For those of you who missed it, professional Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was until recently running for president. Then he dropped out. Then he endorsed Marco Rubio, but like every other Serious Republican endorsing Marco Rubio he's been having a bear of a time explaining exactly why he would do that.
After struggling to name a single accomplishment Marco Rubio has had during his first term in the Senate on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” gave him a do-over.
You can tell he put a lot of thought into this. Not so much thought as to be able to pipe up with a single reason Marco Rubio is anything other than an over-promoted manchild sick of his current government job but Republicans' perceived best hope for defeating Those Assholes, Trumpencruz, but ... thought.
“As I said yesterday in the interview, one of the big problems in Washington is it’s a dysfunctional place,” Santorum said Friday. “Nothing gets done right now. And you can’t say that, well nothing happened for the first four years he was there because Harry Reid wouldn’t allow anything to be voted [on]. It just shut down the United States Senate.”
It's not fair to expect accomplishments from Rubio because for a while there Harry Reid was in charge of the Senate and so Rubio just sat on his office couch for those years, reading magazines.
Santorum said he chose Rubio over rivals Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, who maintain they have the executive experience the Florida senator lacks, because of his understanding of national security.
Ah, the ol' secret wonk defense. Marco Rubio is a wonk because people say he is a wonk, therefore giving him a greater "understanding" of things that he has no actual experience in but understands via wonk osmosis. Got it.
Speaking on Fox News a day earlier, Rubio defended Santorum’s struggle and listed getting additional sanctions on Hezbollah among his Senate accomplishments.
Jeb Bush told reporters at a gaggle Thursday that the Hezbollah sanctions were a “93 to nothing vote that [Rubio] didn’t go to.” Rubio was instead holding a fund-raising lunch that day.
This is genuinely sad. It feels like Rick Santorum endorsed Rubio because he thought maybe if Rubio became president Rick Santorum would be appointed Jesus Czar, but Rick didn't bother to do even the minimal amount of homework necessary to be seen as propping Rubio up. That's not going to get you a Rubio czarship, that's barely going to get you onto the Rubio Christmas card list.
For the record, Rick and Marco are indeed being ridiculed for this by the other candidates. Rick for being Rick, and Rubio for being such an empty suit that even his own advocates struggle to name why they're for him.
What a strange election. I don't mean that in a good way.