Sunday, December 13, 2015

Last Call For Moderate Marco

The smart money, the pundits keep telling me, is on GOP Sen. Marco Rubio to emerge as the "moderate" Republican champion who will go on to win the nomination and eventually save the country from Hillary.  The reality of course is that there's no appreciable difference among Rubio or any of the other reactionary bigoted Republicans in the field, and Rubio keeps proving that almost daily as his Sunday interview with NBC's Chuck Todd on same-sex marriage showed:

MARCO RUBIO: I think it’s bad law. And for the following reason. If you want to change the definition of marriage, then you need to go to state legislatures and get them to change it. Because states have always defined marriage. And that’s why some people get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. And in Florida, you have to wait a couple days when you get your permit. Every state has different marriage laws. But I do not believe that the court system was the right way to do it because I don’t believe–

CHUCK TODD: But it’s done now. Are you going to work to overturn it?

MARCO RUBIO: You can’t work to overturn it. What you–

CHUCK TODD: Sure. You can do a constitutional amendment.

MARCO RUBIO: As I’ve said, that would be conceding that the current Constitution is somehow wrong and needs to be fixed. I don’t think the current Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate marriage. That belongs at the state and local level. And that’s why if you want to change the definition of marriage, which is what this argument is about.

It’s not about discrimination. It is about the definition of a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution. If you want to change it, you have a right to petition your state legislature and your elected representatives to do it. What is wrong is that the Supreme Court has found this hidden constitutional right that 200 years of jurisprudence had not discovered and basically overturn the will of voters in Florida where over 60% passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.

CHUCK TODD: So are you accepting the idea of same sex marriage in perpetuity?

MARCO RUBIO: It is the current law. I don’t believe any case law is settled law. Any future Supreme Court can change it. And ultimately, I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed.

This is nothing new of course, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and several other Republicans have come out and said that they don't believe that there is any federal jurisdiction over marriage.  The problem of course is that there's four Supreme Court justices who agree, and that conservatives only need to appoint one more justice in order to then annul thousands of same-sex marriages.

It would be chaos of course, but this is Rubio's stated goal, to stack the court.

Once again, please don't tell me that the Supreme Court "doesn't matter" or that keeping the slim hope of equality alive isn't worth voting for the Democrat you don't wan't over the Republican you know who will destroy it.

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