Marco Rubio: In Your Heart You Know He's Trite

For some time now I've found myself resistant to the charms of Marco Rubio. At a certain level of abstraction, of course, I can grasp the possibility of a young Hispanic from an electorally significant state being the great Republican hope. In the age of Trump, Rubio can even offer the appearance of moderation – he strikes a pose of optimism more than anger, backed up by an “inspiring” biography. And after all, didn't he once support a relatively compassionate approach to immigration reform?

In reality, Rubio is a fanatical rightwinger: an unreconstructed neoconservative in foreign policy – his presidential campaign even adopted the shopworn “new American century” line once peddled by Bill Kristol – who pledges to repeal Obamacare while also proposing massive, irresponsible tax cuts three times the size of George W. Bush’s. His rhetoric about Muslims, as Max Fischer put it, includes “dog-whistling of breathtaking and Trump-level proportions.” Which is of a piece with his litany of nasty accusations about President Obama. (For a helpful rundown of Rubio’s hard right agenda, see Damon Linker’s helpful column here.)

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