Last week, the conservative Weekly Standard
reported Marco Rubio would sponsoring Senate legislation to ban all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It seemed like an obvious ploy by Rubio to convince malcontents on the right that he was still one of them after his support of immigration reform.
But maybe it was too obvious, because now he seems to be AWOL:
Rubio has not been in contact with his office about sponsoring the legislation and is in Florida until Tuesday, an adviser said, adding that there are many other Republican senators also interested in sponsoring the legislation. But because of a story last week by The Weekly Standard — which reported that Rubio had signed on as the bill’s lead sponsor — Rubio is now widely expected to have some role shepherding the bill. He will return to the Capitol Tuesday to face loads of questions on his plans regarding the legislation.
It seems like there are two explanations for the changing story: Either the original report was wrong, and conservatives are trying to jam Rubio into Todd Akin's shoes as punishment for supporting a humane immigration policy, or the original report was right, and now Rubio is getting old feet because it's so obvious that he's trying to trade away women's right to control their bodies in order to score political points with hardliners. Either way, it's yet another example of how,
despite all the hype, it's going to take a lot more than Marco Rubio to save the GOP from itself.