Marco Rubio is not quite the conservative that he claims to be
I believe Tea Party people and conservatives got a dud with Scott Brown in Massachusetts (at least as far as conservative principles and voting record). Mr. Rubio is not Scott Brown; however he hasn’t been quite as conservative as his claims. To really measure the man let’s not get swept up in his words during the campaign, but look at the record.
Caricature by donkeyhotey, donkeyhotey.wordpress.com
Mr. Rubio is generally an anti-tax Republican but there are some questionable votes he placed. As a city commissioner of West Miami for two years, he voted to raise property taxes twice.
Every year as a member of the Florida State legislature (2000-2008), he voted for budgets that would force local school districts statewide to collect more property taxes. The school districts became tax collectors under the direction of the State legislature.
As far as voting for wasteful, big spending let’s look some of the money he brought to his hometown of Miami. Like his opponent Governor Crist, Mr. Rubio favored a $60 million subsidy for a new Florida Marlins stadium.
And then there are the earmarks. He speaks as a candidate for the US Senate that he won’t put earmarks into bills. However, when he was speaker he put $800,000 into the state budget for artificial turf on the fields where he once played flag football.
Lastly, there is the issue of cap and trade (remember Scott Brown voted for the Massachusetts version). He is given credit for stopping Charlie Crist’s cap and trade scheme for the state. And I say it again; however, just two years ago he said the following to a Tallahassee public television station:
“Florida should position itself for what I believe is inevitable, and that is a federal cap and trade program. Florida should do everything it can to be an early complier so it that can access early compliance funds and so that it can help influence what that cap and trade looks like at the federal level. So I’m in favor of giving the Department of Environmental Protection a mandate that they go out and design a cap and trade or a carbon tax program and bring it back to Legislature for ratification sometime in the next two years”.
Marco Rubio is by no means the type of Republican that the Governor is, but he is not quite as conservative as he lets the citizens to believe.
