Wrapping up the Idiot Brigade this week we have Rubio, Santorum, Trump and Walker.
Marco Rubio: If anything, Marco Rubio is still too “wet behind the ears” to run for President. I don’t think he knows what he stands for, so how could voters? For example, Rubio’s campaign website claims:
Marco Will Stand Up For America’s Veterans
This is a guy who voted against the 2014 bill to improve veterans’ benefits, a result of which was a MoveOn petition begun by Monica Bradlee, who wrote:
I demand Senator Marco Rubio explain to Florida veterans and our families why he voted to block a billion-dollar jobs program for veterans, despite their high rate of unemployment and homelessness.
Rubio has no problem grandstanding on veterans’ backs, such as his Facebook post in February of this year:
Watch me live now at Concerned Veterans for America‘s Veterans Health Care Summit.
To which readers replied with comments such as:
“If you want to support Veterans, perhaps you could support their Commander-In-Chief?”
“Marco has voted against EVERY SINGLE VET BILL.”
“Marco Rubio and all the Republicans don’t give a damn about the Veterans. They have vote against every bill that would help a Vet. They use events like this as a photo op…”
“Taking care of our veterans is a cost of war. If you can spend six trillion dollars fighting wars 8,000 miles away, you can spend a couple billion taking care of them here at home.”
“… saying you support them while your party stabs em in the back. Hypocritical douchebag.”
Yeah, I don’t think that went over quite as planned. Then there’s his wimp-out on immigration reform, after which he went to CPAC with his tail between his legs begging for forgiveness.
In 2013 he wrote:
On April 17, my colleagues and I introduced immigration legislation. It marked a first step toward achieving the strongest border security and enforcement measures in U.S. history, modernizing our legal immigration system to unleash strong economic growth and job creation, and dealing with our undocumented immigrant population in a tough, but fair way that is directly linked to achieving several security triggers.
But as the Boston Globe reported this month:
… almost as soon as he and his allies finished pushing the bill through the Senate, Rubio walked away from the issue in what, even for Washington, represented a stunning about-face.
Hopes for an immigration overhaul soon fizzled in the House, where the conservative critics vowed to block any bill offering what they consider “amnesty.’’During 2013, he mentioned “immigration” or “immigrant” 135 times on the Senate floor. But over the last two years, he’s only uttered those words two times, according to a Globe review of the Congressional Record. Over those first six months of 2013, his office sent out nearly 150 press releases on immigration. Since then, he has issued just three press releases on the subject.
Rubio has essentially shot himself in the foot with Latino voters between the immigration debacle and his votes against the Affordable Healthcare Act, which 61% of that voting block supports. The political site Latino Decisions writes:
In competitive states where Latinos comprise a significant share of the active and eligible electorate, Rubio’s numbers remain in negative territory.
In his home-state of Florida — where Latinos are a critical component to this famously competitive state– Rubio’s favorables reach only 39 percent, compared to 42 percent unfavorable; a -3 net result.
Similarly, his unfavorable share is just over 40 percent in North Carolina and Nevada — two states where Latino voters have played a decisive role in recent elections. Since nearly half of all Latino voters reside in Texas and California, it is important to consider Latino political behavior in these two states, regardless of the level of party competition.
The large number of Latino voters in California and Texas means that Latinos can have an impact on the party primary. Rubio is at a net -11 in California, and flat in Texas (net zero with 31 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable). In both states, nearly 40 percent do not know of, or have no opinion of Rubio.
Hmmm, that’s not good. Their post concludes:
Beyond candidate-centered favorablity estimates, 52% of Latino voters indicate they will likely vote for the Democratic candidate in 2016, only 20% plan to vote for the Republican nominee…
The data are consistent and clear: Senator Rubio is very far from topping 40% of the Latino vote that the Republican nominee will need to win in the general election.
Rick Santorum: This guy has offended nearly every voting block except Evangelicals, and even they couldn’t drum up enough support for him in 2012, as Five Thirty Eight notes:
Take that group away, and Santorum didn’t win the vote in any state that had an entrance or exit poll.
In the last two national surveys from Fox News and Quinnipiac University, Santorum was languishing in 10th place among white evangelicals.
Santorum is positioning himself as the working class candidate this time around, launching his campaign with the line:
“Working families don’t need another president tied to big government or big money.”
This from the lips of someone worth an estimated $2 million, whose top donors include Securities & Investment (aka Wall Street), Lobbyists, Oil & Gas, and Commercial Banks.
Rick Santorum has no business in politics. At one time I would have said he was more suited to the Priesthood, but with Catholicism’s current popular Pope, I doubt he’d do well there either. In fact, Pope Francis stated in 2013:
“This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life-experiences of people.
If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.”
Amen, Brother. I’ve always thought Rick Santorum’s religious fervor is employed to keep rampant lascivious thoughts in check. While he seems awfully preoccupied with other peoples’ sex lives, he practically trips over his own tongue trying to put his thoughts into words. There’s this via Right Wing Watch:
In 2012, Santorum pledged that if he were elected president he would discuss “the dangers of contraception in this country,” claiming that contraception is “not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
He claimed contraception access is an “important public policy issue” since it negatively impacts society and makes people “deconstruct” sex “to the point where it’s simply about pleasure.”
In 2012, Santorum pledged that if he were elected president he would discuss “the dangers of contraception in this country,” claiming that contraception is “not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”Then there’s this:
The undermining of the fabric of our society all comes from this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in the US Constitution… The idea of the “right to privacy” is that the state doesn’t have rights to limit individuals’ passions. I disagree with that.
I’ll wrap up Rick with a list of some his votes during his brief stint in Congress courtesy of On the Issues:
- Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.
- Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation.
- Voted NO on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore.
- Voted NO on shifting $11B from corporate tax loopholes to education.
- Voted YES on giving federal aid only to schools allowing voluntary prayer.
- Voted YES on defunding renewable and solar energy.
- Voted YES on allowing some lobbyist gifts to Congress.
- Voted NO on establishing the Senate Office of Public Integrity.
- Voted NO on background checks at gun shows.
- Voted NO on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drug.
- Voted YES on killing an increase in the minimum wage.
- Voted NO on increasing tax deductions for college tuition.
Working Class Candidate my ass.
Donald Trump: I’m not going to waste my time or yours on this ignoramus.
Scott Walker: Out of the many Republican 1% candidates, this guy is the tops; not for being part of the 1%, but for so readily kissing their rumps. Walker is not the champion of fiscal responsibility he makes himself out to be; his personal financial disclosures have shown he lives beyond his means, as the Daily Beast reports:
According to his most recent financial disclosure forms, the governor owed between $10,000 and $100,000 to credit card companies in 2014.
Many people in the country have more credit card debt than they’d like, but they’re not asking for the nation’s purse strings. As the Daily Beast points out:
The Wisconsin governor has made his personal spending habits a central part of his campaign messaging…
His personal debt is chump change compared to the questionable financial moves he’s made in Wisconsin, the latest of which is handing $250 million of state money over to the Milwaukee Bucks for a new stadium. The Bucks’ new owners by the way are Wes Edens and Marc Lasry, worth an estimated $1.2 billion, and $1.7 billion respectively.
At the same time Walker is handing these guys a couple of hundred million, he proposed cutting $300 million from the University of Wisconsin. The state legislature reduced that to $250 million. Priorities, right?
Here are a few of the state of Wisconsin’s stats as of November 2014 from Forbes:
- Median Household Income: $51,738 [National $53,891]
- Unemployment 5.5 [National 5.8]
- College Attainment: 27.7 [National 40.0]
- Graduate Degrees 9.4 [National 11.77]
- Net Migration (2013): -2,300
Walker governs recklessly, rushing to implement his plans and sometimes creating chaos in the process. From Business Insider:
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a public-private body set up by Walker shortly after he took office in January 2011, was supposed to help the state climb out of recession…
But the WEDC has fallen short of its own goals by tens of thousands of jobs and failed to keep track of millions of dollars it has handed out.
State legislative audits have found that WEDC has mismanaged taxpayer funds and handed out awards to companies that should not have been eligible for them. The agency also didn’t follow up to ensure that jobs were actually being created and failed to track whether businesses were paying their loans back on time, according to reviews in 2012 and 2013.
The agency also awarded job-creation grants to companies that have shipped jobs overseas…
State legislative audits have found that WEDC has mismanaged taxpayer funds and handed out awards to companies that should not have been eligible for them. The agency also didn’t follow up to ensure that jobs were actually being created and failed to track whether businesses were paying their loans back on time, according to reviews in 2012 and 2013.Walker hates unions, public education, and reproductive rights. He wants to drug test people on food stamps and those receiving unemployment benefits, stating, as Alternet reported:
“My belief is we shouldn’t be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox.”
Gotta love those Conservative dog whistles.
A “President” Scott Walker would be taking orders from the Koch Brothers while ALEC writes his policies for him.
Thus ends our abbreviated look at the “top” Republican candidates for 2016, or as many on the right would say, their “deep bench”. Truth is, the closest Republicans will ever get to a deep bench is to buy one; here’s a lovely model:
This, on the other hand, is just a bunch of idiots:
Republican Idiot Brigade Update Part 1