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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

On Rubio’s Reply

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Rubio water

While it’s the awkward lunge for the water bottle that everyone will remember from Marco Rubio’s rebuttal of the State of the Union, what the content and tone of the address convey is significant.  Yes, Rubio flubbed the speech, although what impact that has upon his chances for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination remains to be seen.  However, the defensive tone of the speech, combined with the content, indicates a Republican Party on the ropes that is struggling with messaging and ideas.  That was evident from the moment he opened his mouth and began to speak last night.

At the very outset it was clear that Rubio was on the defensive against what Republicans are correctly perceived as wanting to do.  He discussed what Republicans didn’t want to do.  He launched into the same old, and tired, attacks against President Obama.  He effectively called him a communist, socialist, take your pick of various scare tactics used against anyone left of center.  It was straight out of the Republican playbook, but with a tone that made clear the speaker was unsure if those scare tactics would work.  After all, Mitt Romney ran on those exact same scare tactics and he’s still Former Gov. Romney, while President Obama just delivered another State of the Union address.

Most remarkable, though, was a prescient criticism of the Rubio rebuttal that I heard, although I forgot the person who mentioned it.  It basically went along these lines:

Marco Rubio just criticized ‘big’ government by pointing out everything that government has done for him and his family.

The disconnect is amazing.  That same contradiction is also indicative of a larger pattern whenever it comes to proposed government cuts.  When asked, generically, Americans say government is too big.  When asked, generically, Americans support spending cuts.  However, when specific programs are mentioned as potential cuts, it becomes impossible to find programs where a majority of Americans support making cuts.

Republicans love to rail about the deficit and how cuts are necessary to close that deficit.  I think some of them, especially in the leadership, finally understand that a majority of Americans made the connection between their financial gimmickry and the deficits we now have.  More and more Americans understand that the large deficits aren’t primarily a spending problem, but are primarily a revenue problem.  They are beginning to understand that taxes are government revenues and when taxes are cut, but the large and popular programs are not, deficits result.  Americans would rather the wealthy pay their fair share than cut those programs.  That is the death knell of the Republican economic agenda.

Now, enter Marco Rubio.  He brings an impression of diversity to a party growing increasingly white and male in an electorate that is moving more and more away from that.  He is also very conservative in a nation that is moving away from conservatism.  He is seemingly the ideal Republican spokesperson to counter claims of racism and favoritism towards the rich.  Then he begins to speak.

It’s the same Republican agenda, but just repackaged in more flowery language and with a different face on the cover.  He even goes so far as to justify calls for cuts in government by pointing to those very successful government programs that helped him and his family.  He hopes that Americans do not connect the dots and do not care to learn that those very programs were opposed by conservatives and pushed through by liberals.

The current era of conservatism is waning.  A new era of liberalism is beginning to emerge.  This is part of the ebb and flow of our history.  One day in the future this emerging liberal era will wane and a new conservative one will emerge.  There is, however, one other historical lesson to take with that ebb and flow:  the reaction of the conservative eras never manages to completely eradicate the progress made during the liberal ones.  Just keep that little tidbit in mind.


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/ 50 Comments

50 comments

  2. cassandracarolina

    believes that Americans are simply too stupid and inattentive to warrant any real messaging. Just churn out the same old boilerplate material, this time with someone fresh at the podium. Throw in the requisite insults, innuendoes, and tired generalizations. Just phone it in. You’re done. That was easy.

    As Americans – and voters and taxpayers – we didn’t deserve anything better. When people speak to me like that – whether they’re politicians, salespeople, potential business partners, or other people who want something from me – I get the picture. I remember. And I take my business elsewhere.  

  3. princesspat

    Andrew Sullivan’s analysis

    This was an intellectually exhausted speech that represents the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary Republicanism. It was a series of Reaganite truisms that had a role to play in reinvigorating America after liberal over-reach in the 1960s and 1970s. It had precious little new in it. If reciting these platitudes in Spanish is what the GOP thinks will bring it back to anything faintly resembling political or intellectual relevance, they are more deluded than even I imagined.

    The ebb and flow of history is indeed important to remember….I just hope the voting public will be able to see through the lies and propaganda in the next election.

  4. Hedwig

    we wanna still do it so we’ll have this guy spew it and maybe some of you idiots will see it our way!!!

    That was sad…but considering he should have been giving the Tea Party response…did we expect better? Wiser?

  5. JanF

    … large deficits aren’t primarily a spending problem, but are primarily a revenue problem

    Democratic President Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus. Republican President George W. Bush turned right around and gave the PROJECTED budget surpluses for the next 10 years away to the wealthiest Americans. No, let’s not invest any of that in our infrastructure or to help businesses stay competitive in a global economy by funding Green Energy projects or universal health care like Canada has. Shortchange our future by giving it all away to people who don’t need it.

    That is “conservatism”. That is the product that Marco Rubio’s party is trying to sell.

    It is not surprising that he gets all dry-mouthed trying to find words to dress that up.

  6. Hey338Too

    … but it is equally important to see how he said it.

    What I saw was a man whose body language was not supporting the content of the material he was presenting.  He wasn’t just “mailing it in”, he was visibly uncomfortable with what he was saying.  If I were to guess, Rubio would be more in agreement with your observations than any of us would be comfortable with.

    Rubio had to have seen the SOTU speech prior to his “rebuttal”.  Whoever wrote Rubio’s speech had anticipated a blistering, partisan, “my way or the highway” attack on the Republican party.  They thought they were going to get a stump speech, and decided to respond in kind.  Instead the President didn’t go the stump route, he chose the “leader” approach (with a dollop of emotion at the end).  Rubio’s handlers were negligent in not editing out the easily fact checked hypocrisy of the statements he was going to make.  But Rubio knew that he was going to whiff, he was going to whiff in both Spanish and English, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  7. Shaun Appleby

    On the SOTU episode generally:


    John Boehner looked like he needed a drink more than Marco Rubio ever did.

    Charles P. Pierce – The Audacity of Shame Esquire 13 Feb 13

    I’ve been chuckling over that line all morning.

  10. Strummerson

    highlighting a line about false choices.  This can and should be pushed, for false choices are the currency of the contemporary GOP appeal.

    Capitalism or socialism/communism

    Social safety net or individual responsibility

    Strong military or reliance on the good will of others (which is how they understand diplomacy)

    Civil liberties or religious liberty (they position the former as undermining the latter)

    Regulation or prosperity

    Strong families or acceptance of same-sex families

    We could go on and on and on with their misleading manichaeanisms.  It’s all part of the same attempt to portray themselves as wearing the white hats.  Fact is, few progressives want full nationalization of banks and industry.  Few progressives, even while in favor of defense cuts and drone strikes, want a weak military.  Few progressives want religious institutions repressed by the law.  Few progressives want the government to disarm the citizenry.  Yet these are exactly the “false choices” that Rubio decries and attributes to the President.  And in doing so, constructs the same tired false choices about the Presidents agenda.  There’s a word for this: “hypocrisy.”  I hope that Democrats use this clip as an opening to demonstrate that hypocrisy.  Rubio, and his colleagues, seem  pretty exercised about false choices for a political movement that depends upon constructing them.  Maybe they are afraid that Americans will continue to reject these dishonest formulations and recognize the true choice between them and the agenda they are trying to defeat with lies.  

  11. DeniseVelez

    thought. He’s played the exile from communism meme to the max (though Univision busted him for his lies about when his family came here – which was pre Castro)

    The good news is that young Cuban Americans are discarding the politics of their grandparents and becoming Democrats, which is more in line with other Spanish speaking/ancestry groups.

    The R’s are making a big mistake pushing Rubio to the forefront in hopes that he will snag them some latino love.

    It ain’t happening.  But they are pretty clueless about “Latino” other than the fact that they want to get rid of the browns (read “illegals” – their term)  

  12. janicket

    Regarding the Aqualunge:

    Furtive.  That’s the word for it.  Furtive, and awkwardly so.

    Yeh,that’s really going to enhance his presidential prospects, all right.

    Boy done Jindalled himself.

  14. janicket

    Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station perfectly sums up Rubio:


    Supposedly Rubio is a leading candidate for a shot at the Republican nomination in 2016, but last night he looked more like a nervous freshman high schooler trying out for the debate club. On her worst day, dizzy from a concussion and seething at her husband’s ongoing Shenanigans, Hillary Clinton would eat this kid alive and screaming and then use his polished bones for toothpicks.

    From Preemptive Pessimism Isn’t A Plan, his masterful dissection of the GOP response to the SOTU.

    If you have yet to make the acquaintance of Jim Wright, I strongly urge you to hie thee hence.

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