The 45^th POTUS, Marco Rubio

March 2, 2016

Marco Rubio makes George W Bush look like a genius, and Bush has been rated as the fourth dumbest president to ever hold office. Yet Marco Rubio will be our next president.

This is how it’s going to play out:

Currently the Republican establishment wants Rubio to be their candidate. The Democratic establishment wants Hilary Clinton to be their candidate. In poll after poll, Rubio wins a general election against Clinton. She simply inspires too many negative reactions with undecided voters.

Hilary is winning most of the democratic primaries but most of her delegate support is coming from super delegates, who are not obligated to follow the popular votes in these contests. They are under the direction of the Democratic National Committee. Bernie Sanders is actually doing quite well in the primaries, and certainly has fundraising and voter support momentum. In point of fact in polling regarding the general election he defeats quite easily every Republican candidate. But DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz doesn’t care. Hilary is her choice because like Schultz she is an unapologetic corporatist, and so she will do everything she possibly can to make sure that Hilary is the nominee, even if it means using superdelegates as ballast against Sanders’ support.

Donald Trump is winning almost all of the Republican primaries and is presumed to be their likely nominee. But the RNC and its adherents don’t want Trump to be their candidate because he is obviously not controllable. He says whatever pops into his mind, regardless of how offensive or absurd it is. A person like that would make for a very bad president on so many levels and against so many interests. They want Rubio because he is precisely as willing to go along with their agenda as George W Bush was. Unfortunately for Trump, he gets clobbered in the polling versus either of the potential democratic opponents, losing by double digits to either. Like Hilary, he also has too many negatives to win in a general election. In fact, he is the only candidate in recent memory to have more negatives than Hilary. There is no way that the RNC is going to let him ruin their chance to stack the Supreme Court.

Democratic voters are licking their chops at the prospect of facing Donald Trump in the general election in November. But they forget one very important thing: Donald Trump is not a politician. He has never been elected to anything. He is a businessman first which means he can be bought off if the price is right. What could the RNC possibly offer a billionaire? Assuming he is actually worth billions (a topic of some debate, fueled by his own admission that his worth changes day to day), they could offer him at least some of the power he so desperately seeks. He won’t win the presidency but Secretary of Treasury? That might be nice. How about a lifetime of business loan guarantees? FDIC-like insurance against bankrupcy? That might be attractive to a man who has filed bankrupcy four times. Or it could be something as simple as making the Trump University scandal go away. Regardless, back room deals are part of political convention lore dating back as far as this country has been around. What’s to prevent the RNC from making a deal to let Rubio gain the nomination.

So why hasn’t the RNC made their move yet?

Trump has been an excellent test subject for which ideas the Republicans can use to excite their voting block. Remember in 2000 when swift boats were one of the most important issues among people who voted for Bush? And how about gay marriage in 2004? What’s to say that banning Muslims from entering the country won’t be the Republican slogan this year? Who knows what Trump will say next but it will no doubt get headlines… and more importantly, polling data. So as long as he’s campaigning they get their data. Then after the convention they can pair whatever ridiculous non-sequitir of a message that polled best with a candidate with more likeability than Clinton and win the general election.

Additionally, as long as polls show that Clinton would beat Trump, Clinton supporters will feel very comfortable voting for her in the primaries, believing he will be her eventual opponent, rather than voting for Sanders who polls indicate would beat any Republican. However, it is Clinton is who the Republicans want to run against. She is the person least likely to sway undecided voters, unlike Sanders, whose message of social and financial justice resonates extremely well among them. If voters were suddenly given a choice – vote for your favorite candidate or vote for the person you think will win against Republicans – they might start voting for Sanders more to make sure he is the eventual nominee. If Sanders won most of the rest of the primaries, the DNC would look really bad if they didn’t make him the nominee. That’s the very thing the RNC doesn’t want.

So why, you may ask, doesn’t the RNC have the same concern regarding the optics of a nominee that the people didn’t vote for? Are you joking? Have you seen the clown car that comprises their presidential candidates and the issues that concern them? Does anyone honestly think that the party that brought us Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan meltdown, invading Iraq over WMDs, the financial meltdown of 2007, voodoo economics, the 2000 ballot chad embarrassment, voting to overturn Obamacare more than 50 times after it became law and is now threatening to not consider a Supreme Court nominee for almost a year… does anyone believe that party is actually worried about how something looks? They know this presidential election is about stacking the Supreme Court, the only job in America that is guaranteed for a lifetime. They want to put at least two justices on the Court who are no older than 40 years old so that the oligarchy they created over the last 30 years will last for another half century, so that not only your children, but your children’s children will live under their oppressive worldview. Imagine adding two more like Clarence Thomas, who has been a rubber stamp for the conservative agenda for 30 years to the point of advocating that serial spouse abusers should have no deterrents or impediments for buying guns, or Samuel Alito, who was one of the earliest legal advocates for laws like the ones protected by the Citizen’s United decision. Looking like idiots for a few months is a small price to pay for that.

What price are you willing to pay?