Tag Archives: Marco Rubio

Which candidate is best at working with Democrats to get things done?

The Jesus Seminar and their pre-suppositions
Republican voters need to go beyond the surface level in assessing candidates

I have a few friends who I know are supporting either Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in the election. I have asked them specifically what policies, accomplishments and past battles they like best about their candidate.

Donald Trump supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Republicans)
  • he tells it like it is
  • he’s going to build a fence  and make Mexico pay for it
  • he’s a businessman

Marco Rubio supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Democrats)
  • he’s handsome
  • I like the way he talks
  • his wife was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, so she is prettier and funner than nerdy workaholic Harvard MBA Heidi Cruz

My candidate is Ted Cruz, and the Trump supporters tend to have no problem with him. But the Rubio supporters don’t like Cruz. So I made a list of their objections to Cruz.

The Rubio supporters say this:

  • (quoting Donald Trump) not one of his colleagues in the Senate has endorsed him
  • he won’t be able to convince other people to get things done
  • I don’t like the way he talks
  • he has a pickle nose
  • he said he wanted to make Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill “better” but  his amendment actually killed the amnesty bill – that means he’s a liar because his amendment didn’t make the bill better

Regarding the point about Ted Cruz not being able to get along with his colleagues in the Senate, that’s actually false. First, Cruz and Rubio came into the Senate at the same time, and Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio. That might be because Rubio has the worst attendance record in the Senate.

When Rubio works together with people, he authors an amnesty bill, he supports the failed Libya invasion, he gives in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, he weakens border security, he authors a bill to remove the due process rights of men falsely accused of rape on campus, he skips votes to defund Planned Parenthood, he is liberal on the issue of gay marriage, his deputy campaign manager is a gay activist, and so on. In short, he works with liberals on liberal priorities – that’s why he is likable to them.

Ted Cruz gets into trouble with his colleagues, because he tries to stop the spending, stop amnesty, stop the military interventions in Syria, Libya and Egypt, etc. That’s why he is not likable to them.

What about the point that Cruz would not be persuasive to Democrats, and so would not be able to get anything done? Well, we already saw that Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio, despite having a pickle nose. But he’s also shown the ability to pull Democrats towards his point of view.

Here’s an article from PJ Media to explain:

Now that Cruz regularly polls toward the top of an ever-shrinking field, his early tenure bears closer scrutiny. Cruz has gained fame as a social conservative and an unwavering opponent of Obamacare. In his first major leadership role, however, he developed economic policy as the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning.

At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman.

Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.”

Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats.

Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.

[…]Beyond the e-commerce initiative, Cruz also reoriented the FTC’s use of antitrust laws.

[…]Cruz also sent dozens of letters to states to fight new efforts to enshrine crony capitalism.

[…]Perhaps surprisingly, Cruz secured a high degree of consensus in pursuing his agenda.

As an independent agency, the FTC has five commissioners, and during Cruz’s tenure, two of them had served in President Clinton’s administration. All five commissioners voted to support almost all of Cruz’s proposals.

Cruz achieved this consensus by listening to policy experts and political opponents. He listened to the FTC’s economic experts and marshaled empirical economic analysis to support his policy objectives. He solicited input from prominent Democrats, including the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who spoke at the e-commerce conference. In addition, Cruz worked to develop personal relationships across the aisle. He regularly met with Democratic commissioners and incorporated their ideas into his policy proposals.

The article explains Cruz’s conservative agenda in detail; increasing competition, protecting consumers, and so on. But he wasn’t likable in the way that Marco Rubio was likable – by pushing a Democrat agenda. He was likable by convincing Democrats to push a conservative agenda. He did it by gathering evidence and making his case. And that’s what you expect from a lawyer who wins cases for conservatives at the Supreme  Court.

Marco Rubio: skipped NDAA votes, supported Libya intervention, weak on border security

Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Chuck Schumer and RINO John McCain
Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Chuck Schumer and RINO John McCain

Former Georgia Congressman has seen something in Marco Rubio’s record that causes him concern, and he’s written about it over at the grassroots conservative web site Red State.

There are three problems:

  • Rubio has been absent for National Defense Authorization Act votes
  • Rubio was supportive of Hillary Clinton’s failed intervention in Libya
  • Rubio is not serious about border security and other immigration-related risks

He says:

On the campaign trail, Senator Marco Rubio has been pushing a media narrative that he is the most “serious” foreign policy candidate. It’s an odd position since he missed all but one of the 19 votes connected to the National Defense Authorization Act last year! But far more damaging than his missed votes is his inability to learn from our past national security mistakes. Whether it’s Libya, border security, or major security gaps in our visa and refugee programs, when he has voted, it’s often on the side of misplaced liberal ideals and illegal immigrants instead of America’s safety.

One disturbing example is Rubio’s support for the Obama-Clinton intervention in Libya in 2011. As a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I traveled to Sigonella Navy base to meet with our military commanders who were conducting our military intervention. Our briefings were shocking. It was clear we had no end game or definition of success. That is to say the decisions and confused strategy was the product of Obama’s misunderstanding of the middle east. Yet in a speech at the Brookings Institution in 2012, after complaining that Republicans were so bad on foreign policy that he was forced to work on his policies with Democrats, Senator Rubio said the Libya regime change “turned out fine.”  Senator Rubio had been in the Senate for two years at the time, and should have had some understanding of the conditions on the ground. In fact, our people were already being attacked in the region. In a month, Ambassador Chris Stevens would be pleading with Secretary Clinton for more security.  And in less than five months, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans would stop complaining – because they were killed in the utter disaster that was the radical Islamic terrorist attack on Benghazi.

I blogged before about how the failed Libya intervention has resulted in an Islamic State caliphate starting up in Libya, not to mention much violence and atrocities. New Clinton e-mails confirm that this was Hillary Clinton’s war, and Marco Rubio sided with Hillary.

More:

Even today, Senator Rubio refuses to learn the lesson of Libya.  For most Americans, the situation in Iraq and Syria—as Benghazi tragically showed us—is proof that the enemies of our enemies are not necessarily our friends. The result of not properly scrutinizing such movements is often more chaos, and the death toll, like our enemies, often multiplies. Just ask the ISIS brigades rolling around in our tanks and Humvees—and read about their victims.

That Marco Rubio still thinks we should fight both Bashir al Assad and ISIS, while supporting some nebulous factions that he’s confident will never turn on us but will turn Syria into a democratic utopia, demonstrates the depth of his naiveté when it comes to military adventurism.

And while fighting both sides of a civil war is bad enough, these mistakes are doubly harmful when we don’t carefully watch who is coming into our own country.

Too often, immigration is considered a solely domestic issue. But border security is the first and necessary step to securing our nation against the jihadists who are not content to kill each other abroad—they want to kill Americans here at home. And when politicians insist on intervening around the world while voting to grant amnesty, expand refugee admittance – all the while not securing the border — we get the worst of both worlds: thousands of people coming to America from war-torn countries, and no system to tell the innocent from the terrorists. This why a major campaign issue has become the Rubio-Schumer Gang of 8 amnesty bill which prioritizes illegals over the safety of Americans.  This isn’t a new problem – we need look no further than the evil perpetrators of 9/11. The lesson should have been learned more than a decade ago.

Even as Europe reaped the bloody consequences of a borderless welcome-mat policy that led to the Paris atrocity, Sen. Rubio refused to stop the flood of un-vetted Syrian refugees. When Senators like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul called to stop waving in thousands from Syria and other countries with murderous jihadist movements, Rubio did not join them.

There’s an astonishing article up at Breitbart News which talks about how Rubio misled the law enforcement leaders from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding his amnesty bill.

Excerpt:

BNN: What happened in the meeting? Did Sen. Rubio make any promises to you? Did he keep them?

CRANE: To start, even though I had requested to bring someone with me, Sen. Rubio denied the request and demanded that I come alone, which I still believe was highly peculiar and inappropriate.

He, of course, had what appeared to be his entire staff in his office with me. Most of his staff stood behind me as there was no place for them to sit. I raised a series of strong concerns with the bill, and as I raised each issue, Sen. Rubio would look to his staff and ask if that was what the bill said. Each time his staff agreed with my interpretation, and Sen. Rubio would shake his head in disbelief and indicate the bill had to be changed.

Sen. Rubio talked very specifically and very directly to me and his staff saying that the changes I suggested had to be made and specifically said that other Gang of Eight members wouldn’t be happy, but “Oh well.” Obviously the changes I suggested were all serious enforcement related issues, such as establishing a biometric entry-exit system, and cracking down on sex offenders, gang members, violent criminals and other criminal aliens.

When I walked out of his office that night I definitely thought the bill would undergo significant changes, but of course absolutely no changes were made.

BNN: Almost immediately after you met with Sen. Rubio, he introduced bill. Did it include any of the changes you asked for?

CRANE: Not one of the changes we suggested was made to the bill before Sen. Rubio introduced it.

All of his strong statements during our meeting about making the changes we suggested were apparently all just a dodge to get rid of me. It quickly became obvious why he didn’t permit me to take anyone with me to the meeting— he didn’t want any witnesses.

So, there are two problems with Marco Rubio that surface here. First, he is young, and he has romantic notions about the use of force. He supported Libya and it failed. He thinks it succeeded, but actually it failed. Second, he is easily influenced by peer approval to get caught up in liberal priorities. We’ve seen that with his support for amnesty, his support for Libya, his support for removing due process rights for students accused with little or no evidence on campus (think University of Virginia hoax), and so on. He is just not mature enough to be President, and his lack of maturity could really hurt us.

Here’s the full list of Rubio errors:

Ted Cruz explains his position on the issues of abortion and right to life

Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event
Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event

A new 6-minute video was released earlier this week, and I heard about it from my friend Chad.

Videos are nice, but we probably shouldn’t believe anything that Cruz says in campaign speeches and campaign ads. Politicians say anything in election years in order to get elected. What would really be interesting would be to see what the pro-life organizations rate this guy, and whether he has any kind of record fighting for the lives of the unborn.

Fortunately, I have one article that answers both questions… from Charisma News.

Excerpt:

On Saturday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz received a ringing endorsement from Georgia’s largest pro-life organization. “Senator Cruz has an unblemished record of standing up for innocent life,” said Ricardo Davis, the director of Georgia Right to Life’s Political Action Committee (GRTL PAC).

And here are the pro-life achievements:

Senator Cruz’s pro-life record includes the following:

  • Leading the charge on behalf of 13 states in successfully defending the federal Partial Birth Abortion Act before the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • Joining 18 states in successfully defending New Hampshire’s Parental Notification Act before the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • Successfully defending a Texas law that prevents state funds from being sent to organizations that perform abortions; and
  • Calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood amid charges that the abortion giant sells aborted body parts.

The Washington Times reports that Cruz has also been endorsed by the pro-life leaders I most respect, Tony Perkins and James Dobson.

Excerpt:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for president, calling Mr. Cruz “a constitutional conservative who will fight for faith, family and freedom.”

“I trust Ted to fight to pull America out of the political and cultural tailspin that President Obama’s policies have put us in,” Mr. Perkins said. “This is no normal election; this election is about the very survival of our Constitution and our republic.”

Mr. Cruz said he was “honored” to have Mr. Perkins’ endorsement, calling him “a man of incredible principle and faith.”

Mr. Perkins is currently president of the FRC, which promotes socially conservative values and is one of the most influential conservative advocacy groups in the country. Mr. Perkins said on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” it was a personal endorsement and not from any of the nonprofits he leads.

Mr. Cruz has been jockeying with 2016 GOP rival Donald Trump for support from social conservatives ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

The Texas senator has also been endorsed by Dr. James Dobson, another social conservative leader, and past FRC President Gary Bauer.

I think anyone whose main issue is protecting the unborn from the use of force for selfish adults should give Cruz a look. I personally don’t trust any other candidate running on the pro-life issue. Trump is pro-abortion, and there’s no evidence he’s changed his mind except his words form like 5 minutes ago. Rubio can’t be trusted on anything he says – he lied to Florida voters about his intention to oppose amnesty, and when he got to Washington, he sponsored a bill to give 20 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. We can’t trust anything that Trump or Rubio say on any issue, in my opinion. In any case, we don’t have to settle for “maybe pro-life, if it’s popular”. We can pick Ted Cruz and get “pro-life regardless of whether it’s popular or not”.

Ted Cruz has a record of defending unpopular positions, and trying to explain conservative values to others. In Iowa, he was the only candidate to stand up to the power ethanol lobbies and their crony capitalism. Marco Rubio and Donald Trump sided with the ethanol crony capitalists, because they were afraid to lose votes. And Cruz won Iowa.

He is not afraid to defend conservative values. When it comes to the life issue, we should look for the candidate with the proven record of fighting for conservative values: Ted Cruz.

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