That’s right, a Senatorial candidate with a funny sounding foreign name is just fine with the audience at the CPAC convention. Indeed, he’s more than fine, he’s Tea Party approved:

Marco Rubio wowed a crowd of influential conservative activists here Thursday with a call for smaller government and a stinging critique of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. His appearance sparked several standing ovations — and entreaties that he consider a presidential bid.

It was quite the national debut for a U.S. Senate candidate from Florida who a year ago trailed a popular governor in the polls and fundraising. But the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Committee embraced Rubio as a rock star, at one point threatening to interrupt his speech by chanting his name. […]

Outside the hall, he was hailed as a savior of the party — an alternative to national party-endorsed Gov. Charlie Crist, whose embrace of Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package enraged conservatives and has him sputtering in the polls.

Rubio delivered a speech rich with conservative hot buttons — endorsing tax cuts, vowing to try terrorists in military tribunals in Guantanamo and not a “courtroom in Manhattan,” and accusing the administration of using the economic downturn not to “fix America, but to try to change America.

He tweaked the Republican Party as he saluted the Tea Party movement that has embraced his campaign, crediting Tea Party activists with leading opposition to Washington.

“From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history,” he said.

It just goes to show, in an economic downturn where too little has been done for ordinary Americans, demagogues will thrive. It doesn’t matter that the policies they offer have been tried before — tried and failed. Crist is no moderate, and he’d likely vote in accord with his GOP Senate colleagues if he is elected, but he’s not a rabid, foaming at the mouth loon either.

Thanks in large part to the Democrat’s failure to pass health care reform, to regulate and reel in the abuses practiced by Wall Street’s “bad boys,” to forcefully promote a progressive agenda to create jobs, or even to publicize the fact that they gave 95% of Americans a tax cut, a lot of disenchanted people out there are willing to believe that these tea bagging candidates from the fringes of the far right (Scott Brown, anyone?) are truly going to work for them and protect us from Obama’s Marxist/Socialist takeover of our government.

We know they won’t work for anyone but big business and the richest 1% of Americans. We know their policies of privatization and tax cuts and deregulation created the mess we now find ourselves wallowing in. However, try convincing anyone who doesn’t follow politics closely that these nuts are a disaster in the making for our country. They don’t have to capture a lot of new votes from independents, because in an election year where the Democratic base is not as passionate about electing Democrats (for the many reasons I’ve already stated), all these jokers need is a fired up base and a few misinformed independents to get themselves elected.

When times are bad people look for someone to blame and those who hold the reins of power are usually considered the people who deserve to be targeted with the public’s wrath, especially when they can’t get their act together to pass the policies and programs they promised America two years ago. If Democrats keep running the same tone deaf Establishment candidates like Martha Coakley and continue shunning their own base, Scott Brown will be just the first in a long line of even crazier Republican politicians who pull off “upsets” the year. Expect a lot more Rubios (or those who adopt his rhetoric) from Republicans this Fall.