With only four days before the Florida primary, Florida Senator Marco Rubio is emerging as a top choice to be the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate. The GOP is betting that Senator Rubio can “deliver the Latino vote.” But Rubio, a Tea Party favorite, opposesopposes immigration reform and supports Arizona’s SB1070. the DREAM Act,
With Rubio on the national ticket, the GOP would have a Latino spokesperson to drive through anti-Latino policies, dividing our community and weakening our allies.
We can stop this if we can show GOP that adding Rubio won’t “deliver the Latino vote”, because we can see through their scam. So here’s the plan:
We’ve made a hard hitting television ad revealing Senator Rubio's anti-Latino record. Later today, Rubio is headlining at the Hispanic Leadership Network, a Republican-led advocacy group designed to “bring in” Latino voters. Presente members and our partners will be protesting outside. This is a golden opportunity to announce our ad to reporters there, who are already preparing stories about Rubio’s effect on Latino voters.
But first we need to raise at least $5,000 dollars this afternoon, so we can guarantee reporters the ad will be hitting the airwaves across Florida.
Please watch “No Somos Rubios”
Republicans want Florida Senator Marco Rubio to be their Vice President.
The GOP thinks that Rubio can “deliver the Latino vote," but Rubio stands with the Tea Party more than he stands with Latinos on the issues we care about.
Watch this hard-hitting television ad that reveals Rubios anti-Latino record, and please donate right away to help it get on the air. We need to raise at least $5,000 dollars this afternoon to make sure we can air the ad.
https://act.presente.org/donate/rubio_donate/?akid=517.34733.j8duoT&rd=1&t=3
Until Tuesday’ primary, the national media and the entire GOP political machine is focused on Florida. They’re closely evaluating Rubio’s effect on Latino voters. With 50 million Latinos in the United States, they’re getting desperate to trick us into voting for them, while still appeasing an anti-Latino base. If Rubio plays well in the national spotlight, they’ll decide it’s just the trick they need.
So we must ensure the national spotlight also reveals Rubio's anti-latino record, by putting this ad on the air across Florida in the crucial days ahead.
This is our best shot to stop the Rubio scam before it begins. National polls show that most Latinos don’t yet know anything about him. The GOP is desperate to cover up Rubio’s anti-latino record with a blank slate.
Now it’s time to show all politicians that no matter your name, actually standing up for the issues that Latinos care about is the only way to win our votes.
There’s no time to lose.
Thanks and ¡adelante!
Roberto Lovato on behalf of Presente Action
Resources:
"Marco Rubio has what Mitt Romney needs in a vice president," Washington Post, 01/03/2011
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Marco Rubio has what Mitt Romney needs in a vice president
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marco-rubio-has-what-mitt-romney-needs-in-a-vice-president/2012/01/03/gIQAXEVDZP_story.htmlhttp://wapo.st/wqWpOjThe great thing about Iowa is that, no matter whom the voters select in their neighborhood huddles, it doesn’t really matter. Placing in Iowa might land one a talk show (see Mike Huckabee), but the preferences of a handful of Americans belonging to a committed, ideological subset of a committed, ideological party do not a national trend suggest. The presumptive candidate proceeds apace.
Which raises the question none too soon: Whom will Mitt Romney select as his running mate?
Kathleen Parker
Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture.
Several names have been suggested, including Condoleezza Rice and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Rice’s interest isn’t clear, and Portman, despite his personal qualities and swing-state bona fides, would merely add a snooze button to Romney’s campaign.
Latest to the list is the young and junior senator from Florida, Marco Rubio. His political résuméincludes: nine years as a state legislator, including two as speaker of the Florida House; enormous popularity with Tea Partyers who sent him to the U.S. Senate over Republican Gov. Charlie Crist; a Cuban heritage and, thus, his presumed appeal to Hispanic voters; he’s young at just 40 and, it never hurts, attractive.
Add to the above the fact that Florida is a crucial swing state, the population of which is 22.5 percent Hispanic.
No one is ever perfect, of course, and Rubio critics will cite his chronologically challenged rendition of his parents’ exile from Cuba. Rubio claimed that they were driven out by Fidel Castro when, in fact, they left Cuba before Castro took over the island nation. Rubio later explained that the date, though incorrect, didn’t diminish the family’s experience of exile when, upon Castro’s rise to power, they didn’t feel they could return to Cuba.
For Cubans who had to leave their homeland with empty pockets and broken hearts, their homes ravaged and their belongings confiscated by revolutionary rebels, Rubio’s exaggeration no doubt stung. But was it fatal? Not likely. It is possible to imagine that Rubio, who grew up in south Florida, where Spanish is a first language and displacement is the Cuban community’s core identity, can be understood to have embraced the larger cultural narrative as his own. As he wrote in Politico, “I am the son of exiles. I inherited two generations of unfulfilled dreams. This is a story that needs no embellishing.”
Rubio will survive the controversy.
Of perhaps greater value to Democrats is Rubio’s attractiveness to Tea Partyers. Thanks to media portraits of Tea Party members as tantrum-throwing ignoramuses with racist tendencies, the argument would be that Rubio can’t appeal to a broader spectrum of voters. This argument has some merit, but only if you haven’t heard Rubio speak or paid attention to his message. Rubio isn’t just a poster boy for the shrink-government contingent. Much like President Obama, he’s a monument to the American Dream. Like Obama, he speaks often about the privilege of being an American and of possessing a birthright that allows the son of a bartender and a maid to become a U.S. senator. Only in America.
But unlike Obama, Rubio condemns rhetoric that seeks to divide the American people against each other. He shuns the idea that some are worse off because others are doing better. In a year-end address to the Senate about his first year in office (http://bit.ly/vWN5L5), Rubio articulated a conservative road map that is equal parts tough love and compassion and that combines the conservatism of Ronald Reagan with the conciliatory charm of Bill Clinton. He is a human composite of sunny optimism and urgent realism. If it wasn’t a stump speech, it should be.
Saying we’re not a nation of haves and have-nots, but a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, Rubio pointed out three obstacles to prosperity: a “crazy” tax code; complicated regulations that kill small businesses; and a national debt that exceeds the economy.
Obama inherited a bad economy, Rubio conceded, but, mathematically speaking, the country now is in worse shape with higher debt, unemployment and poverty. Rubio said that clearing these obstacles and creating a realistic plan to reduce the debt and deficit would lead to greater prosperity, which would lead to more jobs, which would mean more taxpayers and therefore more revenue for, among other things, Medicare funding and infrastructure repairs.
You won’t find a Republican who doesn’t agree with this assessment, but you also won’t find any who can deliver the argument with greater passion or less-divisive rhetoric. This is the Rubio that Democrats should fear, and to whom Romney no doubt is well attuned.
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