If you felt pings of sadness for Marco Rubio in the past because of the shellacking he took from top-Republican-racist Donald Trump, let those pings dissipate!
But the Florida lawmaker, who is leaving Congress in early January, has conspicuously left undone one legislative item: clearing the way for the Senate confirmation hearing of Miami lawyer Mary Barzee Flores. She is a former state judge who was nominated by President Barack Obama to a vacancy on South Florida’s federal bench more than a year ago.
This past week, his office made it abundantly clear for the first time that Rubio — who along with Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson had recommended her for the judgeship — is blocking her nomination for reasons critics say boil down to “extreme political partisanship.”
In Marco Rubio’s defense, he was always the least funny version of Zelig in the Republican Party. Rubio’s people contend that he has still agreed to three other Florida-based judges.
“If Mary Barzee Flores was the ‘wrong person’ involved in ‘judicial policy making,’ why did [Rubio] affirm the selection of his nominating commission and submit her name to the president?” said Miami lawyer Tom Spencer, a Republican who backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during the presidential primary season.
“Clearly, some huge pressure was put on Rubio to put the knife into Judge Flores, and Rubio will not reveal the real reason for this hypocrisy,” Spencer said. “This is precisely why so many Florida Republicans are fed up with Rubio and the corrosive nature of his big money politics.”
Rubio did this purportedly unprecedented kind of flip-flopping once before with a 2013 Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge. Marco Rubio may be less racist but somehow more unfit for president than Donald Trump.