"Be Respectful" Rubio Says, To Voters He Calls "Rude And Stupid"
If there's one thing that's consistent about Marco Rubio, it's his habit of never showing up.
Despite having the worst absentee record in the Senate, voters in Florida sent him back for another term last November. So how is he returning the favor? By ignoring their pleas to meet with him and hear them out on why they don't want to die without health insurance if he and the Republicans get their way and destroy the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare."
But he's not stopping there. Not only is he ignoring the people who pay his salary, he's insulting them for asking him to meet with them and hear their concerns in the first place. His excuse for not honoring their pleas for a town hall meeting is that he has already determined that if he does so, his constituents will be "rude and stupid."
Marco Rubio: Town hall psychic.
This past week, as other Republicans were either fleeing town halls or actually showing up in some instances, Republicans and Democrats alike were voicing their concerns about having their health insurance ripped away from them, because whether Republicans like it or not, the ACA is popular. People want to keep it and they want Washington to make it even better.
But this doesn't fit the years-long narrative of the GOP, so they're trying to craft a new narrative to fit the old one: Portray voters who want to keep the ACA as angry "liberal" activist mobs who just want to make trouble. That way they think they can ignore them and go about the business of killing the ACA along with millions of people who will die without it.
And because Rubio loves nothing more than not taking responsibility and doing the job he was elected to do, this narrative is a perfect fit for him. Or so he thought.
When confronted a second time on camera (see below), Rubio did a little narrative editing of his own. When a man tells him his health insurance premiums aren't too high, as Republicans have been claiming for years, Rubio tells the man "yes they are." Never mind that this man is the one who receives and pays his own insurance bills, not Rubio. But Rubio's not having that, no sir. Reality will NOT be tolerated.
Talk about "rude and stupid."
Last week Rubio avoided a town hall his constituents held without him with an alleged trip to Europe. But while his office told voters he was away all week, he was spotted fleeing a video camera in Florida when he was asked why he wouldn't show up at the town hall. The same day he was fleeing the cameras, voters who called his office were told he was still in Europe.
In addition to calling his concerned voters "rude and stupid," Rubio has other excuses for avoiding them, like pointing out that he's done town halls in the past. However, the town halls he refers to were of the one-sided variety dating back to 2007-08 organized by his own party and consisting of mostly like-minded conservatives.
He's also falling back on his trusty "have it both ways" rhetoric, the kind that makes him sound totally in favor of (fill-in-the-blank) that's consistently followed up with a "but." For example:
Asked whether he thinks today’s town hall crowds do not consist of “real people,” Rubio was quick to dispel the notion.
“These are real people. They are real liberal activists, and I respect their right to do it. But it is not a productive exercise,” Rubio replied in the interview. “It’s all designed to have news coverage at night — look at all these angry people screaming at your senator.”
See? Rubio would just love to meet with these people who are totally "real," except they're really just real "liberal activists" rather than people who have health insurance they like and don't want it replaced with the "just die without it" plan that Rubio and the GOP are planning.
So no, while Rubio demands they be "respectful" to him, he can't possibly do his job and meet with his constituents who fear bankruptcy and/or death when he and his party rip away their health insurance.
Voters. So rude and stupid, am I right?
We finally caught up with Senator Marco Rubio at @FIU. He told us that he won't host a townhall because people act "rude and stupid." pic.twitter.com/DrefDkvrFD
— Tomas Kennedy (@Tomaskenn) February 23, 2017
(Photo: @Tomaskenn)
