Marco Rubio has at times, been considered a potential GOP star: the young, Hispanic face of the Republican Party (well, maybe the only Hispanic face of the Republican Party, since that crowd never seemed to really be feeling Mel.) Now, his Senate run has gotten an endorsement from conservative South Carolina Sen. Jim Demint, previously known mostly for his bug-eyed entreaty urging tea partying wingers to "take to the streets!!!" to stop the Obamaian "slide toward socialism." Yes, yes, that should help Marco expand his base... (ahem) ... Says Politico:
The move is not out of character for DeMint, who often finds himself at odds with GOP leaders over thorny political issues. But DeMint has a significant grass-roots conservative following, and the fight speaks to the larger struggle over the GOP’s tent: Should it be big enough to include more moderate candidates who have a better chance of winning but stray from the party’s principles? Or should it be mainly limited to bedrock conservatives who would help the party return to its socially conservative and limited government roots? DeMint firmly believes in the latter. A leader of the conservative Senate Steering Committee, DeMint has started a political action committee — called the Senate Conservatives Fund — designed to prop up the candidacies of Senate incumbents and wannabes who adhere to conservative principles. So far, DeMint has backed former Republican Rep. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania (he planned to do so even before the moderate Sen. Arlen Specter became a Democrat) and the staunch conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is up for a second term in November 2010. This cycle, DeMint plans to take a different tack with his Senate Conservatives Fund; instead of simply making donations to his preferred candidate, he plans to ask his 20,000 supporters to help raise the maximum allowable limit for the endorsed candidates — a process known as “bundling.” A person familiar with the PAC said that DeMint is expected to endorse between three and five candidates this cycle.
Is that really what Rubio wants? The name Pat Toomey is almost synonymous with " loser," associated as Toomey is, with the loser-prone Club for Growth (During the 2008 presidential campaign, Toomey even launched his very own jihad, as the then-CFG president, against that liberal squish Mike Huckabee, for the sin of once raising taxes as Arkansas governor. Commie...) So Rubio, it seems to me, has a choice: he can be the future of the GOP, or he can be the standard-bearer for the dwindling, geographically and demographically constricted far right wing past. The bundling, I'm sure he'll take. The poster boy for the Limbaugh wing part? He may want to rethink ... Labels: 2010, Florida, Marco Rubio, politics, right wingers, U.S. Senate |
