Reality Versus Perhaps What You Might Read Marco Rubio Said

Here’s hoping that Marco Rubio’s political science lectures weren’t about institutions because he doesn’t seem to have a very solid grip on them.

Way back in 2014 Marco Rubio was worried about Executive Overreaches:

This idea, that somehow your idea is so good, that it is somehow above the law and above the Constitution, is a very dangerous one. It not only violates the Constitution, it violates the very principles which have kept us a free and democratic country for so long. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from the rest of the world.... One of the reasons why we have not been able to address, in the proper way, many of the issues the President raised, is because of these sorts of actions that he is taking. It’s undermined a slew of other potential policy areas where there could be agreement on. But when you take unilateral executive action, you undermine the entire process. And, you make people more cautious about dealing with you because they don’t trust you to enforce the laws in the future. As you appropriately cited, ObamaCare is an example of that.

And on the campaign trail in January, he was still worried about the damage Obama was doing:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told an audience in Raymond, N.H., that Obama “has waged war on the Constitution.”

But today, when it comes to endorsing Donald Trump and easing concerns voters might have over his hostile, autocratic, even dictatorial approach, Rubio is very optimistic in the ability of the Oval Office to tame him and the Senate to contain him:

“I view the Senate as a place that can always act as a check and balance on whoever the next president is,” Rubio said on WGN radio on Wednesday. “I also think there’s something to be said for, once you’re actually in that position, once you’re actually working at this thing, and you’re in there, and you start to have access to information that perhaps you didn’t have before, especially for someone that’s never been in politics, I think it starts to impact your views a little bit.”

So let’s see. The Oval Office was unable to humble the ambitious Obama, but will tamp down on Trump? The very Republicans who weren’t able to coordinate on a candidate like Bush or Walker or Rubio himself will somehow figure out how to check and balance abuses of power after the fact?

Oh, poor Little Marco. Please don’t hire this man to teach any more political science courses. You’ll be doing your students a disservice if you do.

Well Actually Voting With Your Heart Is Immoral →

You enter a polling booth, there’s a complicated decision floating around in your head, and the best you can say is, ‘I vote for Hillary Clinton,’ or ‘I vote for Donald Trump.’ It’s very limited.

– Eric Pacuit, a philosophy professor at the University of Maryland (via Olivia Goldhill writing for Quartz)

It Looks Like a Mess, but the Democratic Party Is More Unified Than It Seems →

Matthew Yglesias for Vox:

The problem: Sanders had little control over his delegates, who seemed unwilling to get behind his endorsement of Clinton. This was in part a matter of sloppiness on the part of Sanders’s team in selecting delegates. But as one operative told me, there was another reason Sanders’s delegation was so unruly: Everyone was so afraid to cross Clinton by serving as a Sanders delegate that he couldn’t convince the kind of party loyalists who normally take the job to do it.

Instead, many Sanders delegates come from the world of left-wing protest culture rather than party politics. And on the floor of the Wells Fargo Center, they acted like it.

Anguished Testeria →

John Scalzi reviews the Ghostbusters remake:

But they’ve ruined my childhood by being women, wails a certain, entitled subset of male nerd on the Internet. Well, good, you pathetic little shitballs. If your entire childhood can be irrevocably destroyed by four women with proton packs, your childhood clearly sucked and it needs to go up in hearty, crackling flames. Now you are free, boys, free! Enjoy the now.

Civic Disgrace →

Governments should be fixing [the homelessness] problem, but they have mostly failed due to public ignorance, judgment, and apathy. If you really want to be “disruptive” and have a meaningful impact on the world, disrupt the way our cities and citizens treat those less fortunate than the rich young people ordering overpriced burritos from their phones to avoid going outside.

– Marco Arment

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