In the summer of 2012, it was conventional wisdom inside the Beltway that Mitt Romney would not select Marco Rubio as his running mate for the simple reason that Marco Rubio is a crook. To be less concise:
Rubio charged more than $100,000 to state GOP credit cards, had racked up nearly $1 million in personal debt, and nearly had his home foreclosed on. No doubt that Rubio has plenty of assets (young, Latino, from Florida). But he also carries a lot of risk for the usually risk-averse Romney.
Less than a year later, is that all forgotten? Josh Marshall seems to have let it slip his mind. While I see Mr. Marshall’s point about Rubio fulfilling a party deficit in much the same way as Wesley Clark did for the Democrats in 2003-4, the real limitation on Rubio is still that he is a crook. It isn’t necessarily an insurmountable problem, but over time character will out. If you are the kind of person who will steal from your own political party, you’re probably not going to survive scrutiny. This is a man who was fined by the Federal Election Commission last year because he collected over $200,000 in illegal political contributions during his campaign for Senate. That isn’t ancient history, is it?