Ask Rush what they really think
by digby
This Marco Rubio interview with Rush Limbaugh from April 2013 is fascinating. Rubio was selling the gang of eight CIR bill all over conservative radio at the time and Rush was not impressed. It’s worth reading the whole thing to understand what the right thought at the time about what he was selling. Here’s an excerpt:
RUSH: And we’re back on the Rush Limbaugh program with Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, and we’re talking about the upcoming legislation involving immigration. Senator, I know you say that the political aspects of this are not yours, but so many people are scared to death, Senator, that the Republican Party is committing suicide, that we’re going to end up legalizing nine million automatic Democrat voters, and that’s why the Democrats are so adamant. We don’t understand why the Republicans are so eager to make that happen. We seem to be wanting to reach out to Hispanics. Once we do everything we do to reach out to Hispanics, how can we ever reform welfare? How can we reform anything that we might want to change if it’s the product of reaching out to Hispanics, giving them what we think they want in order to get their votes, when they’re already gonna vote Democrat?
RUBIO: Well, a couple things I would say about that. First of all, I’m not prepared to admit that somehow there’s this entire population of people that because of their heritage are not willing to listen to our pitch on why limited government is better. As I said at the outset, this is an argument that right now unfortunately I think we are losing in many sectors of our society. We have young people that have somehow grown up, and we can chalk it up to what the schools are teaching or they’re seeing in the mass media, but people who have grown up to believe that government is the source of prosperity. That the way to grow our economy is for the government to spend more.
That’s always been a challenge ’cause it’s a lot easier to sell people on a government program than it is to sell ’em on free enterprise and limited government. It’s easier to promise that that’s for sure, but I think the evidence is on our side. Once we explain to people the reality of this, I think we can convince anyone, certainly I think we can convince a lot of people in America. I think the future of conservatism, and, in fact, I think the future of America depends on how effective we are at explaining to as many Americans as possible why the road we are on right now is such an economic disaster, and I just refuse to accept the notion that somehow we’re not gonna be able to make that argument successfully to Hispanics.
I imagine in places like California and New York, where there’s a large segment of Hispanics that also happen to live in very liberal communities, it will probably be a heavier lift. But in places like Florida, Texas, Virginia, and other places throughout the country, where there’s a growing Hispanic population not tied to these traditional centers of liberalism, I think we have a very compelling story to tell. The evidence shows that Hispanics are heavily entrepreneurial. And I know this. The more taxes people pay, the more that they own, the more they have at stake in the economy, the more conservative and more limited government they become, and I’ve seen that with my own eyes.
RUSH: Well, I have, too, within certain years, certain eras of this country’s history. We’re not in the era like that now. We’re in an era where seemingly more people are low-information than ever before and are more susceptible — Senator, look at the number of people not working. I mean, 90 million people are not working. But they’re all eating, they’ve all got phones, they’ve all got TV sets and so forth. They are being supported. They are able to live sufficiently well enough that getting a job is not that important, not nearly as important. It’s a cultural thing that’s happening here.
Rush wasn’t buying Rubio’s view that Hispanics are entrepreneurial and hard working. He just doesn’t believe it. And neither do Republican voters. If they like Rubio and Cruz, they also believe that they are the only “good ones” the same way Ben Carson and Tim Scott are the only “good” African Americans.
Rubio could certainly be elected, and even elected largely on the basis of his ethnicity. Republicans want to be able to vote for ethnic and racial minorities. But they do not want them to do anything for “the bad ones” — which is 99% of them.
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