Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will miss a crucial vote in the U.S. Senate next week. Senate Republicans will try to break the Democrat filibuster of a House-passed bill that funds the entire Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but blocks funding for President Obama’s executive amnesty. Rubio will miss the vote because he’ll be in New Hampshire, testing the waters for a potential presidential campaign.
“Rubio will be in New Hampshire early next week, where he’s going to miss at least one vote in the Senate on the DHS deadlock,” Politico’s Burgess Everett wrote on Friday morning in the tip sheet email by Politico, Huddle.
Rubio’s spokesman Alex Conant confirms that Rubio will miss the vote, since he doesn’t expect it to pass.
“Yes, he’s expected to miss the same procedural vote on Monday afternoon that he’s already cast several times already and we know will not pass,” Conant said in an email to Breitbart News.
It’s not unusual for presidential candidates to miss Senate votes. Senator Rubio has not made a final decision about 2016, but he’s seriously considering running for president and taking the necessary steps to prepare a competitive campaign.
As he travels the country meeting with voters, there will be no doubt where he stands on any important issues before the Senate. Regarding the underlying issue: Marco does not and will not support a clean DHS funding bill that does not repeal the Presidents unconstitutional executive order on immigration.
This comes after a dustup Rubio had during an appearance in Nevada, where he told reporters that Congress should pass a DHS funding bill without conditions on Obama’s executive amnesty.
“We have to fund Homeland Security,” Rubio said in a news conference there. “We can’t let Homeland Security shut down.”
Rubio could be taken to have said that Congress needs to pass a bill to fund Homeland Security and prevent a partial shutdown if Senate Democrats don’t break their filibuster by February 27. Rubio’s office quickly walked it back, with Conant sending quotes around to reporters saying that what Rubio in fact meant by “we can’t let homeland security shut down” is that the Democrats must stop their filibuster.
This all comes after a federal judge in Texas, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, put a hold on Obama’s executive amnesty as potentially illegal. Hanen issued an injunction ordering the administration to immediately halt all implementation plans for the executive amnesty—something the administration has reluctantly agreed to comply with.
With the Democrats and the administration on defense after Hanen’s ruling, pretty much all Republicans in Congress—including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker John Boehner and Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) among scores of rank-and-file members—have publicly pressured the Senate Democrats to drop their support of the Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) created filibuster.
It remains to be seen what will happen on Monday. But if any Senate Democrats vote with the Republicans against Obama’s executive amnesty—and many of them said they opposed Obama last Fall, even though they haven’t been following through—Rubio would look really badly for not being there to contribute his vote.
“Just when conservatives want to welcome Marco Rubio back into our good graces, he self-immolates over amnesty yet again,” nationally syndicated radio host Steve Deace, who is based in Iowa, told Bretibart News.
For Rubio to now oppose Republicans just as they seem poised to finally fight Obama on something isn’t just morally wrong, it’s political malfeasance. This will further diminish whatever fading chances he had in next year’s Iowa Caucuses.
Conservatives here see amnesty as bad for rule of the law, and bad for the country economically and culturally. Not to mention the fact it’s the greatest Democrat voter drive of all time.
So all Rubio is doing through his support of amnesty is to help those who oppose us on every other issue as well troll for more voters. Thus, Republicans like Rubio are ironically setting the stage for their own electoral defeats with the fool’s errand.
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