Donald Trump supporters in Sarasota speak out
It would be more than two-and-a-half hours before Donald Trump would appear, yet there were already hundreds of people standing in the pit area in front of the stage at the Robarts Arena in Sarasota, making sure they had a good spot last Saturday morning to see the man who has dominated American politics in 2015. Among those excited to be up front that early was James Bankes, a 51-year-old St. Petersburg resident. A political independent who leans to the right, Bankes says he didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election, and didn’t support Rick Scott for governor last year. He’s all in for Trump in 2016, however. “He’s the face of change, ’cause he’s not so partisan. He’s not a politician,” he says. “And while he hasn’t outlined all of his plans, he plans to manage. A lot of people think you have to have some type of resume to run the country. Well, no president has ever had a resume to run the country, but he has a resume to think logically, to think intelligently, and listen to what people feel, and say that’s how we need to move. So, often politicians just go in their own direction, no matter how they were voted in. That’s what people are fed up with.” The message about the 2015-2016 campaign has been characterized on the GOP side as one about the voters rejecting politics as usual and celebrating outsiders. That certainly explains a lot of Trump’s appeal. That and the fact that he’s unencumbered when it comes to worrying about offending anybody, which the crowd in Sarasota celebrated. Bradenton resident Rich Gross had been carrying a sign criticizing Hillary Clinton before another member of the crowd took it away from him. He said he loves the way Trump “tells it like it is” and isn’t a career politician. Gross said that he’s totally disaffected by politics. When asked why, he blamed the current occupant of the White House. Actually, he can’t even bring himself to say Barack Obama‘s name, instead referring to him as, “That guy.” You mean Barack Obama? “You can call him whatever you want,” says Gross. “I call him other things. He (Trump) talks like the common man, speaks about what we want to hear.” Gross says he thinks a Clinton vs. Trump election won’t even be close at the end, with the real estate magnate becoming commander in chief. “I don’t think America is that stupid,” he says of any other result. “Unless all the people with the handouts vote for her.” The question about government handouts has always been a persistent issue with conservatives, and feels amped up larger than ever in the Age of Obama. When I ask Gross if he thinks that’s out of hand now, he responds, “How do you think Obama got elected for eight years?” Nicole Affatao from Lakewood Ranch says she’s also tired of “everybody coming here for a free ride,” more of a reference to the undocumented immigrants who Trump claims he’ll be able to deport en masse. But she does believe in a social safety net. “People who need it, so be it. They need it. But that’s not a way of life. That’s not a lifestyle.” Tampa resident Shelby McIntyre says he thinks Trump’s tough talk on immigration will fold into a more pragmatic approach if he ends up getting the Republican nomination. “I think we’ll hear in the near future, as we get closer. It’s going to be one of those, ‘you know, I thought about that, this is how we’re going to handle it.” McIntyre, a Democrat who says as of now he intends to support Trump next year, believes that the New York City businessman is tapping into the hard-core conservative voter by making his claims about deportees. “People say he’s going to divide people. Listen, this is politics. It’s a show. He is being hard-core right now. I think he’s going to dial it back, I think he knows he can’t deport that many people, I think they’ll be some self-deportation.” None of the people interviewed expressed much interest in the other Republican candidates, except for Affatao, who expressed her ardor for Ted Cruz. “He’s a brilliant man,” she said of the Texas senator. She said she’d love to see a Trump-Cruz ticket. “We need a businessman and we need somebody who knows politics. The combination. Oh My God, yeah!” “I thought that Jeb was a respectable governor for the state,” said Tampa resident Jim Lucier. “I think Mr. Trump’s right — Jeb’s low energy. He certainly hasn’t distinguished himself in the debates, I just don’t think he’s bringing his message very well.” Regarding Marco Rubio, Lucier calls him a good man and good public servant, but said he certainly fits that career politician resume that he’s not in the mood for. “I’m interested in an outsider candidate,” Lucier says. “But one that I thought that has the intellect, the charisma, the ideas and the strength to lead the country.” Most of those interviewed by Florida Politics seemed to have no issue at all with the many controversial comments that the Republican presidential front-runner has said since entering the race earlier this year. But James Bankes says that Trump’s most recent comments regarding New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski went too far. “This latest one, where he flailed like he was disabled, was a little outrageous,” Bankes said about Trump’s mocking of the disabled reporter. “But in the end if you think about it, so many politicians say lies and ridiculous things with a straight face. Maybe they don’t have dramatics with it, and maybe they don’t have antics with it, and maybe they don’t say it as if they’re a regular lay person. They say it in an articulated, pre-canned fashion speed, when really all they’re doing is the same thing. And it’s called they’re mocking us. They mock us regular people for like we don’t know any better, and I’m in power, so deal with it!” “Nobody
Carly Fiorina says she is the leader the world needs in a time of terror
If you’ve followed any of the stump speeches of the 15 Republican candidates still standing in the race for the presidential nomination, you know that everyone of them spends considerable time criticizing what they call the fecklessness of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton‘s foreign policy. So in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris apparently committed by the Islamic State on Friday, most of the candidates who appeared at the Republican Party of Florida’s Sunshine Summit on Saturday in Orlando had a target rich environment in which to attack. Speaking in her staccato style that has won her acclaim on the campaign trail, Carly Fiorina delivered an intense message of U.S. exceptionalism and boasted extensively about her credentials to lead the nation (and the world) in the continuing war on Islamic terrorism. “Our most pressing and immediate national security challenge is radical Islamic terrorism around the world, and here at home, both lone wolves, and packs of wolves,” Fiorina said to a cheering crowd. “ISIS must be confronted and it must be destroyed and we must call it what it is.” “No, Mrs. Clinton. No, Mr. Obama. Climate change is not our most pressing national security challenge,” she commanded, again to whoops and cheers throughout the hotel ballroom. No candidate on Saturday elicited such enthusiasm. Listing important European and Middle Eastern allies by name who she says are fighting ISIS on the ground, Fiorina promised it would be a new day for them if she was elected president. “All, every single one of them has asked the United States of America for support. For weapons. For material. For intelligence sharing. Mostly, this administration has said no. I. Will. Say. Yes.” As the former head of Hewlett-Packard has said in the debates and on the campaign trail, her first two phone calls would be to “my good friend, Bibi Netanyahu,” to tell him that the U.S. will standby Israel always and forever. Her second call will be to the Supreme Leader of Iran (who she said may not take the call). He’ll get the message, she says, which is to say, new president, new nuclear deal. That wasn’t the end of her boasting about her national security cred. “I understand the world, and who’s in it. I have operated around the world for decades. In business, in charity, and in policy. I have held the highest security clearances available to a civilian. I have advised the CIA, the NSA, departments of Defense, Secretary of State, Homeland Security. We need a president who will speak. He will see. Who will act on the truth. She must understand,” as the crowd erupted. “She must understand how truly exceptional this nation is, and call evil by its name.” “Others will not call it Islamic terrorism, ” she added. “I will, and I have the courage to lead.” She concluded by invoking Margaret Thatcher‘s comment that she wasn’t ready to manage the decline of a great nation. “We’ve been managing the decline of this great nation for far. Too. Long. Now.” All in all, it was another impressive performance. Yet so far, the robust fundraising and poll numbers haven’t followed suit.
Rand Paul says GOP should know about Marco Rubio’s “secret” deal with Chuck Schumer on immigration bill
Although nearly every presidential candidate at Florida’s Sunshine Summit on Saturday in Orlando was talking about getting stronger on defense in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was the exception to that doctrine. Speaking about the dangers of higher federal debt, Paul said that there are some in the GOP who say it doesn’t matter what the money is for, even if it’s for the military. “If we’re going to spend a trillion dollars of new money that’s going to be added to the debt, does that make us stronger or weaker?” he asked, echoing the attacks he made on Florida Senator Marco Rubio in last week’s debate in Milwaukee. Paul also took on Rubio for ignoring requests from him (and all other Republicans, he said) in adding an amendment to the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill. Paul said his amendment would have added more scrutiny to foreigners who visit, study or immigrate to America. “Your Senator in fact, opposed me on this,” Paul said. “I tried to pass something that I think was a conservative proposition to the immigration bill.” Paul elaborated on this notion with the media afterward, and said that Rubio’s “secret” agreement with New York Senator Chuck Schumer and other Democrats to block all GOP amendments to get the legislation passed is now well known. “That’s going to alarm some conservatives, ” he warned, adding that an amendment to check annually on how secure the border from Republicans was also rejected. “I was always disappointed that Marco Rubio voted against that, and probably not that many people know that. But we’re in a presidential cycle now, and we want to make sure that every Republican across the country knows that he blocked conservative amendments to the immigration bill, and in particular, my amendment did provide more scrutiny on people who might be coming here to attack us.” Paul emphasized that the U.S. spends more on defense than the next top 10 countries combined. Paul’s speech in many ways wasn’t different from the one he delivered back in Sarasota this past winter, where he bashed Hillary Clinton on Benghazi, and criticized the U.S. State Department for what he says were misplaced priorities. But Paul is reaching out now more to those fiscal hawks who can’t abide the $19 trillion in debt that the government has reached under Barack Obama. And it seems to be the prism that he looks at every issue, both foreign and domestic. “I think that the debt is a great threat, I think it’s a threat to the very foundation of our country,” he said early on in his speech, eliciting a large round of applause. He expressed fears the further in debt we go, the more peril there is to the country’s future. There is considerable question whether the Republican Party of 2015 — especially the day after Paris — is in the mood to hear such an emphasis on not spending more on the military.
Jim Gilmore blasts “fascist talk” on immigration among Republicans
How little respect has Jim Gilmore received in his quixotic bid for the presidency this year? Well, when your poll numbers are considered to be so paltry that you’re not even invited to the early non-prime time GOP presidential debates, that’s a pretty good sign about what the party (and cable news executives) thinks of you. But the former Virginia Governor and RNC Chair is indefatigable, and there he was on Saturday at shortly before noon addressing hundreds of Florida Republicans at the Sunshine Summit at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel in Orlando. In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, Gilmore shifted the majority of his 20-minute speech to how he dealt with terrorism as Governor of Virginia in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But his most interesting remarks were when he said that the Republican party was making a mistake with their harsh rhetoric regarding immigration during the current campaign. “We as a Republican Party seem to be on the attack against the Latino community, and of Latinos who live among us,” he said, preceding that remark by saying he wasn’t sure the audience would welcome them. “We seem to be expressing attacks on the Constitution, when we threaten to take away birthright citizenship from people in this country.” Gilmore said he didn’t think much of Donald Trump‘s call this week for a “deportation force’ to drag millions of undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. “To rip up our society at the very time that we need unity in the face of these challenges. I want you to know, this is fascist talk. It is unworthy of the great Republican Party of the United States. It may be acceptable to some people, but it is not acceptable to me.” There was some scattered applause, but not much. Later on in a Q&A with reporters, Gilmore said that though it may be “fashionable” to speak so disparagingly about Latinos in the GOP circa 2015, but he won’t do it. “I reject it. I think it’s bad for the party. I think it’s unacceptable for the Republican Party, and frankly, it’s bad public policy for the United States,” he said, adding that he does believe that the U.S. needs to bulk up on border security and does not believe in granting a pathway to citizenship for those who broke the law in crossing the Southern border. He questioned whether a deportation force could even be assembled in a constitutional fashion now. “Load people up on buses and trains and send them someplace, ripping families apart? That is awful policy, and a terrible message for us to be sending.” Gilmore added that the tough rhetoric employed by Trump, Ted Cruz and others is going to be a problem for the GOP in states like Florida, California, Texas and other states with large Latino populations. “The Republican Party is going to have a real challenge being elected to the presidency in 2016 if we kept sending this message and nobody stands up and contradicts it.” Gilmore may be struggling in the polls, but his stance echoes Jeb Bush and John Kasich in looking more toward a general election strategy in discussing immigration — but doesn’t appear to be what GOP primary voters — including in Florida — really want to hear now.
In Orlando, Jeb Bush says leadership is about listening, learning, not talking trash
An optimistic Jeb Bush delivered a yes, energetic speech before a largely supportive crowd at the Sunshine Summit in Orlando Friday afternoon. The former Florida Governor always notes his time in leading the Sunshine State, but seemed to throw in even more references to his accomplishments in office before the home state crowd. The message is that he accomplished a lot between 1998-2006, and that he can replicate that on the federal live. Twice in the speech he seemed to take a shot at Donald Trump, saying that leadership was about listening and learning. “Leadership traits by the way, that are grossly underestimated in the world we’re in today where you’ve gotta be the big guy on stage and talk trash and talk in a way that disparages people. Listening and learning is the way that you lead,” he said with emphasis. After discussing the lives of some vulnerable Floridians that he’s encountered along his political career, he told the crowd that the reason he was talking about them was because that’s what it was all about — the people, and not the slick speakers, again a shot at the GOP front-runner. “It’s not about the big personalities on the stage. It’s not about who can give the great quip. It’s not about that. It’s about building a society that is loving, that is caring, that is aspirational. Where people believe again in the American dream. Where they have the tools to achieve earned success their own way.” the most vulnerable in our society need to be in the front of the line, “we need to be on their side.” He took plenty of shots at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and “the left” overall, making the argument that liberalism is about giving up on people and trusting too much in Big Government. “Hillary was a United States Senator for eight years. You know how many bills she sponsored that became law? Three. Naming a highway, naming a post-office, and naming and monument,” Bush said, before comparing it to his record in Florida of “taking on very powerful interests,” specifically saying he took on the teachers unions when he implemented his education reforms that included school vouchers. “Should I be president of the United States, I promise you I won’t be a divider in chief,” he said in knocking Obama. “I won’t be an agitator in chief. I’ll be a commander in chief, because that’s what we need,” with some in the crowd particularly enjoying that line. Bush said he would fight for a balanced-budget amendment, implement a six-year lobbying ban on elected officials after they leave office and propose a version of a line-item veto system. He also said he’d freeze federal employment, “just like we did in Florida.” But the question remains if the GOP primary electorate cares what Bush did in Florida a decade ago. He believes that they ultimately will.
Regarding Islamic terrorists, Lindsey Graham says he’d “kill every bastard he could find”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham gave an extremely low-key speech at the Sunshine Summit in Orlando on Friday afternoon, concentrating on foreign policy and his concern that the Republican Party could be blowing the Hispanic vote with candidates’ tough talk on immigration. Graham isn’t going anywhere in the GOP presidential race, and he essentially acknowledged that in his speech, talking more about how the Republican Party can win the presidency, not how he can personally. He spent a considerable amount of his 21 minutes on stage blasting Hillary Clinton‘s tenure as Secretary of State, specifically about her role in the Benghazi controversy. “A commander in chief is supposed to comfort the families … not lie to them,” he said in reference to how Clinton spoke with the families of the four Americans who died in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 about a disturbing anti-Islamic video. It’s since been reported that she was emailing daughter Chelsea and two foreign governments that it was a terrorist attack. “The world is falling apart,” Graham warned. “I’ve never seen more danger than I do today. The last thing you want to do is continue the foreign policy of Barack Obama. The the worst possible outcome is to promote Hillary Clinton, because when people needed her, she should have had their backs, but she was not there.” He added that while some people think Benghazi doesn’t matter, he disagrees. “It matters a helluva lot. The next president of the United States needs to know what they’re doing or we’re all going to pay a heavy price.” In speaking about radical Islamic terrorists, Graham talked tough. “I would kill every one of those bastards that I could find,” he declared, speaking quietly and receiving tepid applause. He said that if elected he would call the Ayatollah in Iran and cancel the recent nuclear deal, and called Iranian leaders “religious Nazis.” On the domestic front, Graham said he worries about the GOP losing the Hispanic vote in 2016, and said the country needs to increase its legal immigration numbers, because of a declining U.S. population. “I don’t think we’re going to deport 11 million people,” he said in a direct rebuke to Donald Trump. He then went on to tout how religious and anti-abortion Hispanics are, and why they should be welcomed to the Republican Party. “To those who say Republicans need to be socially liberal to win an election, you don’t know what you’re talking about, but we have to reach out to faith-based minorities. I intend to do that.” Whether he does that as a leading U.S. senator whose profile has grown in his far-flung run for the presidency is unknown. Also unknown is how long he’ll remain in the race before Iowa caucus voters go to the polls in February.
Ted Cruz’ attacks on immigration puzzle Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio says he and Ted Cruz have similar stances on immigration, which is why the Texas senator’s shots at his record on that volatile subject the past few days have surprised him. “I’m puzzled and quite frankly surprised by Ted’s attacks, since Ted’s position on immigration is not that much different than mine,” Rubio told a crowd of reporters in Orlando at the Republican Party of Florida’s Sunshine Summit. “He’s a supporter of legalizing people who were in this country illegally,” the Florida senator said at a news conference immediately after he spoke at the event. “If he’s changed that position, then he certainly has the right to change his position on that issue, but he should be clear about that.” Rubio then said that on other immigration issues Cruz has gone further than he has in trying to accommodate undocumented immigrants. “He wanted to double the number of green cards. He wanted a 500 percent increase in the number of HB-1 visas, so everybody running for president on the Republican side, in one way or shape, supports some form or fashion the legalization of people who are in this country illegally.” Rubio said the question now is what’s the most responsible way to deal with the issue. He then repeated his stance since he began distancing himself from his support as one of the “Gang of Eight” bipartisan Senate group who wrote a comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate passed in summer 2013, but that former House Speaker John Boehner never brought before the House. Rubio’s stance is that there needs to be tighter border security to get the illegal immigration situation under control before there can be any discussion about what to do with the undocumented. He blames the migratory crises of the summer of 2014 and President Barack Obama‘s executive actions a year ago in trying to shield millions from deportation as being the major obstacles against the current Congress working on immigration reform. “The biggest lesson from 2015 for me was how little trust there is in the federal government to enforce the law. Once you prove it to people that it’s working, than I think you’re going to have the support and political space that you need to move forward on modernization and ultimately on dealing realistically with those who are in this country for a significant period of time,” which Rubio says should be about 10 years. For his part, Cruz isn’t backing down one bit in the verbal battle, telling conservative talk show radio host Mike Gallagher earlier Friday, “From Day One I led the fight against the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, stood shoulder to shoulder with Jeff Sessions … and we defeated it.”
In Orlando, Mike Huckabee takes a shot at Disney regarding H-1B visa situation
In discussing immigration at the Republican Party of Florida’s Sunshine Summit on Friday afternoon in Orlando, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took a shot at the nearby Disney organization for their involvement in an embarrassing situation regarding foreign workers. “Let’s not have an immigration policy that displaces Americans,” Huckabee said during the middle of his speech. “For example, under the H-1B process, it wasn’t long ago that Disney — yes, I know that I’m in Orlando, I know it’s the happiest place on Earth — but it wasn’t very happy for the Disney workers who were replaced by foreign workers under an H-1B visa because they were willing to work for a lot less money, and to add insult to injury, the Disney workers were required to train their foreign replacements, before they were ultimately shoved out the door. America can treat its people better than that!” The incident he was referring to took place last fall, when approximately 250 Disney employees were told that they would be laid off, with many of their jobs transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, The New York Times reported, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost. Only 85,000 H-1B visas — designed so foreigners with specialty skills can fill job vacancies left by a domestic skills gap — are granted each year. But critics — including Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson — have complained that U.S. employers exploit loopholes in the system to hire cheaper labor from abroad at the expense of American workers, and there has been talk in Congress about scaling back that program. In a Q&A period with reporters after his speech, Huckabee disagreed with the notion that the GOP was hurting itself with the intense recent rhetoric about immigration. “I think the American people want to make sure that we have control of our borders,” he said. “A country without borders isn’t much of a country anymore, and so it’s not a matter of being more conservative, it’s a matter of being more practical and having more common sense to recognize you have to manage your borders. It’s not so much because you want to keep people out, it’s that you want to make sure that the people that you are allowing in are coming to help make your country better.” He also disputed the notion that he was out of the running to win the nomination, despite his low poll numbers that have relegated him to the early “kiddie-table” debates. He repeated the well documented fact that Herman Cain was leading the GOP presidential race at this time in 2011, as was Rudy Giuliani back in 2007.
Al Cardenas worries about the drift of the current GOP
Al Cardenas‘ perspective on what’s going on with the Republican Party in 2015 is worth listening to. The former two-term Republican Party of Florida Chairman and head of the Washington-based American Conservative Union from 2011-2014 (which hosts the annual CPAC conference every winter) is backing Jeb Bush this cycle, but also has ties to Marco Rubio. Cardenas spoke at the Sunshine Summit on Friday afternoon, but his comments to a handful of reporters in the hallways of the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel in Orlando were as interesting as anything he said on stage. When asked about the state of the national GOP, Cardenas sounded somewhat alarmed. “I’m a firm believer that’s all’s well that ends well. That continues to be my hope. All is not well now. I don’t think the Republican Party as a brand for a long term future can be successful, given what I’m watching. To be successful, you gotta appeal to people’s higher instincts, not lower instincts. You have to inspire people to be better, not to be mad or angry. And you’ve gotta convince them that you can lead them to a better tomorrow, rather than to get even with the bad guys. And if our party is unable to do that, through our eventual leadership, then our party is going to face some long term consequences.” Noting how much success the Republican Party has had nationally since Barack Obama was elected (816 Democratic lawmakers have lost their jobs in state legislatures since 2009, as well as the party taking control of the House and Senate), Cardenas says the contrast is stark when it comes to executive leadership in Washington. “My hope is that whomever we select as our nominee can get the party nationally to meet up with the bar we’ve set up with the states,” he says, adding that he’s not certain at this time if Donald Trump or Ben Carson can beat Hillary Clinton at this time. When asked about the report that Right to Rise, Jeb Bush’s super PAC, may spend millions (perhaps tens of millions) to go after Marco Rubio, Cardenas said that shouldn’t be surprising, since politics always comes down to going after your opponents. “I don’t talk to Mike Murphy (Right to Rise’s strategic leader), as the top-tier gets redefined and we get into next year, all four or five top-tier candidates are going to begin contrasting with each other. Trump’s doing it, Ted Cruz has begun doing it with Marco, Ben Carson has tried to stay out of the fray, but I don’t believe that will last for long. … I think all of them will get into that contrasting business, and I think the only reason you’re paying a lot of attention to it is because of their relationship. If it wasn’t for that, you’d think of it as, ‘Hey, everybody is going to be involved with that.’”
Marco Rubio wants to cut gas taxes by 80 percent
Many political analysts say the reason that Donald Trump and Ben Carson have been the most popular Republicans in presidential polls this year is the fact that they’re outsiders. It’s certainly not because of their policy positions, since, with the exception of Trump’s well known attitude on illegal immigration, the two-front runners aren’t talking that much about policy. Not the case with Marco Rubio. The Florida Senator sends often several statements a day from his office on the issues of the day, and on his campaign website, he’s released eight more policy positions, putting a total of 31 on his site. They include specifics on Cuba, small business owners, families, Social Security and Medicare, transportation, gun owners, health care and the Internet. On transportation, not only does Rubio not want to raise the gas tax which has been frozen since 1993, he actually wants to cut it by 80 percent. “Today, the Highway Trust Fund is running out of money, and the political establishments of both parties are propping it up with the same stale policies of the past,” he says in the post, titled, “A Transportation plan for the 21st Century.” “We can’t keep putting more money into this broken system,” he writes. “Marco will take a new approach in building the infrastructure for the next American century.” Rubio also wants to devolve the action to the states, and repeal the Davis-Bacon Act that he says “inflates” government costs by billions every year and is a “giveaway of taxpayer dollars to labor unions.” On guns, Rubio boasts about what he’s done to protect the 2nd Amendment: Voting to block the Manchin-Bloomberg expansion of background checks Fighting to defund the Department of Justice’s radical “Operation Choke Point” and other federal attacks on law-abiding gun manufacturers and dealers Pushing to bring fundamental Second Amendment rights back to D.C. residents Protecting the Second Amendment rights of veterans and their families Standing against any federal attempt to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines Pushing to make concealed-carry permits function like drivers’ licenses, so gun owners’ constitutional rights don’t end at state lines Opposing U.S. involvement in the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Working to expand opportunities for sportsmen on federal land And on “Family,” Rubio touts his recently announced plan to create a new $2,500 per child partially refundable tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty. Although hailed by advocates for being the first Republican to talk about paid family leave, those same advocates dismissed his proposal, saying tax credits are never an incentive for businesses to offer such benefits.
History shows Marco Rubio resignation would be rare event
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s editorial on Wednesday that called on Marco Rubio to resign “and not rip us off” ignited a number of others to follow suit. It came as Rubio has continued to miss votes in the upper chamber of Congress while on the campaign trail and unapologetic about it. Instead, he’s indicated he doesn’t even really like the job. Historical precedent, though, indicates that if Rubio quit, it would be the exception to usual presidential politics. On his Smart Politics blog, Eric J. Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota writes that since 1972 there have been a total of 50 presidential candidacies by 45 sitting U.S. senators. Only one of these resigned before the presidential election: Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996. Dole only did so, in June 1996, after he had already secured the GOP nomination, and after the last batch of presidential primaries. During the past 40 plus years no other sitting U.S. senator running for the White House cut short their day job before the presidential election. Like Rubio, several of those senators were running for president in cycles in which their term in the nation’s upper legislative chamber was coming to an end – 12 in all: Four opted not to run for re-election: Democrat Fred Harris of Oklahoma (1972), North Carolina Democrat John Edwards (2004), Florida Democrat Bob Graham (2004), and Florida Republican Marco Rubio (2016) Seven failed in their presidential bids but still won re-election to their U.S. Senate seats that cycle: West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd (1976), Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentsen (1976), Washington Democrat Scoop Jackson (1976), Kansas Republican Bob Dole (1980), Texas Republican Phil Gramm (1996), Utah Republican Orrin Hatch (2000), and Delaware Democrat Joe Biden (2008) One is currently running for both offices: Kentucky Republican Rand Paul (2016) And one stat where Rubio would definitely like to emulate Barack Obama: Of those 50 senators who have run for president since 1972, only one – Obama – actually became president. Much has been made of Rubio’s voting record. He’s missed about 34 percent of his from from the start of the year through last week. However, as reported by PolitiFact, from 2007 to 2008, Obama missed more than 64 percent of votes. From 2003 to 2004, John Kerry missed 72 percent of votes, and former Florida Sen. Graham missed about 37 percent of his votes when he ran in 2003-2004. Ironically, the man that Rubio succeeded in the Senate, Mel Martinez, did leave his seat more than a year before his term was set to expire.
News that Ben Carson only became Republican a year ago isn’t really news
Dr. Ben Carson has been getting hammered in recent days for some of his outlandish comments on the campaign trail. Both the New York Times‘ Charles Blow and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson have slammed the GOP presidential candidate for his comments on what he would do if confronted by a mass killer who wanted to shoot him, as well as his invoking Nazi Germany when talking about gun control. Carson has dismissed such complaints, and on The O’Reilly Factor on Monday night, host Bill O’Reilly defended him, saying, “There’s something about you that really annoys the secular-progressives.” But it’s not just liberals who are scrutinizing the retired pediatric neurosurgeon, who has maintained in the top tier of GOP candidates right behind Donald Trump in most national and statewide polls in the Republican presidential contest. On a conservative website called the The American Mirror, blogger Kyle Olson breathlessly reports that Carson never affiliated with the Republican Party until he changed his voter registration in Palm Beach County on October 31,2014. He goes on to writes that Carson was previously affiliated with the Independence Party of Florida, and prior to moving to Florida, he was registered as an independent in Maryland since 2001, not having voted in any primaries through the next 10 years. However, Carson has never been shy about admitting that though he was once a Republican, he left the party decades ago before registering again with the GOP last October in Palm Beach County, where he currently lives. “It’s truly a pragmatic move because I have to run in one party or another. If you run as an independent, you only risk splitting the electorate,” Carson told The Washington Times in an interview last fall before he made the change. “I clearly would not be welcome in the Democratic Party, and so that only leaves one party.” Carson says he grew up as a Democrat but switched his party affiliation to Republican in the 1980s after listening to Ronald Reagan. However, he left the party and switched to being an independent about 15-20 years ago after getting a “sour taste” watching Republicans go after Bill Clinton regarding the Monica Lewinsky affair. “I just saw so much hypocrisy in both parties,” he told the Times. The story was picked up and ran online by conservative news sites like TeaParty.org, WorldNetDaily and the DailyCaller.
