The Orlando Sun-Sentinel editorial board did not take kindly to this week’s story on GOP Sen. Marco Rubio hating his job and is now openly calling for Rubio’s resignation from the Senate.
Rubio has missed more votes than any other senator this year. His seat is regularly empty for floor votes, committee meetings and intelligence briefings. He says he’s MIA from his J-O-B because he finds it frustrating and wants to be president, instead.
“I’m not missing votes because I’m on vacation,” he told CNN on Sunday. “I’m running for president so that the votes they take in the Senate are actually meaningful again.”
Sorry, senator, but Floridians sent you to Washington to do a job. We’ve got serious problems with clogged highways, eroding beaches, flat Social Security checks and people who want to shut down the government.
If you hate your job, senator, follow the honorable lead of House Speaker John Boehner and resign it.
Let us elect someone who wants to be there and earn an honest dollar for an honest day’s work. Don’t leave us without one of our two representatives in the Senate for the next 15 months or so.
You are paid $174,000 per year to represent us, to fight for us, to solve our problems. Plus you take a $10,000 federal subsidy — declined by some in the Senate — to participate in one of the Obamacare health plans, though you are a big critic of Obamacare.
You are ripping us off, senator.
Ouch.
Old enough to remember the whole Republican Savior thing too. Doesn’t get much worse for Rubio at this point, does it?
Well, except when he drops out of the race and fades into obscurity. I’m sure he’ll be back at some point to plague the state again as Governor or something (I can hear Betty Cracker screaming from here) but man, his 2016 presidential aspirations are kinda done at this point.
It’ll be interesting to see if anyone asks him about that at the debate tonight and how he defends it. Spoilers: it’s not going to save his presidential campaign.
Bye, Felicia.
Betty Cracker
I hope you’re right that Rubio is done in the GOP race, but if Jeb keeps imploding and Kasich continues to languish in obscurity, I could totally see the money people turning to Rubio as the establishment candidate to back, even though he is a slacker and dumber than a bag of toenail clippings. But I agree this quitter issue will bite him on the nutsack; the question is how hard. It may be a knockout blow, but I’m reserving judgment.
Regarding Rubio’s gubernatorial prospects, I think he’d have to wait in line behind Adam Putnam, a Big Ag shill who has his beady eyes on the office. After two terms of Jeb and two of Rick Scott, no GOP prospect holds any terror for me. It seriously couldn’t get any worse.
schrodinger's cat
Are you sure? Ross Douthat was pimping Rubio as the frontrunner in his Sunday column.
Elizabelle
Good morning all. Sipping coffee on the deck. Very light rain, and leaves look superb. Hoping peak is still ahead of us this weekend.
Wish I could post or email you this weather and the sound of raindrops on leaves and the color. Maybe the coffee too.
Delectable to read about Rubio. Will do so.
Cervantes
Ripping you off is his métier.
Has been for a while.
benw
Wait, what? Is Rubio crashing and burning? I thought he was taking over as the establishment candidate since Bush is flailing. I can’t keep track of all these assholes! I need a sip of water. GLUG GLUG
Zandar
@schrodinger’s cat: Naah, only a matter of time now after that editorial. Like Jeb, he’ll stick around until he loses Florida on Super Tuesday. After that? Toast.
Danack
I’m going to repost something, as it took so long for me to write, the thread had died by the time I posted it, and it applies to Rubio as well.
——————–
NonyNony wrote: “Jeb is not going to be the nominee
unless some major change happens in the next few months.”Fixed that for you.
At least I can’t see how he can possibly get there unless somehow both Rubio and Cruz are persuaded to drop out of the race, and as both of them have been planning to stay in the race as long as possible – that’s unlikely to happen
I did some playing around with numbers for the current polling numbers and estimated (aka guessed wildly) how many people who say they are planning to vote for each candidate because:
* They want to reject the establishment GOP party
* They have chosen a candidate that aligns with their religious views.
* All other reasons, including picking someone who might win in the general.
The spreadsheet is here, totals don’t add to 100% presumably due to “don’t know”s in the realclearpolitics results.
The short version is that the three groups are at something like:
* Anti-Establishment vote is at 43%
* The religious driven vote is at 22%
* Every other reason at 27%
Lets imagine that all the other candidates that can be considered ‘establishment’ figures drop out, and Rubio and Bush share the extra 10% between them, putting them on 14% and 12% each. From there, how can either of them acquire any more support?
Bush can’t attract any voters that value sticking it to the establishment, or those who want a properly religious candidate. Rubio might be able to pickup a few, as he’s not as closely aligned to the GOP establishment, and the religious voters seem to like him a little more than Bush. But he’s still going to find it hard to get to 20%, let alone to a high enough number to make Bush drop out.
On the other side…..we have Cruz.
Despite being a senator, he has established his commitment to sticking it to the establishment and so can pick up a lot of those votes. And while he’s definitely not the religious voters preferred (or second or third) choice, he’s still going to find it a lot easier to attract religious voters than either Bush or Rubio will.
And that’s if it’s a free-for-all those supporters. Cruz has deliberately been keeping friendly with both Trump and Carson, most of which is done simply by not attacking them:
If Carson gets knocked out by Trump, Bush or Rubio attacking him, he’s likely to indicate to his supporters that they should support Cruz. And when Trump gets bored (i.e. his support starts dropping) then again, he’s likely to point his followers over to Cruz.
So, yeah. Either Trump and Carson stay in and keep their support high, or those two drop out of the race and their support switches to Cruz, just in time for the first half of the primaries.
Obviously, predicting the future is a stupid thing to do, but it seems to be there is no path for Jeb to get the nomination with either the current dynamics, or the dynamics that are most likely to occur over the next few months.
——————–
I think the only real question left is whether Jeb? or Rubio can convince the other to drop out before March. They’re currently splitting what little establishment vote their is, and until one of them drops out, the anti-establishment and religious vote is going to continue to dominate the nomination.
Big ole hound
I don’t give a shit what any Republican does as all their jobs are going away next year anyway. The Democrats will kick ass this time around. Americans have had it with all this post 9/11 crap both here and abroad. I hope, I hope, I hope.
Cervantes
@Danack:
Thank you.
MattF
This looks like yet another case of a Republican candidate looking plausible from a distance but less so in a closeup. Funny, that– seems to happen over and over.
ETA: Changed a couple of words.
Ruckus
Maybe young Marco is giving it his all to run for president and simply has nothing left for the job he’s getting paid for. It’s just too much for him. After all he’s seemed to be overwhelmed by the job when that was all he was doing.
And why would this hurt him with the loons? They don’t want government to work. They want it to fail. They don’t really know why, they have no idea to replace it, they just don’t like it. They don’t even really know what it is they don’t like, they are just certain they don’t like it. I can see them thinking that this is great, one of their own actively making government fail. And getting paid decently to do it. Always a plus in the loon column.
debbie
Poor Marco. He forgot that words have consequences.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I agree, mostly. Rubio is the next in line for stardom.
Kasich is switching tactics. He’s now planning on being the McCain-type Maverick Truthteller. It’s not a bad plan. His whole shot was New Hampshire and it’s such conventional wisdom that they’re all flinty, commonsensical mavericks there.
If Bush was smart he’d go after Kasich for not doing his governor-job. The big joke here is he’s the governor of New Hampshire. It’s fun to watch because there are about 15 GOP freelancers jockeying for position to fill the void, state level. We have all these little fiefdoms springing up due to our hand’s off CEO. There will be a scandal. No one is in charge.
Ryan
Hope you’re right. Rubio seemed the most plausible threat to Hillary, at least to me. There really aren’t a lot of options left, oddly enough.
Cervantes
@Ruckus:
The editorial tried to cover that as well:
Cermet
Wait, I thought in the thug party one starts being a gifter after after leaving office?
Cervantes
@Kay:
That’s all one word.
Yatsuno
@Danack:
THERE’S THAT NUMBER AGAIN!!!
MattF
@Cermet: No, no. One attains grifter nirvana after a period of sucking the public teat. But it’s all grift, all the time.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
There is no “real” frontrunner in this field of Republican candidates. They’re all phonies.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I heard a snippet of an interview with Kasich on NPR this morning as I was shuttling the spawn to catch a bus for a field trip. He was definitely taking the commonsensical maverick approach — he called out his fellow candidates for their unrealistic and irresponsible proposals. I agree it’s not a bad strategy.
If I were advising the Jeb campaign, I’d tell him to do just what you said: call out Kasich for not doing his job, and call out Rubio for not doing his too. It’s true that the GOP base has a visceral hatred of government (or at least what they imagine “government” is), but they also have an instinctive contempt for shirkers.
germy shoemangler
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Well, all right– but what ‘job’ is Jeb! doing? Being a Bush?
Satby
@Danack: glad you did repost it, that was worth reading! Thanks
Danack
@Yatsuno:
Yep. And in this case it’s pointing to the group of people who think that the GOP establishment is the sensible choice.
Which means something I’m sure.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I heard that Obama admin is going to scale back on testing in school. What is your take on this volte-face?
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
Various board-of-directors sinecures, if I recall correctly.
debbie
@Kay:
In regard to Kasich, I’m sure you meant “nonsensical,” right?
He was interviewed this morning on NPR. Frankly, I think he’s delusional. He insisted he’d turned Ohio around, “getting people educated,” and again taking credit for lots of jobs that had zero to do with his efforts.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/28/452365383/john-kasich-2016-voters-hearing-all-kinds-of-crazy-things
I don’t understand why Rubio’s getting grief for not doing his Senatorial duties, while Kasich seems to be skating on abandoning his duties in Ohio. He’s only here when a photo op has been scheduled.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: I don’t know about that. Cray Cray Carson seems to be a true believer. They are all varying shades of insane and/or inept, as far as I can see.
jibeaux
@Cervantes:
That knife is turny.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
That hardly stopped them from backing another dumb slacker whose main political gift was to be the perfect genially companionable frat-boy – George W. Bush. They want someone just bright enough to be both amiably presentable and to compliantly understand the script fed to them well enough to execute its broad outlines, but true understanding of the critical details (beyond what fits in a three-page cliff’s notes-for-dummies memo) is totally unnecessary. The problem with backing someone with true intellectual firepower is that the candidate might be hard to keep within the safe confines of the reservation the money men bought and paid for, especially once he/she takes office, and so someone like Bush or Rubio is actually preferable to them.
Matt McIrvin
Somebody has to get the Republican nomination. But every single one of them has a plausible reason they can’t possibly be the one.
rikyrah
but, see…he was YOUR BOY 6 years ago……so, color me unimpressed with your buyer’s remorse.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Bring back Fred Thompson!
amk
Wait, I thought water boy was the bj’ers favorite bugaboo!!!. After of course the straight talkin’ NJ thug; he-is-gonna-kill-us WI fraud; he-could-win-you-know paul spawn; (just) jeb.
gene108
The burning question is knowing how unpopular Rubio is can Florida Democrats take his seat in 2016?
rikyrah
OF COURSE, they are a scam.
and a fraud.
And Jeb is kneedeep in them.
This is NOT about educating children.
It’s about taking money from the public pool of funds.
……………………..
Online Charter Schools Have An “Overwhelming Negative Impact,” Study Finds
More than 200,000 students are enrolled in the online schools, but evidence suggests they are getting a very bad education in return.
posted on Oct. 27, 2015, at 3:30 p.m.
Online charter schools, which enroll 200,000 students nationwide, have an “overwhelming negative impact” on the academic outcomes of students by almost every measure, according to a series of sweeping national reports released today by three different policy and research centers.
Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, found that students at online charter schools saw dramatically worse outcomes than their counterparts at traditional, brick-and-mortar schools. Over the course of a year, cyber school students lost out on the equivalent of 180 days of learning in math and 72 days reading, the center said.
In the most comprehensive examination to date of online charters, CREDO found that more than two-thirds of online charter schools had academic growth that was worse than traditional schools. James Woodworth, a research analyst for CREDO, called the study’s overall findings “somber” in a statement.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mollyhensleyclancy/online-charter-schools-have-an-overwhelming-negative-impact#.ppan3Lr8KR
cmorenc
@Zandar:
IMHO your declaration of Rubio’s impending obituary in the 2016 GOP Presidential race is a tad premature, at least so long as most of the MSM seems determined to keep fluffing Rubio as the most-likely establishment candidate to emerge at the head of the pack if and when Trump and Carson eventually fade, because also too Rubio supposedly complicates democratic aspirations to corner the hispanic vote in the general election.
I too think it’s more likely than not that a combination of political pratfalls will sooner or later undo Rubio’s chances for the 2016 nomination – but let’s not prematurely spike the ball in celebration.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: The question is: Will the FL Dems shoot themselves in the foot yet again and piss away their chance to gain a winnable seat by nominating someone who cannot win statewide? Rubio is out, and the GOP aspirants are a pack of nobodies.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker: Can’t say I agree with you there. They elected a whole Congress full of guys who fail to do any part of their job other than using it as a platform for mouthing off.
Attacking candidates who are in office for missing votes never has much effect with voters, and people don’t okay close enough attention to realize that Rubio’s taken it to a more extreme level. The only reason it might work in his case is that he’s been dumb enough to think he can turn it into an anti-establishment attack, but instead it just sounds like he’s making excusus.
For Kasich, unless he’s also dumb enough to call attention to it, no one outside of Ohio is going to care.
Jon Wiesman
Brutal editorial, but I still think Rubio has the best chance of any Republican of winning the general election, if he can win the Survivor: Apocalypto reality show.
As bad as it seems for him right now, you can’t sleep on these guys. Truth is, I just can’t see any of the other GOP candidates actually winning the nomination. Say what you want about the rabid base of the GOP, the establishment still exerts enormous control over their presidential nomination process. The Republican base hated Romney, and they hated McCain. It didn’t matter. The establishment got its way. As with all things, that will continue to be true until it isn’t and maybe this is another 1964, but I doubt it.
As bad as they are, I think the smart bet would still be Bush, Rubio, or maybe Kasich.
James Lane
The Sun-Sentinel is a Ft. Lauderdale paper. Talking Points Memo made the same mistake and compounded it by claiming the Sun-Sentinel was the most widely read paper in the Miami area. Uh no. That would be the Miami Herald.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hope so, since I hate the smarmy little douche, but I’ve given up trying to predict what will happen with their side. Every time I think Jeb$!? has to be done, I look at the competition, mostly Li’L Marco, and think it has to be Jeb, who I actually think would be easier to beat than Rubio. Then again, with both the thing under Donald Trump’s hair and all the Bushes and their loyalists trolling him from the convention to election day, would Rubio be easier to beat….
Eric U.
I’m sure some people have lost due to not showing up. The reason the attack is bad for Rubio is that now he has said he doesn’t want to do the job. Justifying your absence like everyone else does blunts the attacks. “I show up for the important votes, but as everyone knows, there aren’t many of those” But saying that you don’t like the job is a big problem, Trump is no doubt going to run with it and be effective with it.
Rubio always seemed more of a VP pick anyway. I look at the the candidates, and think that it’s too bad one of them has to win. But the Republicans always rig their primaries that way, somebody wins every time.
Mike R
Other than comedic value, not counting the destructive potential, what constructive purpose does the modern republican party serve?
Jeffro
@Zandar: Yes…one editorial and the whole campaign comes crashing down around his ears…not…
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
I’ll only argue about the length of the cliff notes memo. One page, double spaced, never more. Any more taxes the recipient. And in three pages they might forget what was on the first by the time they get to the last.
@Matt McIrvin:
In a just world, none of them would. But we of course don’t live in such a world so one of them will. It doesn’t have to make sense to us, we aren’t voting for any of them. That’s why I’m going with tRump. I agree with many when they say something will come along and hit him hard. But what? And while he has been and continues to be a buffoon his whole life, this is his swan song. As long as he has support he’s going to stay in. If he loses several primaries then maybe I’ll believe he’ll drop out.
cokane
Rubio’s done because of one op-ed in an Orlando paper? Puhlease
This guy is relatively young and from a perennial swing state. You might want him to go away, but he won’t. I remember when everyone on here was gloating that he was done after his SOTU response. How’d that work out?
C.V. Danes
@Ruckus: I think basically the good people of Florida want Rubio to do what he is being paid to do: represent them in the Senate. He can run for president on his own time or resign his Senate seat.
cmorenc
@Jon Wiesman:
If Hillary Clinton wins the general election in 2016 (which IMHO is more likely than not, especially if the GOP nominee is extreme-right) – she would do well in the interim between November and taking the oath of office in January 2017 to spend considerable time studying how Lyndon Johnson’s presidency came undone, especially during its last two years – it wasn’t even mainly over southern white resentment over the Civil Rights legislation passed in 1964 & 1965, but rather over an increasingly tumultuous domestic civil environment generated by the increasingly divisive Vietnam war misadventure and urban unrest in big cities, and a deeply disaffected left wing of his own party. A Hillary Clinton presidency might become more at risk from disaffected Sanders-istas than from the usual poo-flinging GOPers, whom Hillary seems to understand how to deal with.
Amir Khalid
I doubt very much that Marco Rubio’s disaffection with being a Senator is going to derail either his position there or his Presidential campaign. Even if he blows off an important vote for his party. It does suggest a less-than-presidential lack of discretion in expressing himself, though …
C.V. Danes
@Jon Wiesman: <blockquote>Brutal editorial, but I still think Rubio has the best chance of any Republican of winning the general election, if he can win the Survivor: Apocalypto reality show.
There is basically zero chance that any of the Republican candidates will win the general election.
kc
I fail to see the problem. Rubio staying away from the Senate is a win for everyone else.
low-tech cyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly. And that’s why I can’t write off either Jeb or Rubio.
Jon Wiesman
@C.V. Danes: There is basically zero chance that any of the Republican candidates will win the general election
That’s what Democrats thought of Reagan in 1980. “No, no. Gary Cooper for president. Reagan for best friend!”
Hell, it’s what I thought in 2000 about Shrub.
Never sleep on these guys.
Mike in NC
In his fevered imagination, after leaving politics Rubio will lead the 2nd Bay of Pigs invasion, riding barechested through the surf on a white steed. Only then will the people of Cuba rise up and throw off the godless oppressors.
Bobby Thomson
@Danack: I agree that all the energy seems to be with the Trump-Carson-Cruz group, and I don’t see how the other candidates break into it. I just have trouble seeing anyone doing a favor for Cruz. Even his friends hate him.
RaflW
I particularly enjoyed this bit from further into the editorial:
Zing!
Tom
@Betty Cracker:
Feature, not bug.
beltane
@kc: True. If the rest of the Republicans in Congress were as “conscientious” as Rubio, the country would be a far better place.
danielx
Eagerly awaiting a similar editorial from the Dallas Morning News about Ted Cruz, who clearly doesn’t give a shit about being a Senator (and most particularly a legislator) except as a springboard for his presidential aspirations.
Yeah, that’ll happen.
Mandalay
There is a general problem for those who have been voted into office running for president: it is inherently impossible to do the regular job properly while campaigning. That applies to Senators Sanders and Obama, and Governor Clinton just as much as Senator Rubio, the difference with Rubio being he is brazen about not giving a shit.
If you force candidates to resign their office, or suspend their salaries, then the presidency becomes even more of a rich man’s club, and we might never have got President Obama. OTOH, Sen. Graham makes a complete mockery of the process by running while collecting a Senate salary, but not even making it to 1% in the polls.
A step in the right direction would be to reduce the campaign period. For example, formally confine it to (say) six months prior to the date that we vote for a president. Does the nation get any real benefit from having such an absurdly long campaign? And would we lose anything if it was limited to six months?
Barney
British and Irish bookies have Rubio as the favourite for the Republican nomination: http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/republican-candidate
He’s at 2/1 or 9/4; Jeb! and Trump between 3/1 and 4/1; Carson about 7/1 to 9/1; and others even further behind (click on ‘decimal’ under Site Settings on the left if you don’t like the British way of showing odds).
I think it’ll take more than a pissed-off newspaper to bring him down. He’s not openly insane, unlike Trump and Carson, and that will eventually bring them down, because the money holders won’t be able to control or persuade them; Jeb! seems remarkably inept at elections and public speaking, considering it’s the family business and he got elected before. Rubio is the product they can mold and market – “he’s new! He’s Hispanic! He’s NotHillary!”, though I would think their chances of success in the general aren’t high. Neither do the bookies – they put a Democratic president at about 4/6, and Republican about 6/5, and individually, Hillary is odds on (eg 4/5), while Rubio is 2nd at 6/1 or 7/1.
benw
@Jon Wiesman: The voters in the US have the distressing tendency to fling themselves headlong into the arms of the nearest Republican buffoon after 8 years of a Democratic presidency fixing the *last* Republican mess.
shomi
ZERO fuuuks given. They voted for him now they gotta live with it. That also goes for all the people who can’t be bothered to vote at all. If you don’t vote you get the representation you deserve.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@benw: I was happy to hear HRC on the Colbert show mention, more than once, how fucked up the country and the world were in 2008, and that history shows that the economy does better under Dems than R’s. She needs to find a short, sharp line on it, and when it comes to it, I think there’s a Trump quote that says that almost word for word.
But I agree it wouldn’t take much to tip the scales in their favor. I still think ISIS and ebola got them at least two Senate seats last time aroudn (CO and NC).
Roger Moore
@Barney:
Which shows why betting markets aren’t especially useful. They help to aggregate public opinion, but that’s not especially helpful when the public lacks adequate information. Look at how badly Intrade got the 2012 election, for instance.
sherparick
@schrodinger’s cat: Douthat, giving Bill Kristol a challenge as the wrongest man in the world.
The crew at Morning Joe was having a “sad” about hoe Rubio’s interview was such self-inflicted disaster. Joe S. was saying one could run a six month worth of negative ads out of that interview.
RaflW
Zandar @OP says
So, semi-OT, I was just reading a proxy for an investment I inherited from my dad, and as I was reading (and already not liking what I read), I noticed that James R. (“Rick”) Perry is one of the members of the board of Sunoco.
And that board is asking us to approve a new stock incentive plan. And as one reads the proxy, one can’t help but notice that, if approved, each non-executive board member (ie: including the seriously damaged Rick Perry) will receive $100,000 for their efforts. Yeah, I bet they broke a sweat approving a management stock incentive plan. Whoo, tough stuff!
This is how Republicans pay off their idiot ex-gov’t peeps (soon to include Rubio). In black and white. I will be voting no on the proxy, and while it will probably just be an exercise in futility, I’ll write a letter to the chairman telling him how bogus and self-dealing this incentive plan is. I will be looking at when to sell out, too. I’ve been shifting to wind and solar investing.
The 1% and their assigned lackeys really are ripping the rest of us off, and it’s right there in plain view, if we have the time or the accidental reason to notice, as I did this time. Bah.
amk
@Roger Moore: Didn’t intrade collapse shortly after 2012?
japa21
The only difference between Rubio and Palin is that Palin did actually quit the job she hated.
Now, Palin may be a heroine to the fanatics in the GOP, but she has become a laughing stock to many of the non totally insane members of the right. Yet, it could actually be said that she actually was more honest than Rubio.
Yes, I know that some twisted logic needs to be used to support that last statement, but twisted logic is the norm with the GOP.
NonyNony
@C.V. Danes:
I disagree. We’ve had 8 years of a Democrat in office – there is a good chance that voter turnout is going to favor the GOP in crucial swing states. Yes the GOP is doing what they can to alienate huge swathes of voters, but they’re also going to be doing whatever they can to depress voter turnout.
Ohio this cycle could flip either way – it is not a lock for Democrats. We’ve got a Senatorial election this cycle that is crucial for Republicans to win, and so there will be a lot of money coming in to help Rob Portman keep that seat (conservative billionaires know what the important races are). That is going to help whoever the Republican candidate is no matter what – nobody is going to be walking into that booth and voting for Rob Portman and NOT pulling the lever for whoever the GOP nominee is. Even if it’s Bush or Trump. Florida also has a Senatorial election this year and there will likely be brinks trucks full of money backing up into the state to support whoever the GOP nominee ends up being since Rubio is out.
I admit it’s a long shot in a lot of ways – the GOP nominee basically has to flip 62 electoral votes from states that voted for Obama in 2012 to the GOP. Ohio + Florida is only 47 so they’d need 15 more and I don’t know what path they’d need to take to get that (a big upset in Illinois? Wisconsin + Iowa? Wisconsin + Colorado? But it’s not completely out of the question that they could still win it – especially if the economy tanks in the next year.
gvg
I can’t imagine any of these fools winning even the primary. Someone has to win it. Now I am actually wondering about Romney (almost completely joking) After one of them does win it, they have to go on and campaign in the general which will be months long and during that time I think they will implode and or display more incompetence so that they will actually lose support. On the one hand you have a party of angry voters with grudges against everyone who ever made them feel stupid and are trying out worshiping non experts, and on the other hand I think the really smart ones aren’t running and possibly all left the party anyway.
We get mad at the DNC not running someone for every office in the country but it is actually hard to get people to run when they are going to lose. It gets a reputation that makes it harder later on and it cost money and time. If the GOP has any “good”candidates, they have not thought this was a good time to run. It was already clear that the base wants to let it’s crazy hang out. We talked in the last election how it would be good if the extreme guy got the nomination and lost in a blowout so that the GOP voters would finally realize their views were not the majority of the country. The establishment guy won again so they got to hang on to their illusion that a more pure candidate would have run.This time is headed that way it’s just I can’t see who the pure example should be as all of them have flaws as I understand the crazies positions.
Remember before it started we talked about the historical pattern of the GOP was always pick the next in line, and we speculated if it was Sanatorum? Nothing is going like that. We don’t have any real idea. But we thought we did before.
boatboy_srq
I usually like the Sun-Sentinel, but the writers in this case are clearly missing the bigger picture. Frankly, Rubio not attending to Senate business might actually be a good thing – for the nation and for the specific concerns the paper cites.
ET
I can see the general election ads now if Rubio got the job (but with a bit more finesse and doom/gloom music):
Marco Rubio was elected to the Senate but he got frustrated and tired so he decided not to do his job as Senator.
Is this the type of man you want to be your president?
Will dealing with the Iranians be too frustrating?
Will getting budgets passed be too frustrating?
Will he decide he doesn’t like being President?
Will he continue to do the job of being President of the United States?
Punchy
Uh….hmmm. Take off-shore betting odds as you like, but they currently have him with the best odds to win the nommy. I dont know why, but they do.
boatboy_srq
@ET: Seems a valid complaint for the entire GOTea, especially considering a) McNasty’s habit of holding press conferences demanding briefings at the exact same time the briefings he demands are being held, and b) a certain half-term governor who left her post to play Reichwing gadfly on the pResidential campaign trail.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
But it may come back to haunt him if he becomes the GOP candidate. Clinton will run ads reminding Floridians about Rubio not caring about voting in the Senate, and Rubio not caring about being a senator for Florida.
It’s really hard to envisage Rubio becoming president if he can’t even win Florida.
bemused
Republicans get more batshit crazy by the day. How is that even possible! I know I can’t stop watching this train wreck but am taking mental health breaks pulling old fiction books off my shelves and I reread A Wrinkle in Time and Bimbos of the Death Sun this week. Very therapeutic but I am going to run through my anything but political books long before Nov 2016.
boatboy_srq
@Cervantes: One wonders whether the Sun-Sentinel paid this much attention to Rubio’s shenanigans in Tallahassee.
Mandalay
@ET: This.
Clinton should sign you up for her campaign.
Fair Economist
@Mandalay:
Actually, no, at this stage Senators can still do their day jobs. Paul and Sanders are still showing up for almost all votes. Rubio and Cruz missing so many votes is a choice. If you’re less interested in doing your job than Paul, a man who plagiarizes entire chapters of his books and makes up quotes rather than actually finding them, you have a problem.
Once the primaries start, yes, it’s normal to miss most votes. Obama, McCain, and Clinton all missed virtually all votes in 2008 when they were campaiging
Frankensteinbeck
Hell if I know what’s going to happen. I will quote @Matt McIrvin for absolutely nailing it.
In a situation like that, who knows?
@Danack:
When polled, Carson supporters were enthusiastic about his anti-establishment related positions in the 40-50% range. They were enthusiastic about his racism related positions in the 70-80% range. Trump went straight from nobody to front runner when he said Mexicans were rapists and murderers.
It looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, guys.
Hawes
Rubio is the only guy I can see winning on their side – both the nomination and the general.
Roger Moore
@benw:
There really isn’t enough evidence to draw that conclusion. The scenario you’re describing (8 years of Democratic presidency) has happened all of twice in the past 50 years. In one case, the voters preferred the Democrat by a small enough margin that the Republicans were able to steal the election, and in the other the Democrat had the country embroiled in an unpopular war. If you go back further, you encounter a period where the Democrats held the presidency for 5 consecutive terms. There simply isn’t evidence to support the idea that the voters will abandon the Democrats because they’ve been in office for too long.
benw
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: agreed. And @NonyNony: agreed. It’s not likely, but it could be closer than we think especially if the Democratic candidate makes mistakes or the media goes seriously into the tank for the Republican candidate. Maybe those things are actually pretty likely, and Democrats have been spoiled a little by two flawless campaigns from a really charismatic candidate (hi, Barak!).
And like NonyNony pointed out, I fear that an economic dip or – God forbid – terrorist attack in the US from the ME in the next year and US voters will trample each other to vote for the Republican screaming to bomb now! and bomb hard!
Matt McIrvin
@benw: Any blanket statement about US presidential elections has the problem that before you can get any kind of significant sample of them, the national situation has substantially changed.
It’s true that there have been remarkably few runs of successive Democratic Presidents who didn’t get into office as VP when their predecessors died. But the national Democratic Party only becomes something recognizably similar to its modern version with FDR, and civil rights doesn’t fully align in the modern way until LBJ and Nixon.
So our evidence for the public’s discomfort with keeping Democrats in office is basically LBJ screwing up in Vietnam; Carter presiding over a confluence of shitstorms at the end of the 70s; and Al Gore fumbling his 2000 campaign because he was scared by the Clinton impeachment, eking out a probable close win anyway and getting cheated out of that. I’m not sure you can extrapolate to a law or even a real tendency.
Brachiator
@Zandar:
Bush has loser stank on him and may not be able to shake it off. Trump and Carson would be insane choices, and I know that GOP voters are furiously unhappy. But insane? Won’t know until actual primaries to see how they actually vote.
That may leave Cruz as the compromise candidate for the Republicans. Would you be happy with that?
Be careful what you wish for.
TG Chicago
So Rubio took a personal Obamacare subsidy while his state of Florida refused the Medicaid expansion?
I mean, yeah, senators don’t get to vote on whether their state takes the Medicaid expansion, but he didn’t exactly fight for Florida to take the money to help poor people.
But he was happy to take whatever money he could get for himself.
lol
@cokane:
He’s not running for re-election and he won’t get elected President. Those predictions have worked out pretty well tbh.
TG Chicago
Of all the crazy things that Republicans say, I find it odd to assume that this one will utterly destroy a candidate. It won’t.
It will absolutely be hung around his neck if he makes it to the general election, and it may hurt, but you’ve got Trump and Carson saying just awful things and they’re winning. Jeb is an uninspiring gaffe-machine, and he’s still the #1 establishment pick. Kasich is the supposedly-sane one even though he said during a debate that we should fight Islamist ideology by showing them how awesome the Judeo-Christian mindset is.
It’s a madhouse. This will not kill Rubio’s chances.
maya
Who cares about Rubio. Feel the moBENtum.
OldDave
@James Lane:
That’s unclear. The circulation numbers for the two papers are neck and neck, and the Wiki pages for the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel both claim they are the largest paper in the area.
WereBear
@sherparick: Douthat works at it. Kristol has a freakin’ gift.
benw
@Roger Moore: @Matt McIrvin: You both are correct, but evidence be damned! I’m feeling cynical this morning.
And on the other side, GHWB and GWB were mired in recessions (and an unpopular war – man did W really have a shitty presidency) when their party was thrown out of the White House. So maybe the evidence points to a tendency to only throw the bums out if things get screwed up during their presidency (the exception here being Gore and he of course was ROBBED). So Democrats are hoping for 1. no disasters in the remainder of Obama’s presidency and 2. a non-fumbled 2016 campaign.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: On the other hand, I think the pattern of the midterm electorate turning against the incumbent party with the Presidency (especially if it’s the Democrats) is very real. The biggest exception in recent history was clearly induced by the 9/11 attacks, and the second biggest happened after the Congressional Republicans had been spending months embarrassing themselves by impeaching Bill Clinton.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump says that Bush fucked up so much even Lincoln (best ever GOP president) could not get elected.
It works especially well against a Bush to say, as HRC has: “The last two times Bushes have been President they have wrecked the economy and Democrats have made it MUCH better. Why do you want to let them have a third chance at it?”
Josie
@Brachiator: This is the scenario that worries me the most.
catclub
@Brachiator:
I think Cruz/Rubio or Rubio/Cruz GOP ticket is a real possibility. Also very weird.
MattF
@catclub: Well, if Cruz is anyone’s VP, my free advice is “Watch your back.”
Brachiator
@Danack:
The Bush family is working the GOP establishment hard to keep Jeb!’s hopes alive. On the other hand, recent reports indicate that a number of money men still love Cruz.
Much will depend on who shows strongly in the primaries, especially if the popular appeal of Trump and Carson does not translate into votes.
Betty Cracker
@Josie: I share your concern to the extent that any hairball the GOP horks up will automatically get 50 million or so votes, and I wouldn’t want a kook like Cruz within a thousand miles of the nuclear launch codes. But Cruz strikes me as much less electable than Rubio. He’s a shrill, extremist prick who comes across as totally unlikable.
Of course, so is my current governor, Rick Scott — the worst retail politician I’ve ever personally seen and a man whose credentials as a human being are much in question — who was nonetheless elected twice. So nothing is impossible. But I’d be less nervous in an HRC vs. Cruz election than I would be during an HRC vs. Rubio contest.
srv
If you people would just allow a Constitutional Convention, we could insert a recall clause into it for elected officials and perhaps judges.
Peale
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think Rubio has beliefs per se. As someone pointed out he’s an ex-mormon who is now both a Catholic and a Protestant depending on which Sunday it is and where he wants to be seen. Cruz on the other hand is as nutty as Carson. The advantage of Carson is that it is unlikely he would know what to do for the first few months. Cruz has been studying this for his entire life and knows exactly who he would be attacking. Given the choice between Cruz and Carson, I guess I’d go with Carson and buy ourselves three additional months before we sunk into the sea.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: WaPo has an interesting story about how Cruz befriends the money guys.
Peale
@Eric U.: And the reasons he gave for not liking the job aren’t actually very compelling. It’s hard and full of procedures! Yeah. O.K. and the presidency is just freedom and writing dictatorial statements. No legal hassles there, I’m sure. Never a late night is called for.
SFAW
@gene108:
I have just the guy to take him on – experienced politician, former governor, has run astounding campaigns in the past, has experience within both the Republican and Democrat Parties. Plus, he’s already considering a run for Congress.
And his name will definitely appeal to Cristians
Betty Cracker may have heard of the guy
SFAW
@ET:
Excellent ad copy. But a shortened riff on that was “Sarah Palin 2012! Someone Else 2014!”
JustRuss
@NonyNony:
And let’s not forget their ability to gin up a crisis, with plenty of help from our “liberal” media: ebola anyone? I’m dreading Fall 2016, there’s going to be some kind of faux shitstorm saturating the airwaves to get everyone nice and scared and show how incompetent our Democrat preznint is.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s meaningless. They are proposing having Congress “cap” testing at 2% of time, but that’s meaningless too. Most states are well under “2%” and it’s just a made-up number anyway. The complaint doesn’t have anything to do with the actual time spent taking tests, as measured by one student taking a test in some theoretical formulation. The complaint is based on the practical reality in public schools. For example, my son’s school spent all or part of 40 days administering federally-required tests last year. They cut that to 15 this year, and they did it without DC, at the state level. The bigger issue is the culture that testing and punishing schools has created. It’s been almost 20 years now. It’s time to clear out the lobbyists and political hacks and ideologues- the whole “ed reform” gang who completely dominate in DC- and get someone who values public schools in there. They never should have allowed the Gates and Walton and Broad foundations to run public education. They don’t value public schools so unsurprisingly they don’t “improve” public schools.
I watched the President’s statement to parents on Facebook and I had already read the Democrat’s proposed testing amendment. It’s a political response to a real problem. I’m encouraged by it only to the extent that it indicates this has finally, finally, reached the President but it would have happened without him, because it’s untenable. It can’t continue. Public schools are at their breaking point, which will happen when you’ve been under what amounts to a politically-motivated assault for 15 years. You know what the President could do for public schools? Stop. Give them time and space to do one or two “reforms” really well instead of this absolute barrage of chaotic and conflicting mandates. Simplify. Prioritize. Fire 100 consultants and replace them with teachers. Do something real.
EthylEster
The Orlando Sentinel is known to some inhabitants of that not-so-fair city as either the Slantinel or the fishwrapper. I have read it many times while visiting relatives there. It is an embarrassment to newspapers….full of accounts of local/state violence and almost zero non-Florida news…unless violent.
So I am surprised to find that I agree with the editorial .
mclaren
@cmorenc:
Things have changed in the last 15 years.
Need I remind you that back in 2000, America seemed prosperous, people still had jobs, the middle class looked as though it was doing well courtesy of that great big dot-com bubble, 9/11 hadn’t yet set off mass insanity in America and converted the USA into a garrison state under undeclared martial law, GDP growth was great, unemployment was low, and we even had a big budget surplus? Back in 2000, the most fiery campaign issue was: how do we spend all that surplus money?
Back in 2000, no one knew who Karl Rove was and the Drunk-Driving C Student looked (from a distance) like an amiable if creepy frat boy billing himself as a “compassionate conservative.” He said “America needs to be a humble nation” and he eschewed nation-building in foreign wars. Or so he claimed. And who could say any different?
Today, America is broke, the middle class is melting away, there aren’t any jobs, GDP growth is in the toilet and 94% of that since the global economic meltdown in 2009 has gone to the top 1%, America has turned into East Germany with a bigger army and you can’t fart without some mugger with a badge asking to see your papers so he can examine them to determine if your papers are not in order, the U.S. is embroiled in multiple different endless unwinnable wars and we’re deploying special ops death squads to 193 of the 204 countries on earth, and we’re stuck in the middle of 7 different economic bubbles each worse than the 2000s-era housing bubble: the college tuition bubble, the subprime car loan bubble, the K-12 charter-school-scam/standardized-testing-scam bubble, the medical-industrial bubble, the “national security” bubble, the prison-industrial bubble, and the dot-com bubble (social media) part deux.
A dead dog could have gotten elected president in 2000 (or governor of Florida) because America was fat, dumb, happy, and seemed prosperous. Now, we’ve realized all that fake prosperity was built on quicksand. So voters have turned mean. They’re angry with the status quo. You actually need to offer something to get elected today.
Jeb’s plan was obviously to outlast the small fry. Trouble is, he’s such a terrible campaigner, and he has so little to run on, that he may not be able to do that. (If he’s such a terrible campaigner how’d he get elected as FL governor? Things were different back then — see above.)
Rubio is trying to offer an alternative to batshit crazy (Trump, Carson) and hated anti-establishment fringe (Cruz, Huckabee) but he doesn’t have the money or the staying power.
Cruz is so widely hated by his own party that he’s trying to hang in long enough for the others to dropout, but even then, he probably won’t have enough traction to get nominated.
Kasich offers no policies that appeal to the Repub base. Times are bad and they want red meat this election.
Trump and Carson offer red meat for a broke electorate in a crashed economy (it’s all the furriners’ fault!), but they’re not serious candidates with real policies, they have no political experience, they’ve never been elected to anything, and neither of them have any credible ideas to fix things aside from racism and immigrant-bashing and tax cuts for the top 1%. That may cut it in the primaries, but voters in the general election will see right through that garbage and laugh them off the stage.
Huckabee is a fringe religious candidate and won’t get much more than the fundamentalist Christian vote.
Jindal is as widely hated as Cruz and has an appeal as restricted as Huckabee’s. Plus, like Huckabee and Trump and Carson, he has no serious policies to offer.
It’s going to be an interesting election.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
So read this “Action Plan” and see what word sticks out. “Should”. Public schools “should” fix this mess that public schools didn’t make. They had little or no input into 20 years of mandates and they’re now directed to fix some of the unintended consequences of 20 years of mandates. That isn’t how you address something or someone you’re “partnering” with. Instead you say what you will do and then you ask the person or entity what they need.
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-testing-action-plan
EthylEster
@Matt McIrvin wrote:
I agree. Too bad we have to talk about this for another year. Very boring already.
PaulW
Considering every workplace I have been required that I show up to work 8 hours a day on average – and in fact one workplace insisting on clocking in/out even for coffee breaks (it was a library by the by) – what Rubio does to avoid doing his ELECTED OBLIGATIONS is a direct insult to myself and millions of other Floridians.
We ought to sue for his wages that he never earned all those days he never showed for work.
J R in WV
@Danack:
Well done work, thanks for doing that analysis and sharing it.
Zandar, who is Felicia, and where is she going? She’s not mentioned in your story except as a parting remark that I don’t grok at all!
mclaren
@Kay:
Out-of-control standardized testing is just part of the society-wide American craze of falsely enumerating everything and everyone with fake metrics.
Nowadays your life is determined by algorithms. K-12 tests are just algorithms: essentially, they measure economic class. So K-12 tests are a self-reinforcing economic sieve. The single most reliable predictor of SAT performance and K-12 grades is whether the kid is born into a high-income family with well-educated parents. In other words, if the kid is born into money.
This even works for IQ tests. Black kids adopted by white parents before age 6 have IQ scores as high as white kids.
Algorithms now sieve everyone, all the time. Credit scores, GPA, Facebook social metrics, minute-by-minute job performance ratings, has has become completely computerized and algorithmized. And it’s wrecking society. Because algorithms are garbage. They’re dumb mindless rote equations that cannot capture anything meaningful about real people in the real world. So Campbell’s Law rules (any incentive always distorts the society so much that the purpose of the incentive gets lost).
China just implemented the ultimate society-wrecking algorithm: a credit score that’s based in part on whether you criticize the government and whether you have friends who do. Coming soon to idiot America, I guaran-fucking-tee you.
If you want to know how this insane halfwitted numerological algorithmization of society is going to end up, watch the Meow Meow Beenz episode of the TV series Community.
Like the stupid self-destructive utterly pseudoscientific craze for eugenics in the 1920s, today’s craze for testing and social metrics will crash and burn so badly that no one will be able to even raise the subject without being shouted down in another 20 years.
mclaren
@Cermet:
Nope. Reagan and all his top aides. Cheney. Plenty of precedents.
MCA1
@cmorenc: Totally agree. Not only will Rubio continue on for a good while longer, but he’ll have a day in the sun to make his case. Right now the shoppers are over checking out the Carson model, but when they kick those tires (starting this evening) they’re gonna deflate in a Herman Cain minute. So the press will elevate someone else in a few weeks when the rest of the candidates are done knifing Carson and his outrageous statements. It’s as likely to be Kasich next as anyone else, but Rubio’s not going anywhere until he gets his turn in the spotlight. No one outside Florida cares about an Orlando Sentinel editorial, and there’s been very little outside the left on Rubio’s no-show as a Senator story this week. Maybe that’ll change, but so far as I can tell this is not some bombshell that’s driving nails in the coffin of his presidential aspirations.
MCA1
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, that’s the calculus a lot of people are trying to work out right now: weighing the percentage chance of each of the given Republicans left of beating Clinton, against the actual damage that given Republican could/would do if elected. For Cruz, it’s maybe a 20% chance he wins if he’s the nominee, but then approaching a 100% chance he’d be an incredibly partisan president who could irrevocably harm the republic. With Rubio, it’s maybe a 40% chance of winning, but I’d say a substantially greater chance he’d be relatively moderate as an actual president. Oddly enough, I think T-Rump might end up the least destructive, and most likely to sell out the rabid wingnut base that elected him. Or at least greatly disappoint them, by actually taking up a couple things Democrats want and then giving up on his more obviously ludicrous ideas like the big wall.
EthylEster
@EthylEster:
This is NOT the Orlando Sentinel. It is a south Florida paper called the Sun-Sentinel. I should have known the fishwrapper would never publish something so sensible.
FYI the Sun-Sentinel does not have a city or region in its name.
J R in WV
@srv:
We could also lose the other 9 parts of the Bill of Rights, in a constitutional convention. So, no thanks, “srv”!
Also, “you people” is famously a derogatory insult, so please don’t keep using it.
OldDave
@EthylEster: The Orlando Sentinel and (Broward County) Sun-Sentinel are owned by the same company – Tribune Publishing, which also holds the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune.
And yeah, the Orlando Sentinel trends conservative.
dogwood
Mclaren:
It’s not just “falsely” enumerating; its the obsession with enumerating in general. My son in law has an Ecuadorian travel company. He is always baffled by the American obsession with enumeration. American tourists always ask him what’s the average rainfall in Quito. His answer is “enough”. And it’s true. You only have to stand most anywhere in Quito, look at the Andes, see all the fruit trees and flowers and conclude they get plenty of rainfall.
Cephalus Max
@cmorenc:
Yep, exactly. Let’s not forget that our “allies” (ha ha!) in the supposedly-but-not-actually-liberal mainstream media were 100% responsible for making Shrub a legitimate presidential contender in 1999. They want a real horse race and will create it on their own if necessary, and there are already plenty of indications that they may settle on Rubio as the Repub winner.
Methinks Zandar is way out ahead of the game on this one. That editorial is meaningless to many Republican voters. Remember that they think government is pointless anyway, so a duty-shirking senator is just fine. (Somehow the same is not true, however, of any non-military actual employees of the Federal government, who, by definition, are all worthless regardless of whether they are working or not. Cognitive dissonance is not a problem in these circles.)
Betty Cracker
@MCA1:
That’s the calculus my Trump-curious uncle is making. He’s not a wingnut, per se, and isn’t a racist, but he abhors the Clintons, gave up on Obama after about a year and is convinced that establishment politicians in both parties are selling us out and dooming the republic. I think he’d vote for Trump over Clinton. If it’s Bush / Rubio / Kasich vs. Clinton, I suspect he’ll sit the presidential election out.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Who has this year’s model of Karl Rove working for them? That’s the candidate to watch out for.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I always appreciate your Ohio view.
sm*t cl*de
@schrodinger’s cat:
Carson’s religious principles are negotiable… if you don’t like them, that’s fine, he has other religious principles. That’s why the Talibangelists like him despite his nominal membership of a weird barely-christian cult… ultimately he has the kind of piety they recognise, the healthy hypocritical kind.
Barney
@Roger Moore: Who would you put as favourite, then? Bookies aren’t just reacting to who is currently placing bets, on the whole (some do fix their odds purely that way, though – on that site, they’re the 3 off to the right), but have someone setting the number based on their guess on how the race will develop, as well as the bets they’ve already taken.
Bush does seem pretty bad at campaigning at the moment. Trump and Carson are both outsiders, and there really hasn’t been a successful candidate like that before (Eisenhower may not have been a politician, but he was a known and respected national leader). Rubio might start to screw up once the spotlight is on him, as Bush is, and Bush could recover in time, and he has the money if it doesn’t desert him. But I think Rubio’s place as favourite is justified.
mclaren
If you want to see how deeply evil inappropriate numerology is when applied to social policy, read this article:
Texas uses fourth grade reading scores to project the number of prison cells they’re going need 10 years later.
It does not seem to occur to anyone running Texas that if you build lots of prisons, America’s injustice system will automatically expand the supply of prisoners to fill the available jail space.