Monday, 07 Jun 2010 09:58 AM Article Font Size By: Ronald Kessler
President Obama’s pronouncements and actions have been undermining Israel, Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida, says in a Newsmax interview.
In responding to the Israeli raid on a Turkish flotilla, Obama has ignored the fact that the flotilla’s organizers and participants were looking for a confrontation and have “strong direct ties to Islamic fundamentalists, jihadists, and terrorists and to many who do not believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, says.
“I believe that there is an organized, systematic attempt to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist and to undermine Israel’s right to defend itself,” Rubio says. “And so Israel has never needed strong American support more than it needs it now.”
Yet, Rubio says, “Some of the pronouncements and actions of this administration over the last year have emboldened those who are trying to de-legitimize Israel.”
As outlined in the Newsmax story Jews Turn Against Obama, in part because of Obama’s tilt against Israel, Jewish support for him has plummeted.
When he started his race for the U.S. Senate, Rubio could not get support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
He turned to Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina senator who heads the Senate Steering Committee. DeMint was impressed by Rubio and his life story. Rubio, 39, was born in Miami to parents who fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s takeover. “My dad was a bartender,” Rubio, a lawyer, would say. “My mom worked at factories. She worked as a stock clerk. She worked as a maid. My parents worked jobs so that I could have the opportunities in my life that they never had.”
DeMint threw the coveted support of his Senate Conservatives Fund to Rubio.
Now a favorite of the tea party movement, Rubio says he entered the race for the Senate because, “There were some who believed that Republicans needed to become more like Democrats in order to start winning elections, and I always believed that that didn’t make any sense. I intend to prove that you can be a limited-government, free-enterprise conservative and get elected in a state as big and as important as Florida.”
Rubio says Obama has used the economic downturn as a pretext to impose ultra-liberal policies on the U.S.: “I am convinced that this administration and this congressional leadership are using this economic downturn as an excuse to try to redefine the American economic system, the role of the American government in our economy, and the role of America in the world."
Under Obama, the federal government intrudes on almost every issue, he says: “Every problem in American is now dealt with by some sort of new federal government interaction of some sort or fashion. The stimulus was the beginning, but since then it’s the healthcare bill, the expansion of executive agency power, deficit spending budgets, and a weakening of America’s national defenses.”
While Obama has been aggressively going after terrorists with drones, many of his policies dealing with terrorism are “at best been naive and at worst wrong-headed,” Rubio says, adding that Obama’s decision to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and his use of euphemisms to describe radical Muslim terrorists are disturbing.
“Maybe he believes that it’s our rhetoric that creates terrorists, but it’s not. What creates terrorism around the world is the desire among some to impose their view on many. They want us to back down, they want us to walk away and leave them alone so they can continue to expand their sphere of influence, and that’s why terrorism exists.”
Rubio adds, “They don’t hate us because of what we say; they hate us because we’re standing in their way. Terrorists are cowards. They should be exposed for what they are and dealt with accordingly.”
Rubio says he is for the new Arizona immigration law as passed and against granting amnesty to illegal immigrants: “I think everyone’s first choice is for the federal government to deal with this issue squarely. So I hope that instead of being a model for 49 other states, Arizona’s law becomes a wake-up call for the federal government to once and for all deal with the issue of border security.”
Asked how the Republican Party can woo Hispanics, Rubio says, “The No. 1 issue in the Hispanic community in America is not immigration. It’s economic empowerment. It’s the desire to do better and to leave our children better off, and there’s only one economic system in the world where that has been possible time and again, and that’s the American free enterprise system.”
So, Rubio says, Republicans need to “make the connection between the American free enterprise system and their hopes and dreams, and then we have to go out and prove that we are legitimately the movement that supports American free enterprise.”
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.
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