Aaaaaaand now we see why the most electable candidate in the Republican field, and the one Republican candidate who finally figured out how to take on and take down Donald Trump and expose him for the New York liberal Democrat conman that he is (just woefully too late), never actually and truly caught fire with the GOP electorate: He never had the courage of his convictions. How pathetically ironic is that?:
Marco Rubio said Wednesday that he was "not entirely proud" of the personal attacks he waged on Republican presidential rival Donald Trump in recent weeks — in part because "my kids were embarrassed by it."
"In terms of things that have to do with personal stuff, yeah, at the end of the day it's not something I'm entirely proud of," the Florida senator told MSNBC's Chuck Todd in a town hall meeting set to air Wednesday. "My kids were embarrassed by it — and if I had to do it again, I wouldn't."
Sure you would, Senator. You did it because you wanted to win and stop Trump, and no other strategy had been successful, and you finally threw up your hands and figured, "What the hell, let's try fighting fire with fire". And it worked. He took the bait and not only introduced penis-stroking to the GOP debate stage, but was treated as the frontrunner for the first time in his eight months of frontrunning, and exposed his "glass jaw" for all to see, as well as his liberal Democrat instincts, corruption, dishonesty, and caesarism. Trump was favored to run the table on Super Tuesday and wound up losing five States; ditto last Saturday, and he only batted .500. If the rest of the field had gang-mauled The Donald months ago, we may very well have avoided the slow death of the GOP and the conservative movement that we now face.
And you know why your "fighting fire with fire" worked, Senator? Because it was entertaining. If this cycle, and the contemporary degeneracy of popular culture, have proven anything, it is that dignity is dead, and Americans are not looking for and do not value or venerate - or even understand - responsible, constitutionally-grounded leadership anymore. Americans do not want to govern themselves, and they don't even want to be led; they want to be coddled, they want to be taken care of from cradle to grave, they want, in the words of Mythbusters' Adam Savage, to "reject reality and substitute their own," they want to point the finger everywhere except at themselves, and more than all of that, they want - demand - to be entertained. They consider it their birthright. Statesmanship is out, tribalism and "reality television" is in.
THAT is the secret of Donald Trump's success. Policy, limited government, constitutional originalism? That stuff's all boring. Pie-in-the-sky wishcasting - "I'll force Mexico to build a border wall and pay for it," "I'll deport all illegal aliens (and then let them all back in)," "I'll cut off trade with Red China, make them like it, and it'll grow our economy YUUUUGELY," "I'll stop jihadists by ordering our military to slaughter their families," "I'll bomb the shit out of ISIS and take all their oil," etc., etc., etc. - and on-stage F-bombs and phallus-boasting, both figurative and literal - that's entertainment, and the new coin of the political realm. It's "Opposite Day" permanently, like the drunken bender that never ends well, where you wake up in a strange bed in a strange room in a strange place you don't recognize or remember how you got there next to a tranvestite Cleveland Brown, or in a back alley somewhere, or in the drunk tank at the local jail, or....you don't wake up at all.
So Rubes started speaking the "language" of Trumplicanism and engaged him on his own terms. Perhaps as the "bad cop" inflicting the wounds for the "good cop" Ted Cruz to substantively exploit in the possible "secret" tag-team tactical alliance that has been rumored and speculated of late. And, again, it worked, and would have taken Trump down if it had been deployed long, long before the past fortnight. It's the latter for which Rubio, and every other not-Trump in this race, ought to be profusely apologizing.
That Rubio is contrite about and repenting of the former is the first overt sign that he's acknowledging that his campaign is finished.
Here's another:
.@marcorubio about to address a 5k seat stadium in his home state.
If there's one thing to be learned from the pompadoured prince, it is that you never, EVER regret success, however modest. Marco Rubio doesn't have to be proud of what he had to do to notch that success, but he should be proud of the #NeverTrump results it produced - and save his regrets for not doing it months before.
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