Savior Marco Rubio and the GOP’s Latino Problem

Marco Rubio is the latest “savior” to carry the torch or Reagan, yet last night’s speech proved he can awkwardly drink water, but he sure can’t walk on it, delivering an awkward lecture filled with tired ideas from a bygone era, proving that different last names, don’t change failed policies.

30 years ago, when Ronald Reagan became the anointed savior of the Republican Party, second only to Jesus of course, he had been a figure in politics for quite some time. He ratted out fellow actors during the McCarthy era, he was a spokesman for the American Medical Association against Medicare, he gave a famous speech in support of Goldwater in the 1964 Republican Convention, became Governor of California twice and made a strong challenge to Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican Primaries before finally earning the crown of thorns.

Yet today, Republicans have grown so desperate, that a freshman Senator from Florida, with no real accomplishments other than winning a 3-way election and being Latino, has been openly called the Republican Savior, even landing the cover of Time Magazine with the title displayed beneath him. Perhaps this isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. The way the Conservative Entertainment Industrial Complex is acting and the way Republican politicians are acting, you would hardly know it. The upcoming GOP Civil War has pitted many against Rubio, openly mocking him, yet overall, he’s really the only interesting thing happening in the party right now, other than the recently ostracized Chris Christie. So of course, they handed the latest greatest thing the fool-hearty job of the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union Address. Rubio’s crown jewel achievement was supposed to be his engineering of a Republican version of the Dream Act, which lay in waste after Obama skillfully bypassed Congress to enact most of the Dream Act on his own. Embarrassment aside, Rubio’s job was to help shore up the Latino vote, which, as we know, he utterly failed to deliver in the 2012 elections, which saw Latinos abandon the Republican Party in large numbers up and down the ticket.

So why is he a savior if he failed to deliver anything tangible whatsoever? Well, quite frankly, because the Republicans don’t have anything accept an antiquated view of race (and everything else for that matter). Very similar to the 2009 selection of Micheal Steele to head the Republican National Committee, it seems to be motivated by who Rubio is, not what he has achieved. Not to demean Rubio’s talent for politics. He became the first Latino speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and was elected at age 28 with little to show for his life in the private sector. Rubio accomplished equally little in office but he sure knew how to win elections. Under his own official page at the Florida House’s website his single achievement under “Highlights” is winning the Florida Petroleum Marketers Association, Freshman Legislator of the Year award. I’m not sure what that is, though I’m pretty sure it has to do with bending over for the oil companies. For a party that never shuts up about hard work and achievement, backing a guy with out a single national accomplishment other than cosponsoring a resolution to declare September as National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month, sure seems hypocritical.

Then again, it seems very Republican. Bush II was no great achiever, Romney also inherited his money, even the maverick McCain, made his money the old-fashioned way: he left his wife and married into it. Where are the great achievements, the self-made men, the American Dream stories? Well, that’s mostly a myth to begin with, since those stories are often dramatized, few and far between occurrences. That being said, many of these guys lean the other way, like Zuckerberg, Gates, and Soros. Yet that doesn’t really matter anyway since making money is not the only defining characteristic that makes you a success. If you’ve read the Bible, yes the same Bible Republicans beat people over the head with, you’d know that Jesus even frowns on rich people, saying: “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” This underscores another, in a long line of self-delusional lies the GOP tells itself and the world about what conservatism actually stands for.

We know what it stands for though. It isn’t family values or the 2nd Amendment  it isn’t rewarding hard work or paying down the deficit. It isn’t even standing for Democracy or doing what’s in the best interest of the nation. It is whatever makes the plutocracy richer. If that means investing tax dollars in tanks the military doesn’t want just to make a few defense contractors richer, they are for it. If it means running up massive deficits to fight a war in Iraq to keep the oil flowing , they are all for it. If it means giving contracts to companies that ship jobs overseas so profits needlessly go up, they are all for it. If it means resorting to socialism to bail out the banks so their portfolios don’t bottom out, they are all for it. If it means pandering to small business while taking money and backing big box retail stores that are squashing small businesses, they are all for it. If it means supporting stupid NRA laws that sell more guns, they are all for it. The good of a multinational corporation comes before you, an American citizen, that’s for damn sure!

Now you know how Latin America feels. They have been getting screwed hard and long by Uncle Sam for generations. From the land grab in the Mexican-American War to the Iran Contra Affair to the present, The Yanquis have been robbing Latin-America blind through the World Bank, state sanctioned coups (every time a politician speaks of land redistribution or nationalizing an industry) and multinational corporations who are exporting resources out well below market value using the threat of the “eye of Washington” to enforce their demands, while they eat through veins of metals and resources like termites and leave open pit mines in their wake. Yet despite having that in common, each country, each region has been screwed different ways, not just by the US, by Spain and the corrupt aristocracies, military dictatorships and various other awful regimes that took over when Spain headed home.  This makes for a unique experience in each Latin-American country.

Which brings us back to Marco Rubio. Not only is he completely in line with the Republican philosophy mentioned above, he is a Tea Party stalwart, once hailed as a leader. His views are extreme on economics, social views and just about everything else for that matter. He is way to extreme for America in general, let alone Latinos, which tend to support left of center causes. As for being Latino, he is the son of immigrants to be sure (he once claimed they escaped Castro’s wrath, though turned out they left years before he was even a threat). However Rubio’s mindset represents nothing more than a faction of the light-skinned Cuban-American population that had the ability to leave early, which is itself a faction of the Cuban experience which is a faction of the “Latino” experience. This experience is rich with diversity and complexity. There are traditional rivalries among the different nationalities and significant cultural and racial differences. Even the language has substantial differences.

Which is why, if you understood anything about Latino culture, you would know there is no such thing. There are Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto-Ricans, Salvadorians, Colombians  etc. The pan-Latino similarities are present, though very limited, largely to language similarities, music and entertainment. There are very clear and distinct divergences in food, history and family experience. Generational divisions appear as well. My own family is 3rd generation Mexican-American, and shows remarkable differences from 2nd generation and 1st generation families. Latinos have been coming to America since a quarter of America was Mexico. Many didn’t jump the border, the border jumped them. What other group of Americans has been coming for so long in such steady numbers?

This is why Republicans just don’t get it. I suppose you actually have to care about something to understand it. Treating a variety of peoples as criminals, calling them “illegals”, passing laws that racially profile brown skinned American citizens, specifically targeting Latinos, cannot be undone by simply propping up some white skinned Cuban conservative and declaring that you suddenly care. It takes more than talking points and Spanish ads to undo the talk of electrified fences with alligator moats and the series of anti-Hispanic laws like Prop. 187 in California and Arizona’s “Papers Please” law. No that ship has sailed and November 7th, 2012 was not the departure date, it was simply the day that Republicans learned the ship had sailed.

Fox News and Republican propagandist, Roger Ailes, recently announced he would be reaching out to the Latino audience. He declared: “If I’m going to risk my life to run over the fence to get into America, I want to win. I think Fox News will articulate that.”

Wow. Nothing reaches out to a diverse audience of Latinos like assuming they are all Mexicans who just jumped the border yesterday. I remind you that Ailes was the genius behind the clown car Republican Primaries of 2012. Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich and Santorum all worked at Fox, while many others like Cain, Bachman and Perry owed a great deal to the network. Ailes pressured Christie to make a run and even tried to get General Petreus (of course before the sex scandals) to join the race, offering to personally run his campaign! He is, in every respect, the unofficial head of the Republican Party’s Propaganda and Media Strategy Arm. There is a good chance he has something to do with Rubio as well. If you see him on Fox, you’ll know it’s true.

If this is his understanding of Latinos, than it speaks volumes about the mindset of the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in general. Now, that whole Rubio-as-savior thing is starting to make sense. Much like the rainbow of faces that popped up after the 2008 election, conservatives point to their token friend of a particular race and go, “see, we got one of, whatever you are, in our party!”

However much like Bobby Jindal and Micheal Steele before him, the GOP will miss the entire point, throwing an untested newbie into a spotlight he isn’t really ready for. Sink or swim. My guess is, that some Republicans are hoping for a sink. Will Rubio swim? Perhaps, though speculating about 2016 now is like trying to predict the Super Bowl in 2016. You don’t know who will even be alive that year, let alone which team has the magic.

If last night’s speech was any indication I would say he performed exceptionally below average, with a foolish moment that overshadowed his actual response. A nervous and dry mouthed Rubio, sweating up a storm, reached for a bottle of water, which today he handed that glorious mistake to God. He looked as if he couldn’t handle the heat, or that it was very hot in his phony studio White House, at least. This received all the attention, not his sub-par, more of the same talking point lecture that continues the long walk the GOP is taking off a short pier, only with zesty Cuban flavor! Yeah, Cuban flavor cooked up by some research panel for a multinational fast-food conglomerate.

I thought, if this is the savoir of the Republican party, they must think they don’t need much saving. So far, the pundits on the right reflect this very mindset. They seem to honestly think that having a candidate with a vowel at the end of his name will make all the difference. Meanwhile their policies drift ever more to the radical right, alienating not just Latinos, but women, homosexuals, most minorities, people with center-left views, veterans, seniors, people in cities and anyone who makes less than $125,000 a year. Bloomberg News called Rubio “scared to death” and a reflection of just how afraid he and his party is of change. They’re right! The real problem isn’t the packaging, it’s the awful, rotting product inside.

My guess is that in 4 years, Rubio will likely be yesterday’s news, after the GOP gives up on minorities again like it did in 2008. However with a GOP struggling to produce even slightly likable candidates, he may end up being top of the heap after all.

So I will close it out with what I’m sure you have all been just dying to hear, my own 2016 prediction. Ok, here it goes: The Republicans will not win the Super Bowl in 2016. Any takers?