TAMPA — “Marvin, what do we do now?” This is one of those
memorable lines, familiar to most movie-goers of a certain age. The
line concludes the 1972 Robert Redford movie, The
Candidate, and is uttered by Redford’s much compromised
liberal senator-elect Bill McKay.
Florida’s new senator-elect, Marco Rubio of Miami, doesn’t
have McKay’s problem. Rubio is not a liberal. And he in no way
compromised his conservative principles to win big last Tuesday,
though his main opponent, partyless Florida Governor Charlie Crist
(I-Narcissus), compromised whatever principles he may have once had
by floating, unsuccessfully, a series of bogus charges against
Rubio during the campaign.
Crist’s political career is almost certainly over. Few
here are weeping for the guy who changed his political positions so
often, so completely, and so opportunistically that Brit Hume
called him “the most flexible politician I’ve ever seen.” In a
column this week George Will referred to Crist as “Plasticman.” In
Florida politics, Crist is so 2006.
Rubio knows exactly what he wants to do now, which is to
work to bring about a clear alternative to the toxic leftist agenda
of President Obama and the Democratic Congress, an agenda which is
turning America into something that it’s never been and that most
Americans don’t want. After the election Rubio said his first
priorities would be to cut federal spending, to see that the Bush
tax cuts are made permanent, and to repeal and replace
ObamaCare.
In his acceptance speech last Tuesday Rubio called the
Republican surge “a second chance for Republicans to be what they
said they were going to be not so long ago.” Exactly. Rubio
realizes the profligacy of Republicans in 2006 and 2008 is partly
responsible for the country’s woes. “Our nation is headed in the
wrong direction and both parties are to blame,” he said repeatedly
on the campaign trail. If most members of the Republican Class of
2010 understand this, and I hope and trust they do, the better the
chances Washington’s wild spending will be brought under
control.
Showing the influence the rookie senator-elect has in the
new Republican Party, he was chosen to deliver the weekly
Republican address Saturday. In it he said the Republican Party had
given nothing less than a promise that if given power again “we
would not squander the chance you gave us… we must not. Because
nothing less than the identity of our country and what kind of
future we will leave our children is at stake.”
Marco gets it. And he invites voters to “hold us
accountable to the ideas and principles we campaigned on. This is
our second chance to get this right. To make the right decisions
and the tough calls and to leave our children what they deserve —
the freest and most exceptional society in all of human history.”
(And if the Brits or the Greeks want to complain that we go on too
much about our exceptionalism, they can complain to President
Obama, who agrees with them.)
Timing is critical in war, love, and hitting a baseball.
It’s no less so in politics. And Rubio was the guy in Florida’s
three-way Senate race whose time had come.
Democratic Kendrick Meek watched Obama’s dramatic win in
2008, in which he won 52 percent of red-state Florida’s vote, and
concluded it was time for another black liberal candidate to win
state-wide in Florida. But the air went out of “that hopey-changey
thing” (thanks to Sarah Palin for the expression) so fast that all
Meek could scare up in 2010 was 20 percent of the vote in the
Senate race.
Crist, who has never had a fixed ideological address,
listened to the Republican establishment, and therefore thought
2010 was the year for moderate Republicans. When it turned out not
to be, he tried to out-conservative Rubio to win the Republican
nomination. When he fell hopelessly behind, he became an
independent, gussied up all new liberal positions, and tried to
fish for Democratic voters. He got more of these than Meek did, but
ended with only 30 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind
Rubio.
Looks like Rubio was right when he repeated on the
campaign trail, “We already have a Democratic Party. We don’t need
another one.”
Rubio pledges to pursue policies that will help grow our
economy, policies that re-assert our reliance on the free market
and limited government. In addition to reigning in spending and
extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, Rubio would like to cut
corporate taxes to make American companies competitive, end the
death tax, end double taxation, reform the U.S. Tax Code, stop
consideration of the value-added tax, repeal regulations that hurt
job creation, reduce barriers to free and fair trade, and fix
entitlements.
These may not be all the actions and answers we need. But
they’re good ideas, and enough to keep Rubio and the Republican
Class of 2010 off of K Street for a good long while. Maybe until
another of Rubio’s campaign suggestions is fulfilled. He said on
the trail, “If you don’t like the Republican establishment, get
another establishment.” Who said there are no new good
ideas?
