Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
It’s hard not to notice that the Republican Party is going through a bit of an identity crisis. One portion of the GOP supports a shady businessman famous for hosting a stale reality TV show and for verbally abusing everyone but his most ardent supporters. Another is backing the most hated lawmaker in Congress. Luckily, Republicans have more than two feasible Presidential candidates to choose from this election year.
The third portion of the GOP is finally beginning to rally behind Marco Rubio following his better than expected finish in the Iowa Caucus. Rubio happens to be young, eloquent, brilliant, passionate, and the candidate I am supporting for President.
Like Barack Obama in 2008, Rubio is running as a relative newcomer to national politics. While he has only spent five years in Washington, those five years have been packed with achievements and experiences that have prepared him well to take on the burdens of the presidency.
Two summers ago, Rubio played a vital role in passing tough reforms to the VA hospital system, surprisingly working alongside Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He also led the push to pass the Girls Count act, a bipartisan bill targeting human trafficking. And in 2013 he was one of the key Senators that almost negotiated a solution to the generational issue of comprehensive immigration reform. While Rubio has since changed his rhetoric on immigration, his actual policy proposal still includes a path to citizenship.
Rubio also has substantial foreign policy experience. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he led the movement to place sanctions on Venezuela and Hezbollah for human rights abuses. He has also been an outspoken and articulate proponent for containing Chinese influence in Asia and Russia’s power in Europe. Rubio has a command of foreign policy unmatched by anyone in the field except for the error-prone Hillary Clinton.
Unlike Obama, Rubio actually had substantial governmental experience at the state and local level before his rise to national prominence with a victory over a sitting governor in a Florida’s 2010 Senate race. Rubio spent ten years in the Florida House, including a stint as Speaker. He is also one of the few presidential candidates ever to serve in local government. In the late 1990s Rubio served a term as City Commissioner of his hometown, West Miami.
At only 44 years old Rubio is the youngest candidate in a race full of relics from a bygone age (I’m looking at you Hillary, Donald, and Bernie). He is acutely aware of our generation’s many problems because unlike any of the other candidates he has actually experienced them with us. Rubio grew up as the son of two Cuban immigrants. His father worked as a bartender and his mother was both a maid and a store clerk. He never received an Ivy League education or a million dollar loan to start a real estate business and he hasn’t been sheltered from the realities of a normal American life since the 1980s. In fact, Rubio just finished paying off the last of his college debt in 2012. At that point he was amazingly two years into his term as Senator.
Rubio hasn’t just passively observed the struggles Millennials face; he has actively attempted to pass legislation to resolve them. Rubio has put forward comprehensive plans to tackle college costs and student debt repayment. He’s also partnered with Democrats to write legislation to tackle Title IX issues. Finally, Rubio has shown a willingness to engage with the tech industry to protect startups like Uber and Airbnb from being regulated out of existence.
The best thing about Rubio, though, is that unlike the other two candidates running for the GOP nomination, he can actually beat Hillary Clinton. Rubio’s background has given him an incredible opportunity to expand the Republican Party and to help it realize its longtime goal of inclusivity. Rubio often claims that he understands the American Dream because he has lived it. If he keeps sharing this message, he can tap into the hope for opportunity that drove so many to support Obama in 2008. All Rubio needs to do is avoid getting caught up in the toxic and divisive rhetoric that has fuelled the GOP race so far. If Rubio can maintain his rightfully earned status as a bipartisan, hopeful, and down to earth candidate, he should easily beat a damaged Hillary Clinton in November.
I realize most Swarthmore students are not looking to support a Republican candidate for President and I likely won’t be able to persuade you to change their minds, but if you are a moderate, a libertarian, or a hardcore conservative, the junior Senator from Florida is the candidate for you. As Rubio boldly stated in his announcement speech, “This election is a generational choice about what kind of country we want to be.” I know he is the best choice for those that wish to see a thriving America filled with vigor and new ideas. Rubio has the personal experience, the vision, and the humility to make this country lead the world in the twenty-first century.
Featured image courtesy of www.wctv.tv
perfect if you want millions of women to lose vital healthcare when he defunds planned parenthood!!
Defunding Planned Parenthood would lead to increases in funding for community health centers, which help provide contraception and other similar services (including mammograms, which PP doesn’t provide) except for abortion. Not to mention that there are many many more community health centers out there than Planned Parenthoods, which would increase access to these services (especially in rural areas). A criticism I have seen of this approach is that community health centers are currently not equipped to handle the massive influx of visitors that would take place if the funding were to go to them instead; however, I am sure that as they received increases in funding, they would be able to become more prominent and that even more locations would become available.
But why try to defund planned parenthood which is a center already equipped and doing a good job in providing care for women, if only to make abortions less accessible?? Leave pp alone.
“He [Barack Obama] continues to put out this fiction that there’s widespread systematic discrimination against Muslim Americans. First of all, let’s recognize this: If you go to a national cemetery in this country you will see Stars of Davids and crosses, but you will also see crescent moons. There are brave men and women who happen to be Muslim Americans who are serving this country in uniform, and who have died in the service of this country. And we recognize that, and we honor that. But by the same token, we face a very significant threat of homegrown violent extremism. We need to have strong, positive relationships in the Islamic communities in this country, so they will identify and report this activity. Especially mosques, for example, that are participating, not just in hate speech, but in inciting violence and in taking acts against us. And I do believe it is important also to recognize- You want to talk about religious discrimination in America? Well, I don’t think Barack Obama is being sued by any Islamic groups, but he is being sued by The Little Sisters of the Poor. We are facing in this country Christian groups, and trad- groups that hold traditional values, who feel- and in fact, are- being discriminated against by the laws of this country to try to force them to violate their conscience” – Marco Rubio, in Saturday’s Debate
What Marco Rubio was trying to say bears being repeated without being interrupted or mocked!
There has been a lot of criticism of Marco Rubio for repeating in the debate that, “Barack Obama knows what he is doing, he is fundamentally changing the United States of America.”
When Marco says this he does not mean the president is doing a great or even a good job as the leader of America, but that he is trying to change the way we think about American Exceptionalism. As Americans we are not more exceptional or superior than any other person, race, or ethnicity, but the way we think and what most believe in as a democracy is better than that of other nations.
We believe that all people are created equal and that we do not discriminate or put in opposition one race, color, religion, ethnicity, sex, age, or even wealth. What we have been seeing with this president more than we have seen with any other president in my lifetime is exactly that pitting one against another. This IS NOT what we believe and it is tearing at the fabric of American Exceptionalism.
For seven years now have seen a constant, “war against something”, and pitting one group against another. There has been a war against the police that ended in a beer summit but was left to simmer where now police are the enemy and not our protectors. There has been a war of rich vs middle class or poor where people like Andrew Carnegie, Howard Hughes, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, J. Paul Getty, Henry Ford, Paul Newman and numerous others that have given large amounts to charities, or created them, built colleges, libraries, town halls and created numerous jobs. These rich of course do not pay their fair share based on what we have been told. The war on women, we do not make enough money and are not treated like a man but women can run for president in this country, and run large corporations and have the ability to go to school and be whatever they want to be in life. The war on ethnicity were we are the bad people that do not allow anyone in this country, where we have a more diverse population of “free” people than anywhere in the world and if you are here legally you can aspire to be whatever you wish to be.
So yes Marco Rubio should repeat it as many times as he can, without interruption or mocking, to get the American people, ALL American people, to see that pitting one group against another is NOT American Exceptionalism it is tearing us and the fabric of America apart.
We must remember that we are the “United” States of America, and that what has been declared in the past, “UNITED WE STAND AND DIVIDED WE FALL.
God Bless The UNITED States of America.
Don’t be so easily misled. Marco Rubio’s record clearly demonstrates his vacuous nature. He abhors effort, expects the world to come to him, and shows all the characteristics of one who believes he is entitled to that which he “aspires”. It makes sense that some would be attracted to this candidate as he is very good at explaining how everything is someone else’s fault and things should change, yet he offers no substantive ideas to solve the problems about which he whines. His election would be disastrous, but certainly representative of a core constituency of intellectually lazy lay-abouts.
He’s a loser, loser. His stand on social issues would take us back to the 50s. He’s not even going to win the primary in his home state. He’s a pretty boy that’s dangerous for our country. His extreme right wing ideas will NEVER work. And please can you believe he got into the mud with Trump – which shows you he is not presidential material.
Doesn’t really matter now, since he failed to even win his own state, which really kind of fits with his propped-up robot of a campaign.
Seriously, look at the candidate roster, including the ones that have dropped out: We have a slick, polished, experienced official who we all know is a lying weasel but are going to elect anyway; an angry old Jewish socialist guy who is anathema to the half of the country that still reflexively hates Communists; Trumpler, who’s basically a shaved howler monkey in a suit; Cruz, who’s a sack of walking pig offal whose smile fairly drips oil and whose policies make James K. Polk look like Ralph Nader; Christie, who never had a shot and was a loudmouthed asshole besides; Kasich, who has no shot but is in it anyway to say that he was in; Bush, who had all of the worst combined weaknesses of Bush 2 and Romney in a primary that actually is sick and tired of stuffed-shirt corporate executives with rich donors; Rubio, AKA off-brand Bush, who frankly has seemed weak and unprepared the entire campaign and was never a convincing alternative to anyone; and about 15 other people who don’t actually matter.
We’re going to get President Clinton, because Sanders can’t win the primary at this point without a major stroke of luck, and even in the current political climate that loudmouthed asshole Trump has no chance. And you know what? President Hillary Clinton kind of is the best option. She’s a career ambitious lying weasel, and one who’s locked in her path to power as a left-leaner. She has the political amorality and skills to finagle compromises out of Congress, which Sanders is too idealistic to do, and she’s better than the entire remaining Republican slate (excluding Kasich since he has no chance) simply through not being a ridiculously outdated bigoted asshole.
But hey! Rubio still has a long and prosperous career ahead of him in Miami politics. Good for him! He gets to be a low-ranking civil servant for the rest of his life.
People like marco rubio because his charismatic, ironically another freshman senator from illinois was charismatic, granted their policies are different, but its worth noting.
Rubio is not an independent thinker, hes an establishment conservative, much in the way bush was, Im writing this nearly 9 months after this post. True,rubio may be a bit more conservative than bush and thread the needle a bit, but hes ideas or nothing new, just a robotic rehash and talking points, and conservative lies and mis-information (its not so much certain conservative ideas but “molded” conservative ideas from the establishment). For instance, the heritage foundation will defend farm subsidies, but not health insurance for children/poor. In arizona,medicaid patients died because the state could fund $2 million for algae research and to renovate the veterans stadium memorial roof, but not $600k. Pro-life until birth folks didn’t say anything. Defense spending is out of control, justification because so and so does this move is silly, we could cut our defense by 80-90% with a few nukes and nobody will attack us. Yet they will say its not a problem,but other welfare is. They will call for school vouchers, but not housing vouchers. They will voucher medicare, and claim that obama has death panels. Rubio wants his abortion views forced on everyone else and believes in denying gays/lesbians many benefits,rights,priviledges that come with marriage as we as responsibilies and conseques (we should diminish marriage in terms of it affecting too many things not strengthen it in certain areas). My college financial aid should depend on whether I am married or not, if a 18 year old gets married to someone poor but has rich parents,they get full financial aid,but not if parents save up and make middle-class wage, and someone decides to be responsible and not get married,never mind if the 18-year old gets government subsidies for children which may not be counted.
Now as we wait a few weeks before election, I don’t know where trump stands, but rubio because his charismatic appeals to florida. Floridians would be wise to say no.