The fact that he has only four years' in the Senate concerns me a little, although I'm sure a couple people I know whose initials are Herman Cain and Rob Laurie will tell me more years getting assimilated into the Washington way of thinking is hardly a good thing either.
And while Rubio seems to understand the problems very well, I'm not sure he grasps the best solutions quite so well.
But you have to give him this: He gets, in broad thematic terms, the essence of America. He understands what's gone wrong, and he absolutely knows the basic direction we need to take to get back on track. And boy, can he express it well, because you sense that it comes from the heart:
Now let's get this out of the way. Yes, the Obama parallels are obvious. A four-year, first-term senator whose previous experience was as a state legislator, and who has never really governed or run anything in a leadership position. That was Obama in 2008 and that's Rubio now. When this came up in reference to Ted Cruz, the rejoinder was that experience as a governor would not have made Obama any better a president, which is true in the sense that he would have been pushing the same horrendous policies, and also in the sense that Obama is Obama and he's really not interested in managing anything skillfully. He's interested in playing golf, making speeches, appearing on TV, being a celebrity and transforming America into a socialist mecca. Yeah. Experience as an executive doesn't make that guy a good president. It might make the day-to-day operations of his administration less of a trainwreck, though, and when we elect a conservative who has the right ideas, we might also like to avoid that trainwreck.
Anyway, a lot of conservatives loved Rubio when he stole the Republican nomination for the Senate away from Charlie Crist, because he was the conservative wunderkind back then. As soon as he showed his willingness to work with John McCain and Lindsey Graham on immigration reform, you wrote him off as a RINO, which more reflects how the understanding of that term has changed than anything serious about Rubio. A RINO used to be a guy who got elected as a Republican from a liberal state but voted with Democrats pretty much all the time. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut was really a Republican in name only. So was Bob Packwood of Oregon. Rubio wants to repeal ObamaCare, cut taxes, slash regulations, get spending under control and stand up to enemy regimes around the world. A guy like that is not a RINO because he doesn't think it makes sense to take an all (deport all 12 million illegals immediately) or nothing approach to immigration reform. It means he disagrees with you on one issue, and it's not as simple an issue as you think.
On taxes, I like the fact that Rubio wants to cut the corporate tax to 25 percent. I'm not as crazy about his $2,500 child tax credit idea. I'd rather see lower rates and fewer credits/exemptions/deductions.
But there's still time, and his story is truly aspirational. He'll need to be careful not to use it as a crutch, though. As the campaign gets rolling, everyone will know before long that he is the son of Cuban immigrant bartenders and that he rose to become a U.S. senator. That's a great story and a true campaign asset but if all he does is keep reciting it in lieu of serious policy prescriptions, it will quickly become a cliche that causes him to be taken less seriously.
But Rubio has taken a very serious approach to governing as a senator, and he's correctly frustrated that the Senate under Harry Reid's control basically did nothing - and that it's not getting much better even now that Republicans have a majority. The prospect of a Rubio debate against Bill Clinton's Wife has me salivating, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. I like the field that's taking shape, at least so far, and Rubio is another reason it's strong.
