Marco Rubio Not ‘Waiting His Turn’
Marco Rubio announced his candidacy for the Republican GOP nomination yesterday, and by all accounts it went well. The Washington Post has an in-depth look at Rubio in this morning's paper with a focus on his unwillingness to, as some have put it, "wait his turn."
You can see it in his bouncing leg, his restless energy, his rapid-fire answers. Marco Rubio wants things now, now, now.
He has just left the Senate floor, where he ripped President Obama’s Israel policy, and now, seated in his grand Capitol Hill office, he dives headlong into explaining why, at just 43, he is ready to run for president.
“I have never understood that ‘wait your turn,’ ” logic, the Florida Republican says. “The presidency is not like a bakery, where you take a number and wait for it to be called. You’re either compelled to run for it because you believe it’s the best place to serve your country” or you stay out of the race.
Never mind that his mentor, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, 62, is gearing up to run, too. Or that he has not even finished his first term as senator. Or that the GOP has a long tradition of picking older presidential nominees who have paid their dues…
The story recounts Rubio's exchange with one New Hampshire voter addressing the issue that might be Rubio's biggest weakness, at least from the perspective of many conservatives considering his candidacy: immigration.
...others were more skeptical, including a woman who challenged him on his 2013 bipartisan effort to establish a path to legal status for illegal immigrants. When that measure passed the Senate, it upset many conservatives, who said it amounted to “amnesty.”
“When I first heard you, I liked you a lot — and then you lost me,” because of immigration, she said. “Can you commit, if elected president, to send home every single person that’s violated our country’s laws and is here illegally?”
“I don’t think anyone can commit that to you,” Rubio replied, without a second’s hesitation. “You have 12 million human beings in America, most of whom we don’t even know who they are and some of them whom our country’s not going to tolerate rounding up and sending back.”
The article helps to explain why Rubio has tossed his hat into the ring, and why he's not one to wait his turn.