Last updated on February 17th, 2013 at 04:16 pm
Marco Rubio told the Christian Broadcasting Network yesterday that in spite of the Time Magazine cover declaring him the Republican Savior, “There are no saviors in politics.” Rubio modestly suggested that Watergate was “God’s funny way” of reminding him that he was human.
Rubio bending down for water while live on TV was not human error but rather God at work, to remind Rubio that he is but human. It is tough to argue with God’s decisions to force us to make fools of ourselves in order to teach us humility, but at least we know it’s not our fault. And at least God’s wrath/efforts are not in vain, as the Senator has found a way to make Water Bottle Gate pay. Rubio is selling refillable water bottles with his name on them for $25.00 a piece.
Here is the video from CBN:
In case you missed Senator Marco Rubio’s lecture to President Obama about his middle class origins because you were distracted by his God-inflicted dry mouth and general sweaty nerves, the Florida Republican claimed the middle class as his in his State of the Union response.
Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy.
Rubio presented himself as the hero of the middle class based on where he lives. He reinforced the message by mentioning the words middle class 17 times. Repetition has always worked so well for Republicans in the past.
It’s true that Rubio lives in West Miami, but his house is listed for $675,000.00. You see, he’s trying to move to D.C.
His house has been listed since January 30, so it’s not as if the Senator didn’t know that he was planning to move to D.C. when he climbed atop the cross of middle class suffering and presented himself as the One Who Gets It because he “still lives in the same working class neighborhood” he grew up in. He left out the part about owning two homes in that neighborhood, and trying to move.
According to Huffington Post, Rubio and his wife paid $550,000 in 2005 for the house. According to a reappraisal done a month after purchasing, their house increased in value from $550,000 to $735,000 in a month’s time. This allowed them to get a nice big equity line of credit for $135,000.
You might be thinking, well, they got lucky. Yes they did. Maybe this was God again. Even if it wasn’t necessarily divine intervention for the Republican Savior, it certainly was opportune, since Rubio was reportedly $1,000,000 in debt at the time. Rubio, who was in debt partly due to student loans, voted no on S. 2343, the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012. He got lucky, but it didn’t hurt that the board of his bank was controlled by political supporters:
Arranging the $135,000 home credit line in 2006 from a bank controlled by political supporters who valued his home at 25 percent above the purchase price a month after the sale closed.
In 2005, the real estate market was beginning to soften, but appraisers and banks were often operating as if nothing had changed. However, in 2010, this 2005 $735,000 home was assessed at $392,000 for tax purposes, and now it is on the market for $675,000. In the real estate business, they call this smoke and mirrors. Maybe God runs the tax appraiser’s office in Miami.
The Rubios say that the house surged in value between the time they started building it to the year later when they closed. That’s entirely possible. But Rubio has a trail of these kinds of stories, coupled with charges of fiscal recklessness. The Herald Tribune reported that Rubio put every day food, movie tickets and more on his GOP credit card, “In 2007 and 2008, Rubio charged nearly $100,000 on his Republican Party credit card.” In 2010, the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald newspapers reported that Rubio’s credit card spending was under investigation by the FBI and IRS. Rubio denied this accusation, even after admitting that he had double-billed the Republican Party for airline tickets. No word on if this was God’s funny way of showing Rubio that he was just human, but Rubio did reimburse the party for his personal charges after the media got wind of them.
Mike Fasano, a Florida Republican state Senator who was supporting Rubio’s opponent Charlie Crist at the time, said, “Marco Rubio spent money like a drunken sailor. This is a person who has gotten in way over his head with his personal finances but he’s running for the United States Senate and talks about being personally responsible and fiscally responsible. It’s ludicrous.”
Rubio’s supporters claimed he made so many clerical errors because he was so busy. I suppose when one is President they have more time for luxuries like using the right credit card for personal expenses and properly filing disclosure forms. He isn’t unethical, they tell us. He just forgot to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. God may have been busy then, or maybe He/She felt Rubio needed to be reminded again that he is just human.
In his speech, Rubio also tried to equate our government with the corrupt governments many immigrants are fleeing, which is odd for someone who works in government. It’s also odd for someone who has a history of charges of corruption, also known as “clerical errors”.
When selling yourself as a working class hero, it’s important to tout policies that would actually help the middle class and if you’re claiming fiscal responsibility, you probably want to avoid debt problems leading to threats of foreclosures on one of your many homes.
Marco Rubio hung his hat on his neighborhood because his recycled Republican policies have already been debunked. But even this attempt at redressing the trickle down fail is rickety, because the value of Rubio’s home isn’t exactly what most people associate with working class.
Working class people don’t generally have access to a bank board or a party credit card, and yet if they forget to dot an i or cross a t, they can get into big trouble. It’s possible that God doesn’t love them as much as He/She does Rubio, but it’s still tough to hear “I’m just like you” from someone who expects you to look the other way over their mistakes, while voting no more often than yes on bills meant to protect the middle class.
But leave it to someone as humble and lucky as Rubio to find a way to cash in on Water Bottle Gate/God’s reminder. The Republican Party has been down this road before and it didn’t end well (TM, Sarah Palin).
Note: Any mistakes in this article are just God’s way of reminding me that I am human, and offering me a new path to generate revenue via marketing God’s reminder. Thanks, God!
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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