Live from Council Bluffs, it’s Marco Rubio

Nebraska attorney David Begley continues his series of reports on appearances of the presidential candidates in Iowa for us. Today Dave attended the appearance of Senator Marco Rubio in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Des Moines Register has posted its report of Rubio in Carroll this morning before his appearance in Council Bluffs here. Dave’s report is below.

MarcoDave When I saw Marco Rubio in person, I was reminded of a line I have modified from The Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan edition): “It’s not a crime to be young, handsome, articulate and whip smart.”

He really has a JFK-movie star vibe and a main campaign theme for him is that his election will result in a New American Century. No direct mention of Hillary other than several references to tired old ideas and policies from the last century. With Marco it is, “new leaders with new ideas.”

In Carroll, Iowa, in the morning town hall attended by the Register, Rubio made some news with his idea to video our attacks on ISIS and also show how their leaders “cry like babies when captured.”

The Senator got fired up when he spoke about foreign policy and the military. He sits on both the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees and he prefaced one answer by stating that he “needed to be careful.” In essence, he said that he saw the same intelligence the President did back in 2012 and warned on the Senate floor then that we needed to do something to support the non-jihadists opposed to Assad in Syria.

Rubio discussed the use ISIS has made of Libya as a training ground. He emphasized that Obama knows full well the uses to which Libya has now been put by ISIS. Rubio obviously could have pinned the ISIS training ground in Libya on Secretary Clinton. Perhaps he’s saving it for future reference.

As for “radical Islam,” Marco said that even Muslims like the King of Jordan use that term while Barack Obama won’t. The devotees of radical Islam believe in death to anyone who doesn’t agree with their version of Islam. Marco sounded like Ronald Reagan when he said that the Rubio answer to this problem means we would win and they would lose. None of this degrading and containing stuff for him.

Rubio noted that in Obama’s overseas comments last week the President became most animated in talking about the GOP rather than ISIS. He described Obama’s foreign policy as “feckless” and vowed to reshape it so our allies would trust us. He would cancel the Iran deal.

On the domestic front, he described the President as “lawless.” He would repeal Obamacare and create competition for health care insurance as we see for auto insurance.

He made an oblique reference to the tax-motivated merger Monday between Allergan and Pfizer. Currently our tax code invites our biggest American companies to leave. American companies have two trillion dollars overseas and that number is equal to Russia’s GNP. His tax plan would allow immediate capital expensing and eliminate tax preferences.

He said he would be the “vocational education president” and he went into great detail there. Common core would be repealed and he would abolish the Department of Education.

On energy, he said he would keep the RFS (ethanol) rules through 2022. He said natural gas is our key advantage in attracting new manufacturing to the United States.

Marco drew on his family history to testify to the meaning of the United States to his family; it could only have happened here.

A question about faith is nearly obligatory in Iowa as Christians are a big voting segment. A young boy asked when the Senator sought God’s counsel. He gave a long answer. He said we should turn to God in matters large and small. He noted God’s ways are not our ways. God allows pain into one’s life and that’s where faith comes in for each person.

Maybe the real news came at the end. I told the Senator that I was there on behalf of Power Line. He replied, “I read Power Line all the time. Do you know who else reads it? Rush.”

JOE adds: My wife and I are cohosting an event for Marco Rubio in Mountain View, California on December 7. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, send me an email and I will send you an invitation.

PAUL adds: I believe the event Dave attended in Council Bluffs was scheduled in lieu of an event I had signed up for when I was in Iowa last month that Sen. Rubio had to cancel. I wish I had been able to attend in order to meet the Senator and ask him to discuss the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, which is pending in the Senate.

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