Freedom Line Blog

The Des Moines Register reports:

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is endorsing a Convention of States to amend the U.S. Constitution, saying it’s the only way to impose term limits on Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court and to require a balanced federal budget. . . .

. . . Rubio told reporters later he has been studying “very carefully” the Convention of States concept to amend the U.S. Constitution and that his former Senate colleague, Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, is an advocate for the initiative.

“It is something we feel very positive about. I think it is the only way that you are ever going to get term limits, and the only way that you are ever going to get a balanced budget amendment,” Rubio added.

Asked if he had concerns about opening up the Constitution to a convention, Rubio remarked, “I think you would have to limit the convention, and that is what they are proposing: a very limited convention on specific delineated issues that they would talk about — like term limits and a balanced budget amendment.”

Approval from 34 states is required for a Convention of States to proceed, and any amendments would need to be ratified by 38 states to become part of the Constitution.

A few observations/words of caution:

• Although term limits have a certain populist appeal, they don’t really work. Term limits haven’t produced more “citizen legislators.” In fact, such laws have succeeded in empowering lobbyists and government employees. As Alan Greenblatt observed a decade ago in Governing magazine, “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that short-term legislators aren’t prone to engage in long-term thinking.” That’s about the long and short of it. Lawmakers may come and go, but special interests and bureaucrats are forever.

• The idea of term limiting U.S. Supreme Court justices is a popular one, which is exactly why it should give people pause. As David Harsanyi argued at The Federalist in a 2014 piece:

It is pretty clear, though, that through lifetime appointments, the Founders wanted to shield judges from the political pressures of the day. But an excellent byproduct of having ancient, long-serving justices is that they are far more likely to be impervious to . . . fleeting populist bugaboos and contemporary preferences . . . . This should be about the long game.

• A balanced budget amendment offers no guarantee of fiscal rectitude. For a good sense of how a balanced-budget amendment would work in practice, one need look no further than California.

• There is no real way to limit a constitutional convention. Remember, the Framers of the Constitution of 1787 were only sent to Philadelphia to fix the original Articles of Confederation. But James Madison had something quite different in mind. Sure, it worked out well the first time. But it is no mere exercise in nostalgia to say the Founding generation was far wiser (even when bitterly divided) than the vast majority of those who would pass for statesmen in our day. The point is, any Convention of the States is bound to take up questions beyond limiting legislative and judicial terms or balancing the federal budget. So let’s be careful what we wish for.

Sen. Rubio says he’s given this idea a great deal of thought. He might do well to spend some time with the original Federalist just the same.

If at first you don’t succeed, pivot to the next best alternative.

That seems to be the strategy used by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) as he positions himself for a potential White House run in 2016.

Rubio, once the darling of conservatives and a top GOP presidential contender, quickly fell out of favor with the grassroots when he supported a version of comprehensive immigration reform championed by the Obama administration and some of the most liberal members of Congress.

After the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill was pronounced dead-on-arrival in the House of Representatives, Rubio has since modified his position on how to pursue immigration reform. Unsurprisingly, it now aligns with what conservatives have said all along: secure the border first, build trust in the federal government’s commitment to the rule of law and national sovereignty, and only then discuss how to integrate illegal immigrants into American society.

Last week, Rubio sent a letter to President Barack Obama warning against a unilateral executive action that would grant some kind of legal status to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants. In Rubio’s words, such an act “will increase the perception of ambiguity in our laws, incentivize more people to immigrate here illegally, and significantly set back the prospects of real reform.”

It’s too early to tell whether Rubio’s repositioning will be enough to convince conservatives that he’s changed his principles instead of just his tactics. Until he can give a convincing explanation of why next time will be different, skepticism about his true beliefs will remain.

What makes conservatives so sure that the Obama administration will bailout insurance companies losing money under ObamaCare?

“According to a recent investigation conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Darrell Issa, insurers widely expect to receive funds from the bailout program,” writes U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). “One large insurer recently filed financial statements claiming they expect part of their revenue to come from American taxpayers via the ObamaCare bailout ‘fund.’”

Thwarted by the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives who refuse to appropriate money for this part of ObamaCare, the Department of Health and Human Services “figured out a way to use general funds available through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pay off health insurers,” says Rubio. “The effect is to circumvent Congress’ power of the purse for the purpose of bailing out health insurers with taxpayer funds.”

Whether it’s the CIA lying about spying on congressional investigators or IRS officials conveniently losing potentially damaging emails, executive branch officials in the Obama administration are destroying the ability of anybody outside their clique from being able to trust anything they say.

If you want to see what the future of the Republican Party might look like consider Mike Lee’s social network.

The Utah Republican has an enviable number of connections to fellow U.S. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. Each is strategic. With Paul it’s teaming up on civil liberties issues like reining in the National Security Agency and prison reform. Few remember that it was Cruz and Lee who helped force the government shutdown to halt ObamaCare. And now Rubio is coming around to Lee’s push to make the tax code more family friendly.

As James Antle puts it in a terrific post, “You don’t have to agree with all of the aforementioned proposals to see how different the Republican Party would look if Lee’s policy entrepreneurship with Paul and Rubio gained traction: Less identified with war, wiretapping, and mandatory sentences; more identified with reforming government programs and cutting taxes for the non-rich.”

By influencing the policy platforms of three likely GOP presidential contenders in 2016, Mike Lee is also forging friendships that could make him one of the most powerful officeholders on Capitol Hill.

Keep an eye on Mike Lee. He just may be the most important Tea Party Senator not running for president.

By now you may have heard about Charlie Crist saying he left the Florida Republican Party because of racism.

The former Florida Republican Governor and one-time U.S. Senate candidate rationalized his switch to the Democratic Party this way: “I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there. I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”

In reality, what really pushed Crist into the Democratic Party was a 40 point swing in his poll numbers relative to a Republican state representative named Marco Rubio.  In the 2010 GOP U.S. Senate primary, Rubio pummeled Crist with the latter’s liberal gubernatorial record. Crist’s anti-conservative tendencies included voting to increase state spending, appointing liberal justices to the state supreme court and vetoing legislation to link teacher pay to student test scores. All this and Crist still claimed in a debate with Rubio that, “I think we can both agree we’re both good conservatives.”

As liberal pundit Chris Cillizza explains, Crist’s party switch was driven by the failure of his actions to align with GOP orthodoxy, not racism. And lest we forget, Florida Republicans voted for the Hispanic Rubio over the Anglo Crist; hardly the result one would expect if racial considerations dominate GOP thinking.

Fundamentally, Crist is dogged by skepticism that he has any core principles worth fighting for. That, and not some imaginary racial bias, is what made Florida GOP voters reject his bid to go to Washington. Now that Crist is seeking his old job as governor under the Democratic label, Sunshine State liberals should be equally as suspicious of statements that seem to align with their ideology. As Crist has proven time and again, he’ll say anything to get elected.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is using an interesting tactic to get House Republicans to pass his immigration reform bill – Scare them with threats of a lawless presidency.

“I believe this president will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, he will be tempted to issue an executive order as he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen,” the presumptive 2016 presidential candidate told a Florida radio station last week.

In effect, Rubio is telling House Republicans – opponents of his pathway to citizenship plan for illegal immigrants – that unless they pass the Senate Gang of Eight’s bad bill President Barack Obama will enlarge his controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Brought to life last year via executive order, Obama directed immigration agents to put illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children at the bottom of the deportation list. The policy also makes available temporary work visas to those covered.

But Rubio, a University of Miami law school graduate and former Speaker of the Florida House, has his eyes on the wrong target.

For one thing, not even the liberal academics that provided cover for the president’s unilateral and unprecedented action think Obama has the power to defer action on every illegal immigrant.

“The justifications for DACA made clear that this is not a situation where the president can reduce overall enforcement of immigration laws. He can just redirect it in certain ways,” former principal deputy attorney general and current University of Virginia law professor David A. Martin told the Washington Post.

And even if President Obama did decide not to enforce any immigration laws, why is his lawlessness an argument against Republicans? Wouldn’t the proper response to an expanded abuse of presidential power be to oppose the president?

Yet it seems like Rubio is giving Obama a pass while preemptively blaming House Republicans for future bad acts the president may commit.

Only in a place like Washington does that kind of logic make sense. If Rubio really believes that the President of the United States won’t be constrained by the separation of powers and the rule of law, then the object of his anger should be directed at the White House, not Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is surprisingly mum about whether House Republicans should pass, amend or kill his signature legislative achievement this year: Comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes up to 11 million illegal immigrants before securing the border.

According to an interview with Politico, Rubio said the House GOP deserves “the time and space… to come up with their ideas about how to reform immigration – and I hope they will – but that’s up to them.” But while Rubio obviously wants to create some distance between himself and a bill that his conservative base hates, now is precisely the time to put his influence to work if he really believes that his immigration reform is the right thing to do.

As Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a co-author with Rubio on the bill says, “If he’s got some influence in the House, now is a good time to use it.”

That Rubio is refusing to gives the strong impression that much of his support for the Senate’s version of immigration reform is more about politics than policy. Now that his 2016 presidential aspirations look endangered because of his stance on immigration, the rising conservative is looking to bolster his image by talking about fiscal responsibility and social issues.

But the problem remains that his performance on immigration – for the bill when it seems to help him, against or at least ambivalent toward it when it hurts – indicates his most important criteria is whether a particular stance propels him closer to the White House.

That’s a fine way to operate if one is a paid consultant looking for any advantage to climb the ladder, but it’s the exact opposite of what people expect from a statesman. Rubio helped pass and craft the Senate’s immigration bill, so he either needs to defend it to the death or disown it for principled reasons. Enough calculating. Make a decision and own it.

So, will he or won’t be vote for his Gang of Eight’s version of comprehensive immigration reform?

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is starting to sound like a politician who knows he miscalculated on the public’s support for a legalization first approach to fixing America’s broken immigration system.

Consider these two statements from the Florida lawmaker as quoted by The Hill:

“There will have to be improvements [to the Gang’s bill],” Rubio said [after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved it without substantial changes]. “Because the good thing is the American people, the vast majority of them throughout the political spectrum, have clearly said that they are prepared to responsibly deal with those that are here illegally, but they are only willing to do so if we can take measures that ensure that this problem will never happen again in the future. And so, if we can make sure we put in place enforcement mechanisms and a guest worker program that ensures this will never happen again in the future, we’re going to have responsible immigration reform. And if we don’t have that, then we won’t have immigration reform.”

But on Monday of this week, Rubio is sounding a different tune when explaining to a constituent why reform couldn’t be piecemeal as Republicans in the House of Representatives want:

“I give you my word, that if this issue becomes one of those old-fashioned Washington issues where they start horse trading, one part of it for another part of it,” Rubio said in a video response to a constituent’s concern. “If each of these are not dealt with as separate issues even though they are dealt with in one bill, then I won’t be able to support that anymore.”
…
The problem with immigration though is that it is complex because it is all interwoven,” Rubio said. “It’s all related to each other. It’s literally impossible to do one part without doing the other.”

So, which is it? Is immigration reform as the Gang envisions it in need of major changes to make it acceptable to the House, or is it a done deal that can’t be amended?

I suspect the answer for Rubio is both. The Gang’s bill as-is does not secure the border first, and therefore – among many other serious problems – will be dead on arrival when it hits the House, as it should be. The problem for Rubio, though, is that he is one of the Gang members, making him a co-author of everything that’s in the bill.  To walk away from it now, without any big changes, would indicate that his real problem with the bill is that it’s not popular. What conservatives want instead is for him to oppose it because, as written, it’s wrong on the merits.

Personally, I like Marco Rubio and hope he can find an honorable way to disassociate himself from the Gang of Eight, so that he can be a Senate champion for immigration reform that puts security and enforcement before amnesty.

It’ll be tough, but it’s worth the effort.

Human Events kindly provides the full text of Senator Marco Rubio’s speech at last night Jack Kemp Foundation ceremony bestowing on him its annual Leadership Award.

While the entire speech is a must-read, a passage on a specific health care reform struck this conservative as especially attractive:

In addition to promoting Flexible Savings Accounts, we should create a health insurance system that focuses on empowering people, not bureaucracy. People should be able to buy a health care plan that fits their needs and budget, from any company in America that is willing to sell it to them. And they should be able to buy it with tax free money, just like their employers buy it for many of them now.

That is, until Obamacare fully kicks in.  Since Obamacare’s regulations on employers only apply to full-time workers, there is a regulatory incentive to minimize the amount of full-time workers one employs.  In order to avoid either the stiff compliance costs or the steep penalties for failing to comply, employers are likely to increase the trend of laying-off workers, scaling back hours, or using contract workers in order to avoid the profit-killing expense of paying for all of Obamacare’s new required benefits.

Because of the entirely predictable response to Obamacare’s mandates, millions of American workers are likely to be caught in an employment trap where they work just enough at two or more jobs not to qualify as full-time employees with benefits.  If Republicans are unable to repeal Obamacare, then fixing the tax code to allow independent workers to buy affordable health plans with pre-tax dollars is one of the next best moves.  Marco Rubio seems poised to lead that charge.

Peter Beinart says the GOP’s “Hispanic problem” is about more than just immigration reform and competing forms of amnesty:

Hispanics do feel that the economic system is “stacked against them” and they do “want stuff” like health care, college-tuition assistance, and other government benefits that might help them get ahead. According to Pew, while only 41 percent of Americans as a whole say they want a bigger government that provides more services, a whopping 75 percent of Hispanics do.

Food for thought for those thinking Marco Rubio’s version of the DREAM Act or another legal quick fix will suddenly flip Hispanics from Democrats to Republicans.

Quin makes a characteristically impressive case for why either Jon Kyl or Bobby Jindal would be great vice presidential choices for Mitt Romney. As my column last week made clear, I’m a Kyl man, but I’m certainly not immune to the charms of Jindal, one of the most effective Republican governors in the nation (for proof, see my recent praise for the education reforms Jindal is implementing in Louisiana).

Still, I think Kyl is the superior choice for Team Romney. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Capitol Hill Experience — With Romney never having held elected office in Washington, having a Vice President with preexisting influence and relationships in the Beltway would go a long way towards advancing his agenda. Jindal isn’t exactly a Washington unknown — he spent just under two years as an Assistant HHS Secretary in the Bush Administration and had a two-term stint in the House — but his background pales in comparison to Kyl, who’s been a member of Congress for 25 years. And with Kyl currently serving as Republican Whip in the Senate — the position responsible for counting votes — his skill set is uniquely suited for helping Romney get legislation through Congress.

2. Foreign Policy Experience — Kyl has become a major figure on foreign policy in recent years, leading Republican opposition to both the New START Treaty and the Law of the Sea Treaty (both of which he has been right on, IMHO). Jindal has no commensurate experience. For Romney, who is also a foreign policy neophyte (and whose foreign policy pronouncements — identifying Russia as the nation’s largest security concern and threatening a trade war with China, for instance — have been dotty at times), having someone of Kyl’s stature would flesh out the ticket in the area where the presidency confers the greatest power — and requires the greatest responsibility.

3. Playing the Number Two Role — Let’s stipulate up front that neither Kyl nor Jindal are electrifying speakers. Neither is going to bring to the ticket anything as energizing as Chris Christie’s blue collar pugnaciousness or Marco Rubio’s stirring eloquence. But while Kyl is steady and workmanlike, Jindal can come across awkward and uncomfortable in public appearances. This was famously the case with his 2009 response to President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, a speech so widely panned that it’s thought to have delayed whatever presidential ambitions Jindal may have had by at least one election cycle. And while he hasn’t had a moment that bad since, Jindal can still be halting and uncomfortable when he appears on national television.

Personally, I’m inclined to give the guy a break on this. It’s obvious when you’re watching him that Jindal’s awkwardness is a function of his precociousness. This is the nice kid who’s always been the smartest in his class but has never quiet figured out social cues. That earnestness, however, will make it tough for him to play the traditional attack dog role of the number two on the ticket. Kyl, on the other hand, while hardly a demagogue, would be very effective employing the same strategy as Dick Cheney did as a vice presidential candidate — using his age and gravitas to dismiss Obama as callow and incompetent.

4. The Future — My own preference is for the vice presidency as a sort of emeritus post, reserved for senior statesmen whose presidential ambitions either (a) never existed or (b) are exhausted. That also prevents the VP’s political interests from clashing with those of the president, a situation which has caused many an unsettled White House in years past. Ideally, I’d like it to be a terminal position, which makes sense for Kyl, who is retiring from the Senate this year and has forsworn any further electoral ambitions.

Jindal, by contrast, just turned 41 and has a bright future ahead of him regardless of whether he gets tapped for the post or not. His current gubernatorial term lasts through January 2016, which would line him up well for a presidential run should Romney lose. Alternately, he could run against Democrat Mary Landrieu when her seat in the U.S. Senate comes up in 2014. In the interest of retaining Jindal as one of the party’s main leaders well into the future, these options seem preferable to me to marooning him in the vice presidency, which more often than not — barring presidential death or departure — puts an end to one’s career in elected office.

Regardless of whether you support Jindal, Kyl, or someone else, there’s one thing that has to be admitted about the veepstakes: Unlike this year’s presidential race, there’s an embarrassment of riches.

Though you won’t hear much about it in the press, tomorrow will be a big day for the Tea Party movement. That’s because it will be the day that Republican voters caucus throughout Utah to pick their delegates to the state convention — delegates who, in turn, will choose which candidates to put on the Beehive State’s June primary ballot.

This is momentous because there’s a big push by Tea Partiers — with FreedomWorks leading the charge — to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and replace him with a more conservative alternative. This is how Politico frames it:

The group’s tactics are the latest chapter of the debate still hounding Republicans as they try to win a majority on Capitol Hill this November: Should they purge their own to find fresh blood who will be less willing to seek bipartisan compromises by straying from conservative principles? Or should they unite behind the most electable candidate and train all their fire power on Democrats?

Allow me to answer both of those questions: yes.

It’s all a matter of political prudence. One of the lessons of the 2010 midterm senate races was the importance of finding the right candidate for the right jurisdiction — and that means different things in different places. In Utah, for instance, which is the most Republican state in the nation, it was utterly sensible to replace incumbent Bob Bennett (not exactly a liberal, but not really a constitutional conservative either) with Tea Party darling Mike Lee, knowing that Lee could easily carry the general election in the fall. The Tea Party was similarly shrewd in getting behind Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rand Paul in Kentucky.

There were a few missteps, however. The hyper-conservative Sharron Angle was a poor choice for the swing state of Nevada, where either Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian (both of whom would have voted as conventional conservatives) would have stood a better chance at defeating Harry Reid. Even less suited for her contest was Christine O’Donnell, the conservative firebrand running in deep-blue Delaware. O’Donnell’s primary opponent, the moderate-to-liberal Republican Mike Castle, would doubtlessly have taken many votes as a U.S. Senator that would have made conservatives squirm — but fewer than the eventual winner, Democrat Chris Coons, who Castle likely would have beaten had he been the nominee.

So what does this principle mean for Utah? Hatch, like Bennett before him, has been an able public servant, who has, most of the time, been in conservatism if not exactly of conservatism. Were he from a swing state where moving to the right could be an electoral death sentence, then that would probably be a sufficient argument for retaining him. That’s not the case in Utah, however. And the state’s conservatives are going to have a hard time turning down the opportunity to elect another senator as consistently principled in his defense of limited government as Mike Lee.

It doesn’t help either that the best argument against Hatch comes from Hatch. I’ll let Politico have the final word:

In Utah, FreedomWorks distributed a 44-page brochure to 37,000 potential convention-goers, highlighting Hatch’s positions over the years on earmarks, the bank bailout and deals with Ted Kennedy over a child health care law.

On the inside page of the brochure is a quote from Hatch during his first campaign in 1976 against 18-year incumbent Sen. Frank Moss: “What do you call a senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.”

I’ve written previously about former Texas Solicitor General and U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz.  He’s a towering legal intellect and a conservative’s conservative.  His Cuban heritage and up-by-the-bootstraps story from son of immigrants to Princeton and Harvard Law are legendary.  His ill-chosen words about Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) are not.

In an interview with the Dallas Morning News reported by Roll Call, Cruz said he was “not going to prejudge” the upcoming Senate GOP leadership race where Cornyn is running for GOP whip, one step below party leader.  Based on his comments, Cruz seems to be saying that if he becomes Texas’ next U.S. Senator he might vote for someone besides Cornyn if the opponent is more of a constitutional conservative.

That’s all well and good, and Cruz’s scenario may even come to pass, but the first-time campaigner made a rookie mistake by refusing to support his fellow Texas Republican in what amounts to little more than deference to a party elder.  After all, as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Cornyn has his hands on millions of dollars in fundraising that he could use to either hurt or help Cruz in the latter’s current primary battle.

So far, Cornyn has honored his pledge to stay neutral in the primary.  Chances are he’ll keep that pledge, but Cruz’s unforced error makes it more likely that Cornyn would be fine if David Dewhurst, Cruz’s primary opponent and sitting Lieutenant Governor, frames Cruz’s comments as a signal he can’t be both a conservative and a Republican at the same time.

By contrast, Florida’s Marco Rubio isn’t having that problem.  Without sacrificing any of his conservative bona fides Rubio has managed to win the confidence of party elders and is no doubt on the vice presidential short list of every remaining Republican presidential candidate.  Cruz needs to take a page from Rubio’s playbook because Texas – and America – needs as many constitutional conservatives as we can get in the U.S. Senate.

In case you didn’t read the National Review cover story about him, the New York Times has a nicely condensed biographic piece on Ted Cruz, the former Texas Solicitor General running to be the state’s next U.S. Senator.  Here’s a sample of his background:

Mr. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, where his parents were working in the oil business. Back in Houston for high school, he entered speech contests run by the Free Enterprise Institute. Students learned the “Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom,” a government-out-of-the-economy manifesto based on the work of libertarian thinkers like Mr. Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, then wrote and memorized 20-minute speeches about it. As one of the citywide winners for four years, Mr. Cruz traveled the state, speaking to civic groups for $50 or $100 a speech.

The institute then chose him to be one of its “Constitutional Collaborators,” who spent hundreds of hours debating the Constitution. Using a mnemonic device to memorize it, they toured the state, writing it out for audiences.

It made Mr. Cruz an early adopter of the worldview that now characterizes Tea Party politics, where federal involvement in health care or the economy (and many of the roles it has assumed since the New Deal) is socialism and an abuse of the Constitution. At Princeton, he wrote his thesis on the Ninth and 10th Amendments, the core of the states’ rights argument.

It also directed him toward politics. He graduated from Harvard Law School, then clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and served in the Bush administration at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.

How many U.S. Senators do you know who could write out the Constitution from memory?  Perhaps the Lone Star State will give us at least one.

If you need another reason to hope for a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate next fall, here you go: a resolution to overturn net neutrality — the Obama Administration’s attempt at a government takeover of the internet — failed today in the upper chamber by a narrow vote of 52-46 (it had previously passed in the House, 240-179).

Of the Republicans who fought the good fight, none put the issue in as sharp relief as Florida freshman Marco Rubio. This a man who gets the bigger picture, as the Daily Caller reports:

“The FCC and the federal government cannot keep pace with the Internet and the technology industries, and the government should not attempt to catch up through regulation or legislation,” said Rubio.

“And that’s an important point. We are asking this government, we are asking this bureaucratic structure which struggles to keep pace with issues we have been facing for the last 20 years, to somehow keep pace with issues and the technology and the innovations that arrive in the Internet world. Not only do I think that is asking too much, I think it’s impossible.” 

Rubio is right on the money, sounding the same cautionary note that CFIF’s Timothy H. Lee has repeatedly emphasized. America has had no more dynamic sector of the economy in the last two decades than the internet, a development that would have been impossible without a relatively light hand from the federal government. If Washington gets in the driver’s seat, we should expect the same results that have characterized government involvement in everything from health care to postal service to education: lower quality at higher prices with less convenience. It’s a Wi-Fi world and we’re handing off the internet to a dial-up government.

In a major speech last night at the Reagan Library, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke with clarity about “the proper role of government.”

Saying that the United States must always aspire to compassion and prosperity, Rubio argued that an ever-expanding federal government will doom the nation to failure.   “Americans in the 20th century built here the richest most prosperous nation in the history of the world. And yet today we have built for ourselves a government that not even the richest and most prosperous nation on the face of the earth can fund or afford to pay for.”

At a time when high-sounding but often empty shoot-from-the-hip sound bites dominate the national dialogue, the understanding and vision with which the Florida Senator spoke is a breath of fresh air.

Watch the must-see speech below.

Roll Call reports that Texas Republican Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has entered the race to replace retiring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX).  The field is already crowded, with former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, an ardent conservative, angling to be the Lone Star version of Florida’s Marco Rubio.

Dewhurst’s substantial personal wealth and four statewide electoral victories (3 as Lt. Gov., 1 as land commissioner), are prompting some to say he’s now the frontrunner.  With Governor Rick Perry mulling a bid for president, this could signal a major shake-up of Texas GOP politics as two of the state’s highest profile jobs come open for the first time since 2002.

You would’ve thought that the leaders of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the Senate GOP caucus’s in-house mechanism for supporting candidates for the upper chamber — would have learned their lesson in 2010. Rather than waiting for Republican nominees to emerge before throwing their support behind them, the NRSC intervened in primaries throughout the nation, opposing such strong conservative candidates as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey. It should have been a source of public shame. Yet it doesn’t look that way, based on a report in the New York Times’ Caucus Blog:

A group of placard-waving Tea Party activists converged on the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee early Monday afternoon, demanding that its leaders refrain from supporting incumbents facing primary challenges, and serving as a reminder that the intraparty fight over party purity continues…

One reason the activists are angry with the Republican senatorial committee is that it is holding fund-raisers for [Utah Senator Orrin] Hatch — they waved signs reading “Retire Hatch.” But more generally, they want the committee to withhold political or financial support from any incumbents in the primary.

“It’s like they haven’t learned the lessons of the midterms,” said Brendan Steinhauser, an organizer for FreedomWorks who urged on the marchers.

And indeed, the committee has heard this tune before, particularly in the 2010 Florida primary for United States Senate, when the committee initially backed Charlie Crist, then a popular Republican governor, over a scrappy challenger, Marco Rubio. Mr. Rubio did so well in polls that Mr. Crist abandoned the party, ran as an independent, and lost, badly, to Mr. Rubio, a Tea Party darling.

Of the 47 Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate, none is as likely to someday become president as Marco Rubio. And his ascendancy was nearly extinguished at the hands of the NRSC. If that isn’t a sign that they shouldn’t be weighing in during primaries, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) owes a lot to the late Jack Kemp, Ryan’s former boss at Empower America.  In a published remembrance of Kemp, Ryan said that while Ronald Reagan motivated him to get into politics, Kemp inspired him.

Indeed, Ryan’s “Roadmap to America’s Future” and “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution are models of Kemp’s supply-side thinking about incentivizing economic growth through government policies.  It was thought that, at most, Ryan might entertain becoming the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s running mate if the right candidate asked.  Much like Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ryan is a methodical politician of substance who is purposefully navigating his career trajectory.  Unlike others, Ryan and Rubio seemed committed to establishing a real record before running for higher offices.

But reality may be pushing up Ryan’s time frame.  With the surprise announcement that Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) will not seek reelection next year, Ryan has an opportunity not unlike Jack Kemp faced as a rising New York congressman in the late 1970’s.  Then, Kemp decided not to challenge liberal Republican incumbent Jacob Javits in the 1980 GOP primary.  Had he done so and won, Kemp would have significantly increased his national profile by holding a statewide office at the beginning of the Reagan era.

Of course, to run Kemp would have had to split time between promoting his Senate candidacy and his landmark Kemp-Roth tax cuts – the soon-to-be centerpiece of Reagan’s economic recovery plan.  Like Kemp, Ryan has a game-changing economic program to fight for this next cycle, but unlike his former mentor, I think the odds are very good that Ryan will decide to run for the Senate.  If Democrats are going to make Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” a major campaign theme next year, why not see if Wisconsin voters are ready to promote their state’s best presidential contender to statewide status?

Politico has a revealing article on the different approaches of Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rand Paul (R-KY).  Each claims credibility with the Tea Party movement that propelled them past establishment candidates in their respective primaries.

Rubio is developing a reputation as a quiet Capitol Hill operator who still votes his fiscal conservatism.  (As evidenced by his opposition to the 2011 budget bill negotiated by GOP leadership.)

Paul is taking his father Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) outsider approach to the insular Senate.  Much like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Paul is scoring points for taking uncompromising stands on spending, even if it angers the Republican leadership.

Both approaches are needed; especially if the Age of Obama stretches into a second term.