Tea Party darling freshmen Senator Marco Rubio (R) Florida, was exposed today in the Washington Post for lying about his family history.
What the Post has found out and Rubio has not denied is that Marco Rubio mislead and lied about his family history.
During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.
But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2.5 years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
This is the equivalent of having bragged about military service and never serving in the military. He is finished as a candidate for president or vice president. The worst part for Rubio is that his anti-Castro base will be the most upset with him. His claim that he relied on family oral history is laughable. The fact that his parents went along with this fraud is shameful. The Rubios were economic immigrants to the U.S. not exiles fleeing a dictatorship. There is a big difference.
The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election. Rubio — now considered a prospective 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate and a possible future presidential contender — mentions his parents in the second sentence of the official biography on his Senate Web site. It says that Mario and Oriales Rubio “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king good looks has drawn on the power of that claim to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical skills of one of the more dynamic stump speakers in modern American politics.
UPDATE
The Senator issued the following statement:
“To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous. The dates I have given regarding my family’s history have always been based on my parents’ recollections of events that occurred over 55 years ago and which were relayed to me by them more than two decades after they happened. I was not made aware of the exact dates until very recently.
“What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate. My parents are from Cuba. After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times. In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family’s matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return.
“They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.”
http://nation.foxnews.com/...
His lie has become a huge embarrassing one now. He claims it was all murky until recently, so why didn't he correct his website? Why didn't he get the true story out there? He claims that they were moving back to Cuba in 1961?!! Really? Now he is on very shaky ground. The Bay of Pigs invasion was in 1961. By 1961 the Marxist-Leninist nature of the regime was obvious. Were the Rubio's going back to Cuba in order to build Socialism? To become Revolutionaries?
Marco Rubio is finished. Not only for future presidential ambitions but I predict he will never be able to run for Senate in Florida. He should resign. This is not some sin of the flesh that befalls good men, no, this is an orchestrated lie to deceive voters throughout his entire political life. Good thing for Marco that Gadaffi went down today.
As the son of Cuban exiles myself, people who came here after having their hopes for a democratic revolution betrayed by Fidel Castro and his allies, Rubio's fraud is particularly galling.