Senator Rubio: "It's Time To Concede"

by JASmius

He's right, my Tea Party friends; and you damn well know it:

So I guess this means MR is off the reservation now? Excommunicated? Sold out to the "Establishment"? Or any internally divisive epithet TPers and Santorumoids (but I repeat myself) want to belch into the ether?

I dunno, boys and girls. Senator Rubio is still the same grassroots right-wing rock star he's always been, the same guy who rose up on people-power and slayed the mighty RINO beast in the person of "Sorry Charlie" Crist, and the same guy who has repeatedly, categorically, and Shermanically declared his non-candidacy for the veepancy, an at least implicit admission that, as my friend Doug Gibbs has pointed out, he's constitutionally ineligible for it. And I can't begin to imagine anything else that the "establishment" could bribe him with, even if he were open to such things (or "they" were prone to offering them).

No, folks, I think Senator Rubio simply has his eyes where the Tea Party's eyes should also be focused: on the prize. Which is to say, terminating the Obamidency with extreme electoral prejudice in November - a one-time goal of TPers, I'm told.

UPDATE: I would be remiss if I didn't add this post-script:

The way he phrased it, it's not necessarily an instruction to Gingrich or Santorum. It seems like more, "We should all concede this."

For what it's worth, I don't think politicians should say this. It's
counterproductive. Every statement like this makes people want to dig in their heels more.

People should just be permitted to come to terms with this on their own schedule.

It's one thing to think you lost a big game. If you think you were outplayed, you accept it.

If you decide that the refs took the game from you, now you have a
grievance, and a sense of unfairness, and an anger towards The Whole Corrupt System.

Romney supporters should be very wary of giving anti-Romney Republicans that sense of grievance.

Those of you who follow both our respective blogs know that Ace and I are pretty much always on the same wavelength (kind of my Qui-Gon Jinn to his Obi-Wan Kenobi), and I get what Ace is saying here - in a phrase, "Don't rub it in." Or "Don't run up the score." Which is certainly prudent advice.

Thing is, I don't think that's what Senator Rubio is doing. To my ears the perspective from which he's speaking isn't "Romney partisan" but "party unity". Nothing he says in the clip above is anything less than entirely factual: Neither Newt nor Santorum has any path to the nomination, the only thing their continued presence in the race can accomplish is to kneecap Governor Romney and diminish his chances in the general campaign, and there's only one big-earred demi-despot who can benefit from that. Recall further that MR didn't endorse Mitt until the outcome of this process became incontrovertible, so he's dragging around no "pro-Romney" baggage.

Marco Rubio simply remembers an axiom Tea Partiers have either forgotten or never bothered to learn: the Eleventh Commandment. It's the difference between winning the election and saving the country from economic and fiscal disaster, and sitting on a decaying park bench muttering to oneself about "how right we were" while hoping the Obama DHS secret police don't show up to demand your papers.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

[cross-posted @ Hard Starboard]