The GOP self-evaluation continues. Except for Dick Armey, Jim DeMint and Ted Nugent, Republicans now begrudgingly acknowledge that demographics are as much their opponent as that other party. The solution: inclusion. The strategy: Give the appearance of it.
Cue more spotlights for Marco Rubio.
Even right-of-center pundits not named Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck, Coulter and Krauthammer seem enamored of the glibly charismatic, Hispanic senator from South Florida. The usually discerning David Brooks, for example.
The New York Times columnist and PBS commentator wrote glowingly of Rubio’s recent reception of the Jack Kemp Foundation’s Leadership Award in New York. He chronicled Rubio’s evocatively vintage, finely-honed acceptance-speech performance that underscored his immigrant background and how his hard-working, banquet-bartender father was like the “overwhelming majority of our (American) people.” Salt of the earth sorts who just wanted a chance.
So much for that 47 percent political albatross.
Brooks said the GOP confronts a formidable task in reviving itself, but the moving, well-orchestrated Rubio speech was likely a key “moment in that revival.”
Glib is great, of course, if you’re a disingenuous, populist panderer. But as has been previously pointed out, including here in this publication, choreography, charisma and a candidate with an Hispanic surname will not revive a GOP that has forsaken “compassionate conservatism”–let alone its Lincoln legacy.
Voters, even America’s pundit-and-PAC-prodded electorate, won’t be so enamored of the Rubio who will be inevitably seen as at war with his well-crafted, carefully nuanced image of inclusion and striving-class identification.
In part, it’s because there’s a fundamental dichotomy at play with Rubio’s back story and Latino lineage.
The Rubistas want to play off the premise that as a Cuban-American, their candidate can be all things to all Hispanics–whether Mexican, Central American or Cuban. That, arguably, is insulting. It’s like equating Cancun and Havana. Moreover, it matters in certain Cuban circles that Rubio once went self-servingly revisionist and changed his bio to pander to hard-line anti-Castro exiles.
In addition, as a Cuban-American, Rubio has to tap dance around the “wet-foot, dry-foot” double standard on immigration that uniquely benefits Cubans. Others have to get in line or sneak in. And his continued support of U.S. policy–economic embargo and restricted travel–with Cuba is increasingly seen as counterproductive from humanitarian, economic and geopolitical perspectives.
Then there’s that party credit-card flap, his suck-up signature on Grover Norquist’s no-tax/never-ever pledge, his rhetorical weaseling on creationism, his vote last week against the U.N. treaty banning discrimination against people with disabilities. And more. Vetting won’t be kind.
Imagine Rubio’s chances if he didn’t give good speeches.