Here's Marco Rubio tellin' jokes about this weekend's monster blizzard.
“[I]n Washington right now they are being buried in a snow blizzard. Which means that, like, federal agencies, were not able to work all day yesterday and issuing new regulations. Apparently Barack Obama’s executive order pen has frozen.
“So come to think of it, it’s probably one of the best things to happen to the republic in quite a while.”
Ha ha ha government sucks, and so on. Put me in charge now!
This is usual campaign-trail rhetoric for all Republican candidates, as in every last one of them as near as I can tell. The theory goes that government can't do anything right, and so shouldn't try, and so shouldn't even show up. (Sen. Marco Rubio, we should note, has been doing a bang-up job of the not showing up part, so nobody can accuse him of not living according to his own ideals.)
Still, Steve Benen points out that this is, well, weird.
Celebrating a natural disaster while it’s ongoing – we’re talking about a blizzard that left at least 30 people dead – is bizarre, especially for a presidential candidate.
It all depends on your point of view, of course. If you see a blizzard that leaves 30 dead as being a dangerous weather event that’s still killing people while you’re talking, Rubio's little jokes while American citizens are dying seems a little crass. If you don't actually give a damn, or are one of the many thousands of sociopaths that rise to the top tiers of our fine American society via a steadfast program of never giving a damn, then it's just another little tidbit for preening yourself with in your next speech.
So what's the verdict? Let's call this one Not Presidential, but Very Republican. While other government officials are off doing the business of getting those states running again, dealing with flooding, restoring services and the like, Marco Rubio is left to grumble about government doing anything at all, and how gosh darn outrageous that is.
Well, he has a long way to go before he's as vigorously dislikable as fellow candidate Ted Cruz. But give him credit; he's been practicing.