Marco Rubio faces Hispanic critics: "He is a laughing stock in the Southwest" says GOP group founder

[seafan]

Should be a challenging week for Mr. Rubio.


Politico
October 26, 2011

.....

Rubio is expected to encounter tough questions from voters and activists over his hard-line stance on immigration as he heads to Texas and possibly Arizona next week to court Hispanic voters and high-dollar donors. As his personal history morphs into a national political story, it’s clear Rubio still has plenty of skeptics in the Latino political community.

“He is a laughing stock in the Southwest … because people discovered he wasn’t telling the truth about his political Cuban exile history,” said DeeDee Garcia Blase, founder of Somos Republicans, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GOP group that backs a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. “They are saying, at the end of the day, ‘He is just like us. His mom and dad came here; they migrated because of economic reasons, just like the rest of us.’”

.....

Rubio’s decision to identify with the exile rather than the economic migrant community won’t play well politically with other Hispanics groups in Texas and elsewhere, said Nestor Rodriguez, a fourth-generation Mexican American and a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies immigration issues.

“They would just see him as another politician,” Rodriguez said. “His parents came as economic migrants, yet he ignores that, and he promotes the refugee cause rather than (helping) other economic migrants who may need amnesty. There is a side of experience and history that is being ignored that is very important.”

.....

Floridians have watched Rubio's rapid climb onto power in the Florida Legislature under the tutelage of Jeb Bush, and using that power to enrich himself and his friends; steadily eroding the rights of the citizens of the state; spending lavishly on himself and his family for years by using the GOP American Express credit card (an insider practice now under investigation by authorities); pushing the most extreme elements of legislation onto the people of Florida; feigning "outrage" when people point out what he is doing, saying, embellishing.


It is not a good picture of a politician, continually grasping for more unbridled, self-serving power.


We are now stuck with this kind of "politician" representing Florida for 5 more years in the U. S. Senate, in one of the worst periods of economic need our country has ever endured.


We do not look to Marco Rubio, nor have we ever, for the kind of leadership we demand now.


Step aside, Mr. Rubio.


We need the space you now occupy, and intend to replace it with the type of leader who has the best interests of the people of this country at heart, and not some pinched right-wing version of extreme entitlement for a very privileged few.

[SharonAnn]

1. And he's an "anchor baby". Citizen only by being born in USA of non-citizens.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

2. The anti-immigrant Hispanic would make the perfect VP running mate

for the anti civil rights African American, Herman Cain.

[14thColony]

21. By God you're onto something here...

Cain-Rubio 2012: The Twilight Zone Ticket

[LonePirate]

3. He's a laughingstock in the rest of the country, too, not just in the Southwest.

[seafan]

4. ......“so anti-immigrant, so xenophobic, so tied to the extremist right wing.”

Of the anti-immigrant, great Hispanic hope of the GOP....



Politico
October 26, 2011

.....

The senator has conceded he may have gotten some dates wrong, but he has continued to insist he’s the “son of Cuban exiles” because his parents never could return to their native country after 1961, when they realized their country had taken a turn for the worse under Castro. However, new discrepancies in Rubio’s story surfaced this week based on his parents’ 1956 immigration application, which shows they never intended to return to Cuba.

“Permanently,” Rubio’s father answered when asked how long they intended to stay in the U.S.

.....

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a Puerto Rican American and one of Congress’s most vocal advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, said he doesn’t understand how Rubio can be “so anti-immigrant, so xenophobic, so tied to the extremist right wing.”

“You know what I say to him — the immigrants who come here today that you brush aside so easily, I hear your story about your mom and dad. They are the same. They came here to work hard, to sweat and toil in some of the least of the meaningful jobs,” Gutierrez told POLITICO.

“His story is that they washed dishes, that they worked in restaurants, that they sweated and they toiled at blue-collar jobs, and I say, ‘You know what, it sounds like the very same people that you want to deny an opportunity in the United States today, and I think it’s kind of shameful.’”

The end of the line for blind political ambition is now closer for Mr. Rubio.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. That's reassuring, if true.

[seafan]

6. People do not like being lied to, Mr. Rubio.

Here is a piece written by an actual Cuban political refugee, not an embellished story by an ambitious politician being groomed for national office by the GOP:

.....

Unlike mine, Rubio's family left by choice, not necessity. Unlike mine, Rubio's family left before Castro even took over.

Rubio says he just, "got a few dates wrong." That's how he excuses his falsehood about when his parents fled Cuba. With that story, he convinced Americans that he was the son of political refugees, implying that it somehow made him different from the other Hispanics who he attacks regularly--the ones in Arizona, Georgia and Alabama that he and others want to detain, arrest and kick out. How dare they come here looking for work and to better their lot in life? Marco Rubio made us believe he is different from them when he's not.

Marco Rubio owes an apology to my parents and the hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans who actually did experience the hardships of being political refugees. Their stories are real. And the dates and times associated with their flight from Cuba are etched in their memories, often to the minute. It's not something they "just get wrong." Ever. Unless they want to get it wrong.

But they are not Rubio's biggest problem. This seemingly likable young man with Tea Party backing will likely be forgiven in Miami. His real problem is that the GOP has national plans for him, and national elections aren't won in Miami. They are won across the country where Mexicans and other immigrants, who make up the vast majority of the Latino vote, may not be as forgiving.

Would you be? Latinos across the country who see themselves as economic exiles, or whose parents came here as economic exiles, say Senator Rubio has continually attacked them. Now, they learn that he is, in many ways, no different from them. He too is the son of economic exiles. His story is their story--one he must now embrace or change. Again.

---Rick Sanchez, Journalist, reporter, news anchor

And it is on the basis of that lie, told repeatedly to voters, that Marco Rubio rode to the U. S. Senate.

[flamingdem]

9. So he said he was a son of exiles on election night!

:rolf: I think he truly believed it.

Funny thing is I kind of get it. If you grow up around the exile community you believe you've suffered too since they are absolutely insanely and compulsively obsessed with Fidel and la isla.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. Otro pendejo mas. He's the newest brown puppet to be tossed aside once he's served his

purpose. Just ask that rising star JC Watts. If you can find him.

[flamingdem]

8. Good, but on msnbc an insider said that the Cuban American community is supporting

him regardless. Plenty of dirt on hands all around in that crowd. The right wingy sector I mean.

[seafan]

10. The Cuban American community represents only 3.5 percent of all Hispanics in the U. S.

From the Politico story:

.....

But while Cuban Americans are a powerful political force and the largest Hispanic group in greater Miami, they represent only 3.5 percent of all Hispanics in the country. (more than 50 million)

But, certainly a very, very vocal 3.5 percent.

[flamingdem]

13. For sure this issue will split Latino republicans - good! nt

[hifiguy]

11. This klown is going to go over with the Mexican-American community

like a ham at a Passover seder. Keep digging, son, keep digging.

[flamingdem]

14. Like putting your shoes on the bed

I know this totally offends Cubans.

[NNN0LHI]

12. Recommended

Good post.

Don

[seafan]

15. NPR: Rubio Accuses Media Of Excess In Reporting Flaws In His Cuba Story

Frank James at NPR reports:


October 27, 2011

Sen. Marco Rubio blamed the news media Thursday for making too much of his differing versions of the story behind his parents' immigration from Cuba in the 1950s.

.....

Rubio has made his parents' immigration from Cuba an important part of his own political biography. But the differing versions of the story, some more dramatic than others, have caused some to question whether he has engaged in embellishment.
In one version of the story, Rubio's framing of the story left the impression that his parents fled into exile after Cuban dictator Fidel Castro swept into Havana from the Sierra Maestre mountains in 1959.

.....

Also noted in this story are the previous claims by Rubio on his Senate website that his mother had returned to Cuba in 1961 'to be with his older siblings', and was held back from returning to the U. S. by the Cuban government for 9 months.


However, NPR reported this week that Rubio's mother had gone to Cuba in 1961 to care for her father, who had suffered an accident. On Rubio's website, he has since stated that his mother returned after only one month, with neither a mention of her taking care of her father on that visit nor of a '9-month' delay of her return to the U. S.


Rubio's story has morphed so many times, it is difficult to decipher the actual truth of it. But the fact remains that he made this story a centerpiece of his political biography as he campaigned for the U. S. Senate last year, and by doing so, he misled the voters of Florida and the nation, in his relentless drive for increasingly higher office.



At the end of the NPR story is this:

Rubio had been a Republican rising star, frequently mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate. His Cuban-American background was seen as an important asset that could help the party appeal to Hispanic voters, many of whom have been turned off by the GOP's hard-line stance on illegal immigration.

But the discrepancies in his the details he's offered about his family's emigration from Cuba has raised questions about his political future.

But, as we now are seeing, Marco Rubio blames all of his biographical discrepancies on the media, for having the gall to notice them.



This individual does not deserve to be sitting in the U. S. Senate.

[UTUSN]

16. K&R #40 for ANCHOR BABY!1 n/t

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[provis99]

18. he may not have Cuban exile parents, but Batista would be proud of him.

[lib2DaBone]

19. He is a total creation of Jeb Bush and the greedy TeaPublicans...

He's a liar and a cheat.. a whore for the one-percenters.

[dipsydoodle]

20. Rubio is at best economoc with the truth

Reminds me of the first verse of Hank Williams You Know That I know.

Now you know that I know that you ain't good
And you wouldn't tell the truth even if you could
Lying is habit you practice wherever you go
You may fool the rest of this world but you know that I know

Jack White cover : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBUFGFKHk-o