Marco Rubio
November 17, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here and here about what I take to be Marco Rubio’s greatest vulnerability in the GOP presidential race — his sponsorship of immigration reform legislation that would have granted amnesty and a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants. However, one views the merits of Rubio’s Gang of Eight legislation, I think it’s beyond dispute that this represents a serious problem for his campaign. Not surprisingly, Ted Cruz is
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November 14, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about Marco Rubio’s vulnerability on the issue of immigration. Ted Cruz, I contended, is especially well-positioned to exploit Rubio’s vulnerability. The Cruz campaign has, in fact, started to attack Rubio for sponsoring the Gang of Eight amnesty/path to citizenship legislation of 2013. And Rubio has fired back. Figuring that the best defense is a good offense, Rubio told reporters, “I don’t think our positions are dramatically different;
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November 12, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post finds that Marco Rubio is taking little fire from his Republican rivals even as he moves up in the polls. It claims that “other candidates have not figured out how to deal with what some are calling ‘the Marco moment.’” I disagree with the Post. Rubio has been attacked by both Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. The amount of flak seems commensurate with his standing in the
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November 12, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
In the absence of gotcha questions at Tuesday’s debate, philosophy moved to the fore. It was trashed twice. In an exchange with Ted Cruz over a hypothetical bailout of Bank of America, John Kasich said: That’s the difference of being an executive. And let me just explain: when a bank is ready to go under, and depositors are getting ready to lose their life savings, you just don’t say we
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November 6, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Democrats must be getting very nervous about the prospect of running against Marco Rubio, because yesterday the DNC released this hit ad: Ask yourself this question: Why would you put out an ad like this about the candidate of the other party this early in the primary cycle? Wouldn’t you want to hold your fire with negative attacks until later? It seems like a “tell” of the candidate you least want
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November 1, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The Iowa caucuses are in significant part about who can get their supporters to show up. Thus, one thing I wanted to watch for at yesterday’s Growth and Oppoertunity event was which candidates got supporters to the fairgrounds to cheer and hold signs. This metric would, it seemed to me, provide a rough measure of some combination of level of support and “ground game.” Unfortunately, neither Donald Trump nor Ben
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October 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
This morning, Marco Rubio appeared on CBS’s This Morning program. Host Charlie Rose appeared to be appalled by Rubio’s statement in last night’s debate that Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi. For most of us, this is like saying that the Sun rose in the East, but to Rose it was evidently a new idea. So he tried to defend Hillary, unsuccessfully. Marco gave him chapter and verse, briefly and effectively:
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October 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Early tomorrow, I’ll be heading off to witness our odd democracy up close. First, I will meet up in Omaha with our excellent reporter, David Begley. We’ll check out Marco Rubio and Chris Christie at events in Council Bluffs, Iowa on Friday. Then, I’ll be off to Des Moines for a big event on Saturday at the State Fairgrounds that should enable me to “run the rule” (as English soccer
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October 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for tonight’s debate, Remy Munasifi to the rescue with a new rapdown of Trump (only about a minute long):
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October 26, 2015 — John Hinderaker
As Paul noted earlier today, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have attacked Marco Rubio for missing Senate votes. Rubio’s response, for the reasons Paul points out, has not always been strong. I was with a Rubio staffer a couple of weeks ago who asked what I thought of the issue. I suggested that Rubio’s staff look into the voting records of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who was
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October 26, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio is compiling a dreadful Senate attendance record. When he cast a Senate vote last week, it was his first in 26 days. When he gave a floor speech, it was his first in 41. Naturally, Rubio has come under attack for this record by some of his GOP presidential rivals, including Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. Rubio responds that he’s fed up with the
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October 21, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
There’s another poll of the GOP presidential race out, a Washington Post-ABC News production. It tells basically the same story as its predecessors. Donald Trump continues to lead with a little better than 30 percent support; Ben Carson remains in second a little above 20 percent; Marco Rubio holds third place at about 10 percent. Despite Trump’s consistently strong showing, Nate Silver and the folks at FiveThirtyEight remain unimpressed. They
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September 25, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump’s latest war of words is with Marco Rubio. Here is what Trump said about the Florida Senator on “Morning Joe”: I’m looking at guys like Marco Rubio who has the worst voting record in the United States Senate. Young guy, although he sweats more than any young person I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve never seen a person sweat, down water like he downs water. They bring
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September 24, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Fox News offers a new poll of the Republican presidential field (scroll past the Pope Francis stuff to get to the GOP race). The poll shows Donald Trump still in front with 26 percent support. He’s followed by Ben Carson at 18 percent. Then come Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio at 9 percent; Ted Cruz at 8; and Jeb Bush at 7. This poll is more favorable to Dr. Carson
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September 20, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Debates matter. That’s not a scoop. Yet many doubted whether Marco Rubio’s quality performance last week in California would help him, and the doubts weren’t unreasonable. After all, he had debated very well in Cleveland, yet received no significant bounce. This time, though, Rubio has been rewarded. A new CNN/ORC poll shows him at 11 percent, up from 3 percent less than two weeks ago. The poll is of Republicans
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September 17, 2015 — John Hinderaker
It is no secret that I am a Marco Rubio fan. Yesterday afternoon, before the debate, Jake Tapper posted this tweet. The key word is “discreetly”: When Sen. Rubio came by the set, he discreetly drew a cross on the tape behind his podium #CNNDebate A photo posted by Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) on Sep 16, 2015 at 12:57pm PDT
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August 24, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Tevi Troy, author of What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted, takes a look at what the 2016 GOP contenders are reading. One seldom knows for sure what anyone is reading, but Tevi’s discussion is revealing nonetheless. Here are some highlights: Donald Trump says he will “read anything about Lincoln” and his “whole era.” This is one of our very favorite eras too. Jeb Bush reportedly told Dan Senor,
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