Republicans by and large have deeply struggled with mustering even the slightest counter to President Donald Trump’s incessantly belligerent behavior. After Trump’s antagonism of four Democratic Congresswomen of color culminated in a rally crowd last week chanting “Send her back!” targeting one of those women — Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) was among those on the right who swayed back and forth in response, deriding the chant as “grotesque” but immediately pivoting into asserting those circulating outrage beyond that low level are “self-righteous hypocrites” playing a “stupid game.” In response, the Miami Herald has now published an editorial slamming Rubio as a useless shill for Trump’s agenda, a status made all the more striking considering past suggestions — including on the cover of TIME magazine! — that he would personally lead the GOP away from something like Trump-ism.
The tweet was wrong & the chant last night grotesque
The left wing politicians & many in the media demanding outrage are self righteous hypocrites
And the “outrage & response cycle” allows for only 2 sides & demands you pick or else
It’s a stupid game that I refuse to play pic.twitter.com/AhM4epeqNx
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 18, 2019
Rubio ran in the Republican presidential primary in 2016, but — obviously considering the current occupant of the White House — he lost. He couldn’t even manage a majority of the support in his home state of Florida, after which he officially withdrew. In the time since, he’s jumped on the Trump-ism bandwagon over and over, beyond his utter failure to criticize the president singling out Omar and others with demands to leave the country as “racist.” The Herald asserts that the Senator has “transformed from Trump critic to a sycophantic cheerleader to the point that he’s willing to kill Obamacare even though his own state leads the nation in enrollment” and who “could not find the spine to do more than mildly criticize Trump after his blatantly racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen.”
The publication continues:
‘Rubio, far from the Republicans’ savior, seems just another slick politician with his finger in the wind — pushing the party deeper into Trump’s swamp.’
As they note, the Floridian leader certainly isn’t the only one to have failed to stage any kind of meaningful opposition after the president’s behavior culminated in demands to send a Congresswoman back to where she was born, even though she has been a U.S. citizen longer than the president’s own wife.
House Republicans, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have pitched back and forth with complaints about the Democratic majority bringing forward a resolution to condemn the president’s behavior as racist at all. They explicitly were stumping for adhering to an aged rule of decorum above addressing the president’s behavior. McCarthy himself got on the House floor and shouted about “decorum.” Only four Republicans ended up voting in favor of the resolution.
In other words, heading into 2020, Democrats can not count on pretty much any meaningful coalition from the right to support them in their aims to get the federal government back to working more closely for the people of the United States as opposed to just the about one-third who support Trump. They’re on their own in their efforts to protect health care, human rights, the immigration system and more because figures like Rubio protect their standings within their party rather than speaking out.
Featured Image via screenshot
