Marco Rubio is having a hissy fit now that he's discovered governing is more than just looking pretty for the cameras and giving speeches.
“I don’t know that ‘hate’ is the right word,” Rubio said in an interview. “I’m frustrated.”
This year, as Rubio runs for president, he has cast the Senate — the very place that cemented him as a national politician — as a place he’s given up on, after less than one term. It’s too slow. Too rule-bound. So Rubio, 42, has decided not to run for his seat again. It’s the White House or bust.
“That’s why I’m missing votes. Because I am leaving the Senate. I am not running for reelection,” Rubio said in the last Republican debate, after Donald Trump had mocked him for his unusual number of absences during Senate votes.
Five years ago, Rubio arrived with a potential that thrilled Republicans. He was young, ambitious, charismatic, fluent in English and Spanish, and beloved by the establishment and the tea party.
But Rubio had arrived at one of the least ambitious moments in Senate history and saw many of his ideas fizzle. Democrats killed his debt-cutting plans. Republicans killed his immigration reform. The two parties actually came together to kill his AGREE Act, a small-bore, hands-across-the-aisle bill that Rubio had designed just to get a win on something.
Now, he’s done. “He hates it,” a longtime friend from Florida said, speaking anonymously to say what Rubio would not.
Awwww, poor Marco. It's a tough world when billionaires buy your seat in the Senate and then you're expected to actually do some work to earn it.
Not only that, but it really suggests a lack of ambition that wouldn't serve him well in the White House, should this country lose its collective mind and manage to elect him. Does he think being President of the United States is as easy as sending down a few edicts and expecting action?
I'm sure his billionaires will buy him a think tank somewhere.