It is said that
there is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.
Waaaaay back in May of 2009, four days after the National
Republican Senatorial Committee betrayed its mission, betrayed
Republican voters, and betrayed the Reagan legacy; I, along with eleven other
bloggers, came together to co-blog at a site known as Not One Red Cent.
Back then I was the proprietor of
a blog called No Sheeples Here. That site was taken down in June of
2011. I felt that my effort to get the
message out for conservatism was falling on deaf ears. I had poured so much of myself into politics
that I was burned out.
Before I had reached the end of
my rope though, I
penned a blog post at Not One Red
Cent that I thought was pretty powerful.
Our posts at Not One Red Cent gained the notice of Professor William A. Jacobson
following the 2010 mid-term elections.
Writing at Legal Insurrection,
Professor Jacobson wrote,
“In those first few months they blogged like crazy, and they were voices in the
wilderness.”
“Over time Marco Rubio began to
pick up recognition and support and went mainstream, and NORC posts dropped off
as others picked up the cudgel elsewhere. The rest, as they say, is
history.”
“When that history is written, I
hope people will recognize the impact a few bloggers had in the revolution of
2010.”
The mistake was mine for trusting
Rubio.
On Thursday, June 28, 2013 the
Senate voted to pass an immigration reform bill that most true conservatives
believe gives amnesty to illegal immigrants.
The following day, The Insufferable Airhorn called Marco Rubio (R-FL) to
congratulate him on passage of the bill in the Senate. Rubio didn’t answer the call.
The day before, when the bill
passed 68-32, there was an impromptu press conference and Rubio wasn’t
there. He avoided it like the plague.
Why didn’t he show his face at
the press conference? Why didn’t he take
the phone call? It’s obvious to this
observer that the candidate who was adamant three years ago that an earned path
to citizenship was “code for amnesty” was afraid that his slip in the polls
would fall even farther.
If the bill is enacted it would flood
our borders with 10 million more immigrants by 2023 and 16 million more between
2023 and 2033. It would also provide a permanent welcome for 8 million illegal
immigrants who are already in the country. Most infuriating of all is those immigrants
are expected to be low-skill workers and Democrat-friendly. And if that doesn’t set your hair on fire, they
would pay less in taxes than they would receive in benefits.
The bill would also reduce the
nation’s average wages and education, increase unemployment and shift
more of the nation’s earnings away from wages and into investments, according
to a June 16 report by
the Congressional Budget Office.
“He was deceitful. Not to beat a
long-dead horse, but this guy—and Ayotte, and Dean Heller, and even McCain—all
lied to greater or lesser degrees about this subject to get elected by posing
as stalwart border hawks.”
“One of the most dispiriting
moments I’ve had in this process came this morning on Twitter when some
righties argued to me that I’m overreacting to Rubio’s lies because all
politicians lie. It’s part of their job description. If that’s the new
standard—lie your ass off to get elected because we expect you to—then there’s
no reason to prefer any one Republican candidate to another on actual policy
grounds. They’re all liars, so let’s just elect the guy with the best retail
skills and hope he doesn’t screw us too much once in office. (That’s basically
Rubio’s 2016 campaign slogan.) Two problems with that logic, though.”
“One: Immigration isn’t just any
issue. Rubio didn’t lie about whether he’d support a farm bill or a tweak to
student-loan interest rates, only to renege. Immigration was a core part of his
appeal to conservatives. He ran as an eloquent spokesman for border security
despite left/media identity-politics expectations that any Latino politician
must ultimately support comprehensive immigration reform. And now he supports
comprehensive immigration reform. It’d be like someone running as a staunch
hawk and then, once in office, deciding that Ron Paul had some really good
ideas about foreign policy. Should hawks let that guy slide because ‘all
politicians lie’?”
“Two: Rubio wasn’t elected as
just any Republican pol. He was a self-described ‘movement conservative’ who caught
the tea-party wave against the Republican establishment and surfed it
all the way to the Senate. Three years later, despite lots of red-meat
conservative rhetoric over that time, the two policy pushes with which he’s
most identified, I think, are this sham immigration reform bill and
international interventionism in various forms, including
in Syria. He has, in other words, become a sort of successor to McCain in
the Senate. Has anyone who ran on an anti-establishment tide ever embraced the
establishment as quickly as that? Even now, even after everything, I strongly
prefer his flip-flopping to the grotesque omnibus opportunism of Charlie Crist.
But it’s worth asking: How different would the Senate have looked since 2010
with Crist in there instead of Rubio? What would have changed in terms of
actual policy? If anything, without Rubio to woo conservatives, the Senate
immigration effort would have been in deeper trouble than it is now. The fact
that we have to pause and even consider this sort of ‘what if Crist won?’
hypothetical makes me think maybe we should hold off on the Rubio tributes. For
now.”
In life, it’s the coward who
abandons himself first. Following that,
all other betrayals become easier. I’m
grieved to find that Rubio lied to us and saddened that now we can no longer believe
him. I don’t want him in the White House
in 2016 or ever.
