The Orlando Sentinel — a prominent newspaper from the home state of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — has declared in a new editorial that it’s “time to surrender any hope that Rubio will ever do the right thing if there’s any risk involved,” which seems about as blunt as one could get. As the paper’s editorial board outlined in the new article, Rubio originally supported the idea of forming an independent commission to investigate the riot at the Capitol this past January — but then, ahead of a vote in the Senate on a bill to create such a commission, he declared that he’d be opposing it.
Time to give up on Marco Rubio, who will never do the right thing if there’s any risk | Editorial https://t.co/Ln6bgE7I72 pic.twitter.com/xHHt61oXwi
— Orlando Sentinel (@orlandosentinel) May 27, 2021
Rubio himself said not long ago at all that Americans “need to learn as much as we can” about the Capitol violence, also saying that his “general feeling is that if we can have a serious examination of the events leading up to, occurring, and in the aftermath of that day, we should do it.” Literally just days after those comments were published, Rubio publicly said that he’d be voting against a bill to create an independent commission, claiming that subpoena power with which the panel would be vested would be used “just to embarrass the GOP,” as the Sentinel summarized.
According to the plan, there would have had to be bipartisan agreement before any subpoena from the commission — but that wasn’t enough for Rubio. As the Sentinel reported, “if Republicans vetoed a subpoena, according to Rubio’s reasoning, the media would embarrass the Republicans by reporting that news.” Thus, Rubio voted down a plan for a serious examination of a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol because… Republicans might look bad at some point of the process. The self-serving pettiness is astounding.
As the Sentinel put it:
‘In the history of this nation we’ve never seen the likes of what happened on Jan. 6. And yet, somehow, that doesn’t merit an extraordinary inquiry into why and how it happened so that, as Rubio recently put it, such a thing would “never happen again.” Rubio’s stated reasons are phony. He’s afraid an honest inquiry would make his party look worse than it already does ahead of the midterm elections. Even more terrifying to him is the prospect of getting primaried if he stands up to the party. Just look at all the Trump family members flocking to Florida. Any one of them could step right in and probably squash Rubio like a bug if he gets out of line. It’s time to surrender any hope that Rubio will ever do the right thing if there’s any risk involved.’
Rubio is up for re-election in 2022. Electoral margins in Florida have often been quite close — Rick Scott, the state’s other Republican Senator, won his seat back in 2018 by just about 0.2 percent. Check out the full editorial against Rubio from the Orlando Sentinel at this link.
