Rubio: The Opportunist
Though the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended at the border was at its lowest level in decades, voters who were anxious about jobs and opportunity responded to increasingly militant language.
.. “The bottom line is that we are not ‘Hispanics.’ We’re Cuban-Americans, we’re Mexican-Americans, and so forth.” Cuban-Americans represent only about four per cent of the Latino population, and their votes and interests are not always in accord with those of other Latinos. For one thing, many Latinos resent the accelerated path to citizenship that Congress bestowed on Cuban arrivals during the Cold War, a privilege not granted to Colombians, Guatemalans, and others who have faced repression.
.. A conservative Super PAC ranked Rubio as the ninth most conservative member of the 114th Congress, but, unlike Ted Cruz, who amplifies confrontation, he excels at rounding off the corners of conventional conservative prescriptions. “I want to be the world leader in renewables,” he tells crowds. “But we better also be the world leader in oil and natural gas.”
.. But in October, 2011, the Washington Post and the St. PetersburgTimes reported that, according to immigration records, his family had left Cuba voluntarily, as émigrés, aboard a commercial flight, in May, 1956, more than two and a half years before Fidel Castro took power.
.. But he writes vividly about the most influential figure in his childhood—his maternal grandfather, Pedro Víctor García, whom he calls “my closest boyhood friend.” According to Rubio’s biographer Manuel Roig-Franzia, in 1962 García arrived from Cuba without a visa and was eventually ordered to be deported. He stayed anyway, becoming an undocumented immigrant. The Cuban missile crisis saved him; commercial air travel to Cuba was suspended, and, eventually, he was granted permanent residency.
.. Unlike most modern Presidential candidates, Rubio began his life in elected office at the lowest rung. (Jeb Bush’s first campaign was for governor.) Rubio was twenty-six and living at home with his parents when, in April, 1998, he won a seat on the five-member city commission in West Miami, a Cuban enclave with fewer than six thousand people. He weighed questions about the location of bus benches and the snacks in vending machines, all the while courting local political bosses.
.. As he ascended in the House leadership, he was hired by Broad & Cassel, a prominent law and lobbying firm, and his annual income grew to more than four hundred thousand dollars. In 2012, he received a contract for his memoir, worth at least eight hundred thousand dollars, and yet, even with his rising income, he cashed out sixty-eight thousand dollars from a retirement account, paying a heavy tax penalty.
.. He wants a greater share of young people to consider trade schools and apprenticeships instead of incurring the debts of a four-year education.
.. he delivered the most powerful speech of his career, recalling that the first words that his father learned in English were “I am looking for work.”
.. He said that Latinos would be receptive to a Republican message, but he thinks that the LIBRE Initiative promotes the interests of big business rather than the interests of the community.
.. The phrase “Someone has convinced you” was lethal. Bush—suddenly in the role of the misled, desperate old pol—smiled wanly and tried to speak, but Rubio turned to face the camera. “My campaign is going to be about the future of America—it’s not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage,” he said. “I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Governor Bush.” It sounded like a eulogy.
.. I asked Rubio if he thinks Americans will worry that he is beholden to big backers. He shook his head, and said, “I’ve never had a single donor come to me and say, ‘I’ll support you, but only if you support this initiative.’ ” I said that sounded like a false standard, an unrealistic description of political influence. He continued, “People may not believe this, but the vast majority of big donors in America don’t really ask a lot of government—at least on our side of the aisle. What they really, largely, want is to be treated fairly and be left alone.” He added, “I’ve never changed any item on my agenda in search of a supporter.”
.. “Churchill was a guy who was largely ignored through much of the thirties as a warmonger, and a guy that was crying wolf, and Chamberlain was this heroic figure that was going to achieve peace in our time by diplomacy. And I think, in many cases, we’re kind of at a similar moment, where many of us, including myself, are warning about dangers that are percolating around the world and what they could turn into. Whether it’s Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, or radical Islam.”
.. “This is a clash of civilizations,” he told ABC. “There is no middle ground on this. Either they win or we win.” It was the politics of absolutes, a vocabulary that harks back to the with-us-or-against-us logic of an earlier era. Even George W. Bush disavowed the clash-of-civilizations argument. Rubio stopped short of specifying how many troops he wants to send to the Middle East, but he left no doubt that he believes such action is unavoidable.