A Family Matter Of Facts
(Photo: Marco Rubio U.S. Senate)
Marco Rubio came to Tampa today to speak about job creation during a lunch at the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Sticking to the Republican script, he blamed regulations and political rhetoric for preventing businesses from hiring, according to The Tampa Tribune.
Interesting excuses for the senator who not only voted against merely discussing the recent Obama jobs bill, but is also the co-sponser of another bill that would actually kill one out of every 10 federal jobs. He's also a firm believer in less taxes for the rich along with the rest of his Republican colleagues, despite the fact that Miami is second among the least equal cities in the country in income inequality, and that Florida has a staggering unemployment rate.
But then Rubio isn't big on details like that any more than he is on the details of his family history, which came up again today. When asked about his alleged embellishments by reporters, he denied that he has told different stories at different times.
Rubio continues to deny those claims in the face of videos and news reports that quote him giving a different story until he changed his Senate bio last week after the Washington Post found that Rubio's parents left Cuba earlier and for different reasons than Rubio's longstanding political narrative had asserted.
In fact, American Bridge sent out a memo that found at least twenty instances where Rubio had the chance to correct the record in various news reports before the Washington Post evidence came to light. It was only then that he changed his official bio to reflect the actual date that his parents left Cuba.
Rubio continues to brush off the embellishment.
From The Tampa Tribune:
"The bottom line is the story's the same one, and I think it's been blown way out of proportion by some people in the media."
"There's no disparity, it just more detail," he said.
Details, details. So he got the dates wrong. No big deal, right?
Rubio said he feels "outrage at the way the story's been exaggerated – I mean the bottom line is, I got the dates wrong because they happened 15 years before I was even born."
Oh, well....he got the dates wrong, but only because they happened 15 years before he was even born. How dare the media and voters be so demanding of facts! How can they expect Rubio to know when his parents left their homeland? Hello, he wasn't even born yet, so....duh?
Since his family history is such a big part of his life, which shaped him into the person he is today, or so he tells us time and time again, speech after speech, perhaps he might have taken the time to look into such "minor" details, like what year they actually left, and the reasons why. It's not like the evidence wasn't there for Rubio to discover for himself. If it's as meaningful as he claims, surely those aren't minor details one would forget.
Unless of course "forgetting them" makes for a better story?
For someone who aspires to higher office, and perhaps the White House, I'm not sure which quality in a person is worse: Someone who knows the facts, but chooses to embellish them, or someone who doesn't and isn't even the least bit curious enough to look into the facts for himself. Haven't we had enough Republicans running the country this way already? From Iraq, to jobs, to historical rates of income inequality, ignoring facts has brought us to where we are today.
