.
Marco Rubio is a young (-enough-for-Repub-purposes) man in a hurry. His youth was supposed to be his big selling point — a shiny new face, not like that old Hillary harridan! Only problem with fresh-faced youngsters, even the quick studies, is that sometimes they repeat nasty stuff the Wise Old Heads would’ve preferred to keep a little more private. His much-mocked talking point was not just the result of a callow lad missing his mark after cramming for the Big Test — it was a code phrase for the Far Right fringes. Mr. Charles P. Pierce, reporting for Esquire:
… Now, it is a sad truth that, while traveling with a campaign, you will hear a candidate say the same thing three or four times a day in three or four different cornfields. But I have been to the rodeo more than once and I can tell you that I never have seen a candidate say the same thing three times within five minutes. The transcript doesn’t really do it justice, but it should be preserved for posterity nonetheless. The next time they put him up on the stage, Rubio’s handlers are going to have to nail his shoes to the floor lest he waft up into the rafters.
The general hilarity has tended to obscure what Rubio actually was saying. (And saying, and saying, and saying…) He was accusing the president of monumental and deliberate acts of subversion in office. This is a stunning charge, especially from a one-term pipsqueak whose memory banks jam whenever he steps an inch beyond his actual depth. There already was some evidence mounting here that Rubio’s momentum coming out of his glorious third-place finish in Iowa had dissipated somewhat. His numbers rose at first, but now they seem to have stalled out. And the way to regain that momentum is certainly not to embody perfectly the caricature that your rivals have created out of you. This should be his defining moment. If it isn’t, then the entire political world owes apologies to both Howard Dean and Edmund Muskie…
I suspect donor class has been reluctant to get behind Rubio for fear he's too callow. Tonight will confirm their fears.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) February 7, 2016
Today, Paul Waldman at the Washington Post:
… [T]o understand what Rubio was trying to communicate, you have to see it on two levels. On the surface, Rubio’s claim about Obama is a defense of his own youth and limited résumé. Some Republicans have said of Rubio that he’s too inexperienced to be president, just like Barack Obama was. So Rubio can counter that argument by saying that despite his short time in prior office Obama has actually been a brutally effective president, skillfully carrying out his nefarious schemes, and therefore experience isn’t all that important. But the real message goes deeper, into the dark heart of the conspiracy theories and twisted loathing of Obama that has persisted on the right for the last seven years…
Just to be clear, when a Republican talks about “the rest of the world,” he doesn’t mean it in a good way. So when Rubio says Obama “wants America to become more like the rest of the world,” he’s saying that Obama is trying to harm America, to bring it down, to weaken it, to punish it, to make it less than it has been and should be.
Let’s pause before we proceed to acknowledge how positively insane this idea is. The fact that it has been espoused by untold numbers of supposedly mainstream conservatives in recent years makes it no less so. It’s one thing to say that your political opponents are wrong, that their plans will fail, that they are unconcerned about problems that you believe demand immediate action, or even that their values are misguided. But it’s quite another to think that they are intentionally seeking the destruction of the country. Yet that is just what Rubio argues….
Dave Weigel, at the Washington Post:
…[T]he idea of Obama as a saboteur, who “knows exactly” how to undermine American greatness, is deeply ingrained on the right… This should be familiar to anyone in the tea party movement, and especially familiar to anyone who’s read the Obama-era work of Dinesh D’Souza. Starting with a 2009 cover story in Forbes, D’Souza posited that the president was “the last anticolonial,” a man inculcated with anti-Western values, whose decisions were best understood if one asked how they weakened America.
“Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America,” D’Souza wrote. “In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.”
Over the next few years, D’Souza adapted that thesis into a book and movie. He found common cause with Glenn Beck, who in his Fox News heyday portrayed every Obama decision as part of a long-term left-wing strategy to destroy wealth and empower the Third World. Beck obsessed over a stock phrase from Obama’s 2008 stump speech — that he would help “fundamentally transform America” — and insisted that he had given the game away…
Ed Kilgore at NYMag, expanding on that thesis:
… This is precisely the 2008 stump speech that a host of Twitter critics confronted me with Saturday night when I suggested Rubio was blowing a dog whistle to conspiracy theorists.
If Weigel and I (and the folks at Media Matters, and probably other commentators) are onto something, then why would Rubio choose to get in touch with his inner Glenn Beck in “moderate” New Hampshire? Well, for one thing, there is a vein of tea-party sentiment in the Granite State, even if Christian-right types are a bit thin on the ground. And for another thing, Rubio is undoubtedly looking ahead to a long string of contests in much more conservative states that begin on February 20 in Nevada and South Carolina. And finally, the whole essence of a “dog whistle” is to say something that the initiated understand at a lizard-brain level as a profound message without other people being offended — a particularly useful device to a candidate like Rubio who is trying to straddle ideological lines in the GOP. To “moderates” and to media observers innocent of the Beck/D’Souza meme (which Dr. Ben Carson has also alluded to), the question of whether Obama is incompetent or just wrong may seem like a less-filling/tastes-great distinction. So there’s nothing to lose by waving a secret freak flag to the citizens of Wingnuttia — unless you wave it one time too many and Chris Christie points and laughs.
Easy enough to laugh, like Jon Chait, that “Marco Rubio’s Debate Spinners [Are] Doing the World’s Hardest Job.” Just the fact that so many of the Wingnut Wurlitzer’s best-paid shills are singing Rubio’s praises should make a sane Democrat suspicious!
It’s something of a consolation to know that Jeb Bush and his superpac(s), if they can’t get Bush III elected, intend to at least destroy Young Marco’s hopes of doing so… this time around. But Rubio’s more than young enough to run again, and by 2020/24/28, he may be experienced enough to blow his dog whistles a little less clumsily.
Mike J
Gilmentum!
emphasis added
Baud
@Mike J: That would be hysterical.
Mike J
@Baud: Honestly, it was never as good after Rory went to Yale.
Eric U.
I can’t imagine how you would manipulate poll numbers to get that result
schrodinger's cat
@Mike J: Did you see, there is going to be a Gilmore Girls reunion on Netflix.
M31
hahaha and Cruz is back to the rounding error he should be?
Baud
@Mike J: At least Rory is good enough to hang around with Ted Cruz.
Mike J
@schrodinger’s cat: I dread it. The last two or three seasons were dire, and then Rory got a job as a 23 year old political reporter.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Paris could put Cruz in his place. The showdown would be epic!
schrodinger's cat
@Mike J: Rory kinda became annoying and entitled after she went to Yale. I never liked any of her boyfriends either, except may be Dean in season 1.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Mike J:
That makes me smile! It would be great if the vote finished this way as it would increase the churn on the GOP side. I would be very happy if the top 5 spots just kept rotating between 6-7 clowns.
jl
How is what Rubio did at the last GOP debate in any way a dog whistle? It was more like an explainer on how Obama is the Anti-Christ Commie Muslim intent on destroying America, and delivered in the fashion of an inexperienced HS debater really excited about the amazing insight.
I don’t see how it helps him. But if he handlers are goofy enough to believe that forcing little Marco to memorize reams of stuff is a good preparation, no telling how they think.
Edit: though, given the Marco debates himself clip in the previous thread, maybe his handlers figure best is to have Rubio memorize whatever will fly on a given night for a given event, and who cares if it will make for many good attack ads later on.
Baud
It doesn’t seem to be remarkable anymore that Trump is actually going to win a state.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Baud: In NH, Im actually little surprised he isn’t ahead by more
Oh Christ, Rachel Maddow asking HRC about the speech transcripts
jl
@Baud: If there is hope for Gilmore, there is hope for Baud! 2016!
Have you thought about a flea collar? You could tuck it under your shirt.
JPL
@Baud: He hasn’t won yet. Feel the ..jeb, gilmore, whoever momentum.
I am so confused though. Sanders was suppose to win in NH and he will probably win, so why all the uproar about Hillary might lose?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: Rachel has disappointed me lately.
jl
@JPL: Media need to generate high ROI information content news product.
Baud
@JPL: Clicks and ratings with false drama.
Mike J
@schrodinger’s cat: Jess was ok. I liked him better on rewatching. The bad boy who was scared of her. It was sort of sweet at the beginning, but got old.
Baud
@jl: Fleas are the least of my problems.
JPL
@jl: @Baud:
Aha.. So in other words it’s all bullshit.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: Somebody else noted that this is Clinton rules redux. Lots of people give paid speeches. Only Clintons have to produce their notes and transcripts.
NotMax
No sooner post it then a fresh Rubio thread comes up. So, repeating:
Video for Markie the Parched.
@jl
And lose the crucial Buddhist and Jain vote?
Baud
@catclub: She’s being treated like a Democrat. If Bernie gets the nomination, he will experience it too.
JPL
IMO.. The republican attack on Bill’s past moral indiscretions are going to fall flat. Many of the electorate are going to look at the man, and say, yeah, right.
schrodinger's cat
@Mike J: I wanted to punch Jess when he was in Stars Hollow. He turned out OK in the the end. I couldn’t stand Logan and his over processed hair.
NotMax
@JPL
Because horse race narrative is baked into the media DNA.
catclub
@jl:
This is where I have a problem, too. Are there really people who believe that making health insurance more widely available is part of a plan to destroy the US? Do they ‘believe’ it cynically? Wholeheartedly?
Is it just Rubio showing his heart is in the right place and taken with a grain of salt?
I have no idea.
Baud
@catclub: GOP base voters believe it, I think.
catclub
@Baud: Perhaps, but I don’t remember Rachel Maddow asking for Barack Obama’s College transcripts.
Baud
@catclub: No. Agreed. Rachel is off her game. That’s why I’m disappointed in her.
Anoniminous
@Mike J:
I think we can safely call that poll an outlier.
Anoniminous
@JPL:
Because people are idiots and Infotainment Mediums need eyeballs to sell to advertisers.
ETA: @jl: said the same thing, nicer
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@catclub: insurance more widely available is part of a plan to destroy the US? Do they ‘believe’ it cynically? Wholeheartedly?
I don’t doubt it. The dark version of the Underpants Gnomes:
1) Help people get health insurance
2) ????
3) Total destruction of all we hold dear.
4) Declaration of Sharia Law for the Muslamic States Of Amerika (Russian, not KKK)
NotMax
@Anonimous
Or (as there are no percentages) a poll of totals from voters at the latest Gilmore family reunion.
jl
@catclub: Dog whistle is good, since you have to explain what it means to too many people, which cannot be done in a campaign easily, and a lot of right thinking moderates don’t want to think badly of the candidates.
But, no, Rubio explicates ugly conspiracy theory BS in detail. And contradicts his previous statements. So, you have the makings of attack ads, with good sound bite evidence the kid talks like wacko, and that he cynically flip flops around.
I guess the thinking is, do whatever it takes to win the base today, care nothing about what happened yesterday or might happen tomorrow, and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you later. Or, like today, they are so arrogant, that they think the weak ass BS that they pump out in response will make all problems go away.
Maybe Rubio people can think exactly one move ahead (or maybe better, zero moves ahead), and proceed on that basis. Which would make him very vulnerable in the general election. I hope that is it.
Peale
@Mike J: I would be so happy with that result. After umpteen hundred debates and meet and greets, the New Hampshirites decide that they’ll toss caution to the wind and go for the guy they’ve not been exposed to.
Anoniminous
@NotMax:
Laughing so hard I hurt.
Baud
He’ll be (1) out of the Senate and (2) much balder.
PhoenixRising
@Peale: There’s a certain logic to it:
“Gilmore: Doesn’t Brag About Ways He’s a Sociopath” fits on a bumper stickers.
Baud
@Peale:
That’s what I’m counting on.
JPL
@Baud: Someone might explain to him the difference between the Sunni and Shia during that time. He could be trainable.
I find it odd that Sander’s is criticized about his lack of foreign policy experience but Rubio is given a pass. I guess refer to my previous comment at 16.. I find a lot of the reporting odd.
NotMax
@Peale
30 names (plus a write-in slot) on the R ballot in NH.
So lots of choices for that other than Runless Gilmore.
Baud
@JPL:
I find that quite unremarkable.
RollSound
@Peale:
An excellent notion! Gilmore = None of the Above!
F
It seems absurd to use dog whistles when your two biggest rivals are using bullhorns.
Baud
Felonius Monk
@Baud: Will you be repeating a memorized, nonsensical talking point 5 times at a debate soon? Your constituents need to know.
Eric U.
@NotMax: I bet the polls didn’t include the guy (Vermin Supreme) wearing a boot on his head. Just imagine if boot guy gets more votes than Jeb?
Betty Cracker
In my line of work, I’ve seen plenty of spin doctoring, brand management and narrative control techniques. Rubio’s looped talking point is 100% bullshit, but it’s designed with one purpose in mind: to inoculate Rubio against the charge that he’s an inexperienced naif…like Obama. You have to look at it from the GOP’s perspective: They are utterly invested in the belief that Obama is a smooth-talking nonentity who used a scant senate term as a springboard to the presidency and then failed due to inexperience.
It’s bullshit, but that’s what they think. Unfortunately for Rubio, on paper, his career is pretty similar — state legislature followed by a single senate term and a run for president. To prevent the “inexperienced naif” label from sticking to their candidate, Rubio’s brain trust came up with a plan to recast Obama as a highly competent mastermind who is deliberately destroying America so they can shove Lil’ Marco out as the savior.
That’s all it is — bullshit spin to polish the turd that is their candidate.
Baud
@Felonius Monk:
Of course not. I’m not some idiot Republican. I will have a diverse array of nonsensical talking points.
jl
@Baud: @JPL:
No one cares at all anymore about issues or reality in the GOP primary. It is a poorly scripted pro-wrestling match. Or maybe an out-of-control Povich/Sprnger jamboree, except just with boorish old dudes, the one chick having been disinvited because she has kooties.
jl
@Betty Cracker: Another problem with that strategy is that it requires the GOP base to follow, or even care about, or actively not actively detest, that kind of double bank shot finesse. Assuming that billiards can be played with turds at balls, of course.
Edit: in other words, it invites Trump using the P-word on ‘lil Marco.
jl
@Baud: The Baud! 2016! nonsensical talking points come out at random. The base is impressed that he is in shape to say anything, rather than face plant himself and pass out.
The required Feats of Strength can have many dimensions, my friend.
Mandalay
@jl:
And that is true of all the Republican candidates. A prerequisite for winning the GOP nomination is demonstrating that you are unfit to govern.
Rubio wants to win the nomination by building a wall, and preventing rape victims from getting abortions, and saying that the current president is deliberately trying to destroy America. He may do it even after his meltdown on Saturday night, but he would get landslided in a general election.
David *Rafael* Koch
This notion that Baud! doesn’t know what he’s doing is fiction.
Baud! knows exactly what he’s doing.
Felonius Monk
@Baud:
That’s reassuring. :-)
SFAW
@NotMax:
Could always opt for Pembrook Burrows. Unfortunately, Rex Morgan and Vaughn Wedeking have passed on.
SFAW
@jl:
P-word???
Peckerwood? Pendejo? Psychopath?
CaseyL
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: I didn’t watch, and won’t, but yes – highly disappointing on Rachel’s part. Maybe HRC can turn it to her advantage, noting that “speech transcripts” have become the new “birth certificate,” and pointing out what a ridiculous non-issue this is. Doubtful, though – I admire Hill quite a bit, but quick off the cuff retorts aren’t her style (I wish they were).
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
Yes. Understand that Obama is black. It’s not just ‘He’s black, so he must be wrong.’ This ties into decades old racist memes. They suspect any kind of social safety net of being a way of taking the money of good, hard-working (white) people, and giving it to lazy (black) people. Obama, the first black president, has achieved the biggest expansion of the safety net in goat-knows-how-long. The obvious inference is that this is taking the money of white people and giving it to blacks on steroids, a redistribution of wealth intended to cripple and destroy white, making them essentially slaves supporting blacks who live in luxury and never work.
Rick Taylor
Let’s dispense with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing!
SFAW
@Rick Taylor:
“Dispel with.”
But, irregardless of that, yes, he does know exactly what he’s doing.
PhoenixRising
@SFAW: Hahahahaha I saw what you did there.
eemom
Fer realz?? Wow. Never thought I’d see him, um, quoted here. Thanks for that intro.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Rubio’s problem isn’t that he’s young or inexperienced. His problem is that he’s 44 years old and still comes across as a lightweight. He’s not going to get anymore substantial in the next 4/8/12 years. He’s at Dan Quayle levels of airheadedness, and if he hasn’t developed any intellectual heft by now, he ain’t ever gonna.
I really don’t get all the paeans to Rubio’s intelligence or savvy that you see at WaPo or Vox or NYT or Politico. The man is a nitwit.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
The fact that these asswipes are the best people the Republican Party could cough up out of how many millions of Republicans in the U.S. just scares the shit out of me. As Ted Cruz’s college roommate said, you could find a better lineup to run for the nomination by choosing names blindfolded out of a telephone book.
And, fuck, we’re talking here about one of the two major political parties in the U.S. I’m glad that the political press is beginning to sit up and take note of this, but, fuck, these guys aren’t really all that much worse than the crop from four years ago–and they weren’t all that much worse than the clowns from 2008. This isn’t some new, unforeseen thing that dropped out of the sky; this has been going on for at least 40 or 45 years.
So, yeah, I’m glad they’re tuning into it now, at long last. But, damn. The only way you should only now be beginning to report on this is if you’ve only been working for the last six months. Anybody who has been writing about American politics and is only now seeing this should be fired and then beaten with a sock full of baseballs.
mclaren
@jl:
I can see where Rubio would think it helps him. The Republican party has gone so far off the rails into batshit insane lala-land that any crazed conspiracy theory is red meat for the yahoos. So Rubio is hoping to boost his numbers with the no-necks, nincompoops, drooling racist slope-brows and sleazy misogynist bully-worshipers who now make up the Republican base.
This is a party that seriously floated the claim that the CIA teleported Barack Obamato Mars in the 1970s. When you’re that nuts, conspiracy theories like Rubio’s seem reasonable…even mild.
Sherparick
@mclaren: One piece of good news is that after months of writing political puff pieces about Rubio and heart warming “immigrant rising” story and his “message discipline,” the media now has an alternative meme about Rubio, that he repeats wingnut sound bites, that he repeats wingnut soundbites, that he repeats wing nut sound bites. But I repeat myself. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/08/marco-rubio-has-another-repeat-glitch-in-new-hampshire/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_campaign820p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
By the way, it is not just Obama trying to destroy America. This is a meme that Rush Limbaugh has been pushing for 25 years, and is imitated by right wing talking heads across America, that “Liberals” want to destroy America, that we Liberals collaborate and sympathize with America’s enemies whether Viet Cong or ISIS Terrorists and destroy the economy so we can construct a socialist ecotopia on the ruins. By the way, Bernie is not the only socialist in the race as far as the Right Wing is concern. They consider Hillary and Bill just as much socialist as Bernie, just less honest about it. Rush repeated conflates and equates “Democrat” “Liberal,” “Socialist,” and “Communist.” So, when Rubio is saying that Obama is intentionally destroying America, he also implies that both Clinton and Sanders want to continue Obama’s work and hence must be defeated by the Right.