Our guest blogger is Kenneth Quinnell, a Tallahassee-based political activist who operates a group website, Florida Progressive Coalition.
On Saturday, Sarah Palin spoke at a GOP Victory Rally in Orlando, Fla. Among the topics she talked about was the “mavericky” nature of GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio:
Hearing Marco Rubio, you know, I’m thinking, when we consider this revolution, where it’s been proven now, in this last year, that really anything is possible in these campaigns, where Marco Rubio started and kinda taking on the establishment and mavericky, going rogue, you know, doing it. And I look at him and I think, you know, we kinda started a whole bunch of this stuff. So, very very proud and encouraged by Marco.
But a quick persual of Rubio’s agenda for the U.S. Senate shows that he is anything but a maverick. In fact, his agenda very closely aligns with the proposals of his party’s leadership and it is difficult to find any instances where he bucks the national Republican Party.
As ThinkProgress has noted before, Rubio’s economic agenda consists, almost entirely, of cutting taxes — primarily on corporations and the wealthy. He wants to cut the bureaucracy, reallocate the bailout funds, end the stimulus, end earmarks, and pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Rubio proposed requiring federal tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of Congress. He has, in the past, promoted private accounts for Social Security and wants to freeze all discretionary spending in Washington.
He also has advocated repealing at least a portion of health care reform and replacing it with policies such as allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Rubio has derided “judicial activism” and promotes the idea of “securing our borders” as a solution on the issue of undocumented immigration. He also continues to promote deep water oil drilling as a solution to energy concerns, even after the BP oil spill off his state’s Gulf Coast.
Rubio’s agenda is very much in line with the national Republican Party agenda and he seems rarely, if ever, to “go rogue” against the party.
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