# Why isn't Marco Rubio considered a legitimate 2016 contender? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 20, 2014, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716 "2014-12-20T04:05:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/81 "2015-03-18T15:02:22Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > And what does Sen. Rubio expect to happen when the US imposes unilateral sanctions? Does he expect those sanctions to possibly be stronger than the current multilateral regime already in place? Does he actually believe that any of our allies would follow our “lead” in imposing further sanctions after we unilaterally blew up the deal they all supported? What Rubio is describing is a plan to trash American credibility, reduce our capacity to lead the world, an generally embarrass the country that elected him. What multilateral regime of sanctions are you referring to? As far as I know, only the US is embargoing Cuba. Or have I misunderstood you? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/82 "2015-03-18T15:03:08Z")
The President doesn’t “dictate” foreign policy either. He simply has powers that give him preeminence in foreign policy, with some important limits: 1. Congress has the power of the purse. 2. Congress has the power to approve or reject treaties 3. Congress has the power to declare war 4. Congress can impose or lift sanctions, and related to that 5. Congress has power over international commerce, ie trade. Congress does not concede its right to take action in any of those fields just because the President would rather do something else. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/83 "2015-03-18T15:09:17Z")
If you guys want to argue about Iran sanctions, go open a new thread. Stick to praising or bashing Rubio in this one. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/84 "2015-03-18T15:18:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > If you guys want to argue about Iran sanctions, go open a new thread. > > Stick to praising or bashing Rubio in this one. > > [/Moderating] Ah. Sanctions against Iran. I missed how a thread on Marco Rubio’s Cuba policies had turned into a discussion of Iran. No wonder I was confused. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/85 "2015-03-18T15:21:31Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > What multilateral regime of sanctions are you referring to? As far as I know, only the US is embargoing Cuba. Or have I misunderstood you? Iran, not Cuba. I don’t dispute Rubio’s authority, if he were elected, to tear up any US involvement in a potential nuclear deal. I don’t dispute Congress’ ability to undermine a deal. My problem is with the staggering lack of judgment he displays in thinking a) that this would serve American interests and b) that somehow the US in that scenario would retain the leadership and credibility required to get the rest of the P5+1 to sign onto a renewed round of even more punishing sanctions. The latter in particular is a perspective unhinged from reality, which (along with similarly nonsensical comments like the US isn’t fighting ISIS harder because we’re afraid of upsetting Iran [aka their mortal enemy]) tells me that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s talking about in matters of foreign policy. That he evidently believes he does is a testament to his lack of humility, self-awareness, and willingness (or ability) to learn. He would be a disaster in the White House. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/86 "2015-03-18T15:21:46Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > We’ll see if and when the primary debates ratchet up. Compared to the clown show of 2012 Rubio will seem like Einstein. I’m not sure that’s a net positive in Republican primaries. Anyway, the truth is that Rubio is basically a Jindal: brilliant in the areas he understands, hopeless in the ones he doesn’t. He’s already out of his depth as a senator. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/87 "2015-03-18T15:30:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I’m not sure that’s a net positive in Republican primaries. Anyway, the truth is that Rubio is basically a Jindal: brilliant in the areas he understands, hopeless in the ones he doesn’t. He’s already out of his depth as a senator. No snark intended, but in what areas is Rubio brilliant? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/88 "2015-03-18T15:37:54Z")
Tax reform and controlling the size of government, mostly. I think his plans are stupid, but they are actual _plans_, unlike the pablum (or AEI copy-pastes) that most Republican legislators put out. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/89 "2015-03-18T15:42:05Z")
The bigger problem is that Rubio has done nothing but politics in his young life and he’s never run anything. He should be thinking about succeeding Rick Scott or being a career legislator like a lot of people who have made politics their career. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/90 "2015-03-18T16:17:07Z")
How is someone who’s never run anything qualified to govern Florida? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/91 "2015-03-18T16:28:27Z")
Scott’s run lots of things and sucks balls. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/92 "2015-03-18T17:33:06Z")
Isn’t Rubio a favorite of the Koch Brothers and the billion dollars they intend to invest in the next election? That should give him a big edge. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/93 "2015-03-18T17:52:36Z")
[Here’s another reason why Rubio should not be considered a legitimate contender.](http://www.salon.com/2015/03/12/marco_rubios_foreign_policy_disaster_why_hes_very_confused_about_isis_and_iran/) > [@](#): > > It was expected that the Iran negotiations would come up, since you don’t get the point man, John Kerry, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing every day. Kerry, obviously, had some not nice things to say about Sen. Tom Cotton et al.’s “letter to Iran.” But Kerry was also dumbfounded by a question from Senator Marco Rubio that tried to link what he perceives as the administration’s lackluster military effort against the Islamic State to the nuclear negotiations with Iran. > > But when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), potential 2016 presidential candidate and leading light of the Republican Party, took the mike, he directed the conversation away from the Islamic State to the dominant foreign policy issue on Capitol Hill in recent weeks and what is quickly developing into the dominant foreign policy issue of the presidential race: America’s relations with Iran. > > > [@](#): > > > > “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “Tell me why I’m wrong.” > > > > “Because the facts completely contradict that,” Kerry replied. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss all of them here for a lot of different reasons.” > > This is a bizarre belief of Rubio’s that he continues to bring up well beyond the point that advisers should have stripped it from his repertoire. He raised the same concern during his Q&A at CPAC last month: the Obama administration is somehow holding back against ISIS because it doesn’t want to disrupt negotiations with Iran. (At CPAC he used this as gateway to another unusual argument: What the Obama administration _should_ do is provide the aerial bombing campaign against ISIS while leaving the ground fighting to regional troops. This happens to be… exactly what the Obama administration is trying to do? Is Marco Rubio aware of what’s going on in Tikrit, right now?) > > Iran and ISIS are Enemies. Shia, Sunni. Iran is fighting the Islamic State and is happy that the United States is fighting the Islamic State as well. Iran does not want the Islamic State to take over its neighbor, Iraq. Iran and the Iraqi government are great friends now — some even call the Iraqi government an Iranian puppet government! — ever since the United States deposed Saddam Hussein. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/94 "2015-03-18T17:53:36Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > How is someone who’s never run anything qualified to govern Florida? We have very low standards here. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/95 "2015-03-18T18:07:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “Tell me why I’m wrong.” This is one of the more baffling things Rubio has said on foreign policy, and I see only two logical alternatives. Either he is painfully ignorant of basic regional dynamics in the Middle East, or he believes that voters are stupid and he is cynically exploiting that perceived stupidity to score partisan points. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/96 "2015-03-18T18:48:46Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > This is one of the more baffling things Rubio has said on foreign policy, and I see only two logical alternatives. Either he is painfully ignorant of basic regional dynamics in the Middle East, or he believes that voters are stupid and he is cynically exploiting that perceived stupidity to score partisan points. There’s a third explanation. There’s a tendency, most pronounced in Christian Right circles (you can see it in the Left Behind books, for instance), but leaking out into the wingnut world in general, to believe that all the Bad Guys are allied in one big Evil League of Evil. That’s how they get liberal atheists on the same side as radical Muslims who want all gays executed and all women in burqas. On the right, we’re seeing the rise of politicians who grew up swallowing the snake oil that the previous generation of politicians/activists/grifters pitched to the marks. They’ve got this world view embedded in them. So Rubio may not see the need to even understand Shia and Sunni or any of that. ISIS and Iran are Bad Guys, and even in the same part of the world, so they’re obviously allies. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/97 "2015-03-18T19:02:39Z")
Jim Newell makes the same suggestion in the cited article, **RTFirefly**. But I think there’s a more charitable explanation. Rubio could believe that Iran doesn’t want the US more involved in fighting ISIS because Iran wants to fight ISIS itself, and to use ISIS as a lever for increasing it’s influence in Syria and Iraq, which might be harder if the US takes on a larger role. Newell rejects that explanation out-of-hand, but not for very good reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/98 "2015-03-18T19:21:42Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > But I think there’s a more charitable explanation. Rubio could believe that Iran doesn’t want the US more involved in fighting ISIS because Iran wants to fight ISIS itself, and to use ISIS as a lever for increasing it’s influence in Syria and Iraq, which might be harder if the US takes on a larger role. That makes sense. There’s a good chance that’s what Rubio is getting at. But then he needs to do a better job of making that particular argument. Based on Rubio’s statements that have been quoted in the press (perhaps out of context), it sounds like he’s deliberately obscuring the line between Iran and ISIS to be able to act like they’re somehow in league with each other, when the opposite is true. If he’s making the more reasoned argument that you raise, he’ll have to explain to the public why a policy that gets our adversaries to die horribly bringing horrible deaths upon adversaries we hate even more is such a bad policy. Someone needs to ask him, “Senator Rubio, would you prefer that your constituents (or their children) be sent to die on the battlefield against ISIS than to let Iran potentially take a larger role in Iraq?” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/99 "2015-03-18T19:21:50Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Jim Newell makes the same suggestion in the cited article, **RTFirefly**. > > But I think there’s a more charitable explanation. Rubio could believe that Iran doesn’t want the US more involved in fighting ISIS because Iran wants to fight ISIS itself, and to use ISIS as a lever for increasing it’s influence in Syria and Iraq, which might be harder if the US takes on a larger role. Newell rejects that explanation out-of-hand, but not for very good reasons. But, that would not explain why Rubio would believe that “much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran.” ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716/100 "2015-03-18T19:24:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, that would not explain why Rubio would believe that “much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran.” Why not? I think his perspective may well be that ISIS is obviously threatening, and evil, and can be stopped by American intervention, but that we aren’t doing that much. So, to him, the hallmark of our current policy is restraint. And he is theorizing that this restraint comes from a reluctance to upset Iran in the way described. I’m not at all defending the correctness of that view. I think it’s wrong for a few reasons. But I don’t think we have to posit that Rubio is just demagoguing, or that he is entirely ignorant of basic realities. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-marco-rubio-considered-a-legitimate-2016-contender/707716.md?page=6)