What A Hack
Oh, Marco. Never change...
After getting nearly laughed out of the studio during his debate with Patrick Murphy earlier this week when he danced around the answer to the tough question "Will you serve your entire six year term if reelected?" Marco Rubio is slipping in the polls. The belief that he would just easily sail his way back into the Senate isn't quite working out the way he'd hoped. Even his hometown paper, The Miami Herald, has washed their hands of him and endorsed Murphy instead.
As the man Rubio supports for President would say, "Sad!"
Today Rubio tried a new twist to gain attention, favor, and perhaps votes, and it's quite the pretzel:
For starters, let me just say big of him to wait until he knew there was nothing of political import to be found in those hacks (and no, Rubio, they aren't "leaks." They're called "stolen information") to make such a statement in the first place. After all, Wikileaks didn't just start dropping this stuff yesterday.
Some seeing this declaration of so-called principle on Rubio's part, including some in the beltway media, are patting Rubio on the back for taking a moral stand where others in his party won't. I say don't be gullible. Sure, there's a chance he actually means this, just as there's a chance that climate change isn't really happening and Marco Rubio is just the only one privy to the truth.
It's more likely he's "not talking about it" by talking about it now for good reasons. Let me suggest a few.
He may be hoping he'll get name dropped by Hillary Clinton during the final debate tonight and credited for taking a stand in the hopes of winning over some Murphy voters. The problem there is, of course, he still supports Trump, which brings us to another problem: Trump is the one who invited Russian hackers to take a look-see at Hillary Clinton in the first place, and not long after, it seems they obliged. And then some. This of course, then leads to Trump's Putin problem, and so on, and so on. You could say it's a virtual Matryoshka doll of problems for Rubio.
Of course then there's Rubio's Captain Obvious impersonation. Leave it to Rubio to be the last one to notice the elephant in the room, that his own party, and perhaps his own personal information, are hardly immune to hackers. I can't be the only one picturing the moment when Rubio started trying to mentally picture everything he might have written over the years in his own emails, and then imagining him thinking to himself, "Oh crap!"
Thirdly, it's truly adorable that Rubio wants to warn others against trying to "capitalize politically" only after giving it careful time and thought to figure out his own way of politically capitalizing on the subject himself, and then "leaking" his holier-than-thou thoughts on the Wikileak problem to the awaiting media.
Never mind that Rubio has, and still does, support the only presidential candidate who is practically inviting Putin to interfere with our election, and our democracy in the first place. That hasn't changed.
So, nice try Marco. Oh, and good luck with your delete key, by the way.
(Matryoshka doll photo: Wikipedia)