARP are not supposed to happen. But sometimes war, and hell, lets just limit it to the defense of our nation, will not wait for a bunch of deliberative people to make up their minds. In war, if you wait too long, the opportunity for decisive action can pass you by. Not to mention, is it not foreseeable that our congress could actually vote to not defend our country? I mean, no one can explain there refusal to protect our borders, that is a difference of only a few degrees.
Again, this is my opinion, taken from Washington’s experience during the Revolution and his desire for a strong executive branch. I could be wrong.
By the way, clammy hands is pretty gross.
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