Marco Rubio is going to need to world’s biggest Etch-A-Sketch to erase the digital record of him saying that he’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who will promise to overturn marriage equality.
I don’t know what else he can really say if he expects to have any chance of winning the Republican nomination, but that’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
Bonus points: before Rubio trained his powerful legal mind on the question of Supreme Court nominations, he unburdened himself of this monumental piece of stupidity:
I think it’s [the Obergefell decision] bad law. And for the following reason. If you want to change the definition of marriage, then you need to go to state legislatures and get them to change it. Because states have always defined marriage. And that’s why some people get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. And in Florida, you have to wait a couple days when you get your permit. Every state has different marriage laws.
Can’t wait until he finds out about Loving v. Virginia.
And to think that unlike Rubio, I didn’t go to law school to learn about “Loving.”
Perhaps but hes already beating HRC.
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/nbc-poll-clinton-would-trounce-trump-lose-rubio-carson-n478676
Polls like that don’t really matter at this point. Ever since 2000 Presidential elections have always regressed to brute demographics, with the predictable wrinkle of the 2007 financial crisis, George W. Bush opening up an age gap (though given youth policy preferences, it’s more passive than anything he did that a generic Republican wouldn’t), and the GOP squandering its one-time relative advantage with Latinos.
If its HRC vs. Rubio, things will regress back to demographics once again. Meaning that HRC can look forward to a 6% Presidential election victory with no House.
Then again, despite Rubio being the establishment pick he is genuinely a wingnut to the right of Walker. His positions on abortions and gay marriage no doubt put him at a relative disadvantage compared to Romney and McCain. On the other hand, the worthless corporate quisling media has every incentive to elide just how wingnutty his positions are and there’s no reason to believe that won’t continue indefinitely.
Mojo for “worthless corporate quisling media”. You said it.
As I mentioned upthread, the GOP elders will be getting more than they bargained for with Rubio were he to win. While Rubio isn’t a fascist blowhard like Trump nor does he just calmly spew out crazy-ass things like Carson, Rubio is about where Mike Huckabee is on policy positions. This includes their disdain for church-state separation. No fooling. Despite being fluffed up as a reasonable fresh-faced establishment warrior, he’s a theocrat through and through.
I’m sure that the corporate media’s paymasters will downplay Rubio’s positions as much as possible. But it’s an open question of whether they can fully hoodwink the entire public. I’m almost certain that neither the opposition media nor the Democratic Party is in a position to take advantage of it. We’ll be relying on more David Corns (guy who gave us the 47% video) assuming that such a black swan will show up again.
And on a bad day he is more Dan Quayle than JFK. I have come to believe he is a vain and vacant ninny in awe of his own celebrity.
G.W. II !
But without the mafia style political connections.
For the most part, I don’t think they’ll give a shit if he’s a hardcore theocrat, as long as he doesn’t spend enough time talking like one to freak out the squares.
How can he maintain the support of Paul Singer with comments like this?
Like all wealthy conservatives, Singer is a rich asshole first and a warrior for gender/sexual/racial/religious/etc. minority rights second.
I’m sure Mr. Singer has some blather about healthy hedge funds being of more benefit to mankind than the right not to as a non-straightjacket not get fired nor have your children taken away by hateful bigot judges. After all, Singer’s son has enough resources to thrive through a repeal of Obergefell v. Hodges, so why should he give a fuck?
I think he loves his son and is influenced by him (to some degree). He sure made a difference in NY. So much of his support of Rubio (and Republicans in general) feels so wrong to me. I just don’t get it.
It’s not personal.
It’s the usual “conservative disease”: only MY problems, and the problems of those who I care about, are worthy of consideration.
Not just conservatives.
OT: Latest polling points to new Republican top tier
12/14/15 08:42 AM
By Steve Benen
Ted Cruz has spent the last several months executing a plan that, he and his team believed, would propel him into the top tier of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Right about now, that plan is working out quite nicely.
Over the weekend, a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll was released, and it’s fair to say the Hawkeye State has a new frontrunner.
J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the survey, described the results as a “big shakeup,” adding, “This is a sudden move into a commanding position for Cruz.”
There are some other recent polls that show Trump still ahead in the state, but Selzer’s DMR/Bloomberg poll is generally considered the gold standard in Iowa polling.
The results are largely in line with the results of a Fox News poll in Iowa released yesterday. (This is the first Fox poll of Iowa Republicans, so there is no trend line.)
Note, that this is the third consecutive poll out of Iowa that shows the Texas senator leading in the state, suggesting he’s now the favorite to win the first caucuses on Feb. 1, now just 48 days away.
At the national level, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was released yesterday, and it found the Republican race shaping up this way:
At this point, Carson’s support is collapsing just about everywhere, and the bulk of his supporters are, as expected, gravitating to Cruz.
As for the overall frontrunner, while Trump appears to have lost his advantage in Iowa, let’s not mistake this for some kind of backlash against his recent extremism. Each of the polls noted above have something important in common: they show Trump gaining, not losing, support.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/latest-polling-points-new-republican-top-tier
Kind of interesting to compare Cruz to Huckabee.
The DMR Poll of Iowa 11/25 – 11/28 was
Huckabee 29, McCain 24, Romney 7, Thompson 9, Giuliani 13.
Cruz and Huckabee are similar candidates in some ways, and Cruz’s 31 is almost identical to Huckabee’s 29.
Nationally:
LA Times/Bloomberg 11/30 – 12/3 428 LV
Huckabee 17 McCain 11 Paul 5 Romney 9 Guiliani 23 Thomspon 14
Cruz is at 22 in the last poll, again very similar to where Huckabee was.
Have to think that Carson’s drop came largely from his ‘can’t we all get along’ meme after the SB & Paris attacks. He didn’t throw out red meat and was immediately set aside.
When using 2008 poll numbers should adjust for the calendar. Iowa caucus was Jan 3 and NH primary was Jan 8. The 2016 caucus will be on Feb 1 and NH February 9.
As I high percentage of voters make up their minds in the last two to four weeks, at this time in 2007 it was more settled than it probably is right now.
Obamacare Foe Marco Rubio Insured Under Affordable Care Act
Updated: DEC 12 2015
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio boasts of being the only Republican presidential candidate to have dealt a blow to Obamacare — but he’s also insured under the law.
Rubio’s campaign confirmed to NBC News that the GOP presidential candidate and his family remain insured under the law, through the D.C. exchange. He first signed up in 2013, at which point spokeswoman Brooke Sammon told the Tampa Bay Times that Rubio “spent time looking at all the options and decided to enroll through the D.C. exchange for coverage for him and his family.”
He’s not alone — Sen. Rand Paul signed up for health insurance under the law in 2013, as did all of congressional leadership at the time. Sen. Ted Cruz received insurance at the time from his wife’s employer, Goldman Sachs, and now has private insurance.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/obamacare-foe-marco-rubio-insured-under-affordable-car
e-act-n478156
“Florida Sen. Marco Rubio boasts of being the only Republican presidential candidate to have dealt a blow to Obamacare — but he’s also insured under the law.”
He’s also big on balancing the Fed. budget, but ran up insane charges on a GOP credit card when Speaker of the FL House.
IOW, another big-talking GOP hypocrite.
It is the law!
They pretty much had to if they didn’t have a spouse who could cover or enough money to pay for it privately. Grassley Amendment took their traditional plans away.
Well there you have it! Rubio beats Clinton in new NBC/WSJ poll.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/nbc-news-matchups-december-results
You’re playing with fire nominating Hillary hoping the Democrats don’t go into too much of a deep sleep with almost no debates. The only thing to hope for now is a Trump or Cruz nomination. If all she has is vote for me because I’m not as crazy as the other side, the other side needs to be really crazy.
Bernie kicks all their asses.
Rubio is still not well enough known to take this head to head with Clinton as predictive. Like the other GOP contenders, they’re lead over Clinton in these polls have been dropping over the past few months as the clowns become better known.
OTOH, Clinton does start with a negative fav/unfav and that won’t change much.
Do you remember Clinton in West Virginia and other places late in the 2008 campaign. She had already lost but she was on fire. I’m waiting for that energy level to happen again. It will. But right now it would be a waste of energy and perhaps would be peaking too soon.
Was that before or after she played the race card?
Rubio will collapse in debate against any prepared Democrat, Clinton or Sanders, the way Romney did against Obama, because he’s so sure he’s unarguably right (Trump or Cruz or Fiorina know they’re lying and just bellow on). He’s ripe for a “Please proceed, Senator.”
Sad.
Even more sad is those corporatist at NBC/WSJ didn’t poll Bernie against any Republicans, only Bernie against Hillary. We can’t have it get out there that Bernie is more electable than Hillary.
But he can’t get the nomination. It’s fixed. I say that even though I just sent $25 in response to his latest solicitation.
Jeb(!) thought he had it fixed as well with his bales of money to light with Hillary trying to do the same thing. Bernie says they have the money but we have the people. Bernie is beating Hillary on small contributions to the point of being able to run a viable campaign thanks to people such as you.
The young people who put Obama in office are working for Bernie through the internet in ways that surpass anything Obama was able to do at this point in his campaign. I doubt the people who run these silly corporatist polls are even aware of what is going on. For sure, this revolution will not be televised. Maybe DWS had something when she cynically answered her critics about limiting the debates and putting them on dates and times to ensure the least possible number of viewers by saying, “There are other ways to reach the voters.”
We have a lot of time before the first votes and anything can happen. If Bernie wins Iowa and New Hampshire or comes very close it will be very difficult for the corporate media to continue to freeze Bernie out. The DNC might also get increasingly nervous about alienating a large number of their voters by their antics to tilt the election to Hillary. While the fix may be in, they’ll find it more difficult to pull that off than they ever expected.