“. . . is disqualified from being commander in chief”

Last updated on: February 5, 2016 at 9:40 am by Jane the Actuary

“. . . is disqualified from being commander in chief” 2016-02-05T09:40:22-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That’s Marco Rubio’s new applause line in his stump speech:

Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being commander in chief of the United States. . . .

Someone who can not handle intelligence information appropriately, can not be commander in chief and someone who lies to the families of those four victims in Benghazi can never be president of the United States.

But, in the first place, this is clumsy rhetorically. In the context of all of the (foolish) discussion about whether Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, to use “disqualified” in a figurative sense just doesn’t work for me. Its meaning is too precise, and refers to objective, specific requirements, or decisions by a formal authority (being “disqualified” from a race). It grates on me to hear this being used in this sense.

But guess what? As much as I think this business of the classified info on the private server is terrible (we have annual ethics training sessions on the necessity of never even doing any company business with on our personal e-mail accounts!), and I worry about the consequences if the Department of Justice for political reasons simply buries the matter and shrugs it off, Rubio’s got a “disqualification” of his own.

See, a couple weeks ago I joined a number of Facebook groups — yes, because I’d been told that it’s something that can help with attracting more readers to the blog. Now, that didn’t prove to be particularly useful, as what I write doesn’t really fit into any such niche, but it’s been very instructive to read these groups, and one of the messages, loud and clear, is that large numbers of Republicans simply believe that Rubio’s support of immigration amnesty in the Gang of 8 bill, as well as his support of increasing the numbers of H1-B visas (in light of multiple reports of Americans being required to train their replacements) is an absolute deal-breaker. Yes, it may be that Trump suggests having a “big door” and only came to his “build a wall” proposal recently, and it may be that Cruz has a few suspect votes as well, but it’s Rubio who bears the most guilt. I’ve lamented multiple times in the past that he has even failed to tell a good story about his “conversion” to a stricter enforcement and instead is more “sorry he got caught” than anything else.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, this is extremely regrettable, not just because of the policy position itself but also because it speaks to Rubio’s inability to get a clue about what voters think. But it’s not a deal-breaker for me — partly because I appreciate the fact that Rubio has put out policy positions on other topics (even though I disagree with elements of these as well) and partly because each other candidate (except for Fiorina, whom I totally would vote for if she’s still in the race when Illinois gets to its primary, but that’s not going to happen) has some greater deal-breaker.

Cruz? No, I’m not upset that he was born in Canada, nor that he supposedly has links to Dominionist or New World Order conspiracies (things I’ve also learned about from these Facebook groups). But returning to the gold standard? No, sorry, I was suspicious of him from his announcement at Liberty University, but that’s my deal-breaker.

Bush? I will not support a third Bush — not at the primary level, anyway.

Trump? Trump? Really?

Which, sadly, leaves Rubio.

So what’s your deal-breaker?

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GOP primary

Rubio

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