Marco Rubio won’t be joining Jim DeMint’s Tea Party Caucus, and instead has been one of Mitch McConnell’s favored freshmen, recently accompanying McConnell on a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Tea Party has been in Rubio’s rear view mirror ever since he leveraged it to push Charlie Crist out of the Republican primary, so it’s not really a surprise that Rubio won’t join Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Mike Lee’s little band of true patriots. Rubio has to get re-elected in a state that occasionally elects Democrats, and he’s smart enough to know that the Tea Party will be nothing but an impediment to that run, not to mention a hindrance in his ambition to be the Republican Obama.
Jeff Spender
And another bites the dust. I wonder if those tea party rubes will ever figure out that they were used like cheap French harlots.
My money is on no. They’ll be too busy preening about the gub’mint’s hands in their medicare and black guy in the White House.
By the way, can we start calling it the Executive Mansion again?
Benjamin Cisco
Dumped at the altar again. Hoocoodanode?
Betty Cracker
Yep. Despite all the teabagger adoration, Rubio was always a creature of the thoroughly corrupt FL GOP. I had a ringside seat, and it was fascinating to watch him embrace the ‘baggers to outmaneuver Crist and then give them ever more obvious brush-off signals.
That said, he is a hard-right politician in the mold of DeMint. It’ll be interesting to see how he balances that with his reelection prospects. I expect he’ll sell out his principles.
Kirbster
Rubio sounds like Florida’s version of Scott Brown (R-US Chamber of Commerce), who used the Tea Party to get elected in MA and dumped them immediately thereafter.
Next step: Watch Rubio get a book deal. All serious GOP candidates do a ghost-written “memoir”.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Jeff Spender:
They will not be ignored. I smell primaries and boiled rabbit.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I don’t think all the triumphalism about the teabaggers getting dissed is right. What’s the difference between Michelle Bachman and whoever is the most sane republican in the house? They’ll vote exactly the same way.
JGabriel
Here that, Marco? Every breath you take, they’ll be watching you!
.
Joey Maloney
Dehydrated water. Alcohol-free Everclear. Cruelty-free waterboarding.
Does. Not. Compute.
@MikeJ:
I hear that a lot, but there is a difference and I’ve been trying to figure out how to formulate it. I guess what I’d say is that while they might vote the same, the so-called sane Republican won’t be constantly pushing the envelope of crazy, setting up loonier and loonier things that all Rs will then be pressured to vote for by the Teatards, AND – this is the really damaging part – dragging the Overton Window further and further off into Crazyland.
Linda Featheringill
The real problem I have with Michelle is that I really don’t know what she’s going to do next. I’m not sure that her reality resembled mine very much.
SFAW
You don’t need a ton of nutcases to push the Window, just a few committed ones, aided and abetted by “good”
GermansRepublicans.In the end, the result is pretty much the same. The only practical difference is that fewer crazies means (in all likelihood – I haven’t done a study) fewer crazy ideas to push. But, frankly, I think we have more than enough crazy ideas out there already, and there does not appear to be any sign of them abating.
Suck It Up!
Republican Obama? is that your term or what Republicans think? its not just being a minority that makes Obama, Obama.
cmorenc
@MikeJ:
Let’s call that the Teabagger Turing test: If you know nothing about a politician except his or her voting record, can you tell whether they are a Teabagger or not?
If not, then they’re a Teabagger, however much they try to talk differently. If so, then they’re not a true-red enough Teabagger to satisfy the genuine article, and they’ll get primaried next time around by a bona fide Teabagger.
steviez314
It’s Huntsman/Rubio ’16.
Bet on it.
gene108
@Suck It Up!:
Yeah, it’s being born in Kenya and hoodwinking the American people into the White House (joke).
I wonder if Rubio has Presidential ambitions, if right-wing nuts are going to demand his long form birth certificate to make sure he wasn’t born in Cuba?
Probably not, but it’d be interesting if the media actually holds those guys accountable to see how they try to squirm out of their bitherism.
Ash Can
@steviez314: I doubt the Republicans as a whole are sane enough to put Huntsman on the ticket.
Cat Lady
Was anyone watching CNN around 12:15 or so? The subtitle under the talking head who I didn’t recognize was “The End of Wingnuts?” or something like that, with a subhead of “nation moving back to center”. Sound was off, but WTF?