Political MoJo

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

Here is one of the presumed contenders for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, in an interview with GQ's Michael Hainey:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Should be a fun four years.

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The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in February turned a national spotlight on Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. Following widespread outcry about the killing—in which George Zimmerman shot the unarmed 17-year-old Martin allegedly in self defense—Florida Gov. Rick Scott convened a task force to evaluate the 2005 law. This week, the group came back with their report. Their conclusion? The controversial law is just fine as it is. But there's just one problem: That verdict flies in the face of much troubling evidence to the contrary.

• Inside America's Epidemic of Mass Shootings
• Want to Buy a Gun Without a Background Check? Armslist Can Help
• More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines
• The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions
• Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No.
• How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide
• Flashback: How Republicans and the NRA Kneecapped the ATF
• Unmasking the NRA's Inner Circle

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Stand Your Ground essentially makes it legal to shoot one's way out of any situation that feels threatening: Unless law enforcement authorities can prove that's an invalid explanation from a shooter, a resulting homicide can be deemed justifiable under the law, and the shooter is immune from criminal and civil prosecution. As Mother Jones reported in June, Florida's Stand Your Ground law kicked off a wave of such legislation across the country, with 24 of them passed elsewhere since, thanks to much backing by the National Rifle Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The evidence to date indicates it is terrible public policy. Since the spreading of the law, multiple studies have found that Stand Your Ground laws:

• don't deter crime
• are associated with significant increases in homicides
• are racially discriminatory—homicides involving white shooters and black victims are 11 times more likely to be deemed "justifiable" than those where the scenario is reversed.

But after six months of review, it looks like Gov. Scott's task force took little of this into account. The first recommendation in their final report is a firm endorsement of the Stand Your Ground law: "[A]ll persons have a fundamental right to stand their ground and defend themselves from attack with proportionate force in every place they have a lawful right to be and are conducting themselves in a lawful manner."

The few recommendations for change that the report offers are vague. They recommend more training for law enforcement on the meaning of self-defense laws, that the legislature better define a shooter's criminal immunity, and that it fund study of the correlation between Stand Your Ground laws and diversity variables, including race. (Nevermind that such studies on race already exist.)

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Gov. Jindal speaks at a November 3 rally for then-presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney initially called his remarks on the 47 percent video unearthed by my colleague David Corn "inartfully stated." But since his defeat, he's returned to a political theory that divides the United States into makers and takers, arguing that President Barack Obama only succeeded by providing young people, women, and minorities with exhorbitant "gifts" to buy their support, in the form of things like health care coverage and help with student loan debt. (Jon Stewart piled on with some gifts of his own devising.)

"What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked," Romney said on a post-election conference call with donors.

My colleague Kevin Drum has already addressed why Romney's remarks are ridiculous—political parties reward their constituencies, and Romney would have pursued goodies for GOP backers had he been elected. Financial institutions would have been very happy with a Romney administration that repealed Dodd-Frank, military contractors would have been delighted with Romney's plan to raise military spending to astronomical levels, and Romney's wealthy donors would have been delighted with his tax cuts for high earners. These are all "extraordinary financial gifts," and unlike student loans or health care coverage, they do nothing to help ensure that being born into a family of modest financial means doesn't prevent a person from succeeding. Help with student loan debt doesn't mean you didn't have to work hard to get good grades. A better example of an unearned "gift" is being born the son of a wealthy, famous politician so that you'll never have to worry about student loan debt. 

The more interesting phenomenon, however, is the oppobrium from Romney's fellow Republicans. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who likely has his own presidential ambitions, called Romney's remarks "absolutely wrong," and said "We have got to stop dividing American voters." Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker backed up Jindal, saying that the GOP is the party that "helps people find a pathway to live the American Dream." Conservative writer JP Freire, echoing a theory that Romney's conservatism didn't sell in part because it was not genuine, wrote "I think Romney's saying what he thinks a conservative would say."

My former American Prospect colleague Jamelle Bouie, writing at the Washington Post, has a different theory, namely that Republicans are rejecting Romney's remarks because they're politically harmful—not because they see them as incorrect. "If there's a problem with Romney's statement, it was the language, not the sentiment." 

I think Bouie has it right. If Romney is saying "what he thinks a conservative would say," it's probably because there are so many conservatives saying it. Rush Limbaugh, whose influence on conservatism dwarfs Romney's, explained the 2012 election results by saying "People are not going to vote against Santa Claus, especially if the alternative is being your own Santa Claus." The sentiment was repeated on Fox News incessantly, with on-air personalities like Eric Bolling saying "people voted to continue to get free stuff," and Bill O'Reilly saying Romney was "right on the money." This notion is deeply flattering to conservatives who would like to imagine themselves as rugged individualists, and those who disagree with them politically as lazy moochers.

As with the 47 percent tape, several conservative intellectuals have rejected Romney's statements and explained why they were incorrect. In both cases, however, Romney's problem was not diverging from conservatism so much as expressing it in ugly and unappealing terms. The Republican reaction from party leaders like Jindal is not a rejection of the worldview underlying Romney's remarks, which is extremely popular in right-wing media. It's an expression of political opportunism from politicians who want to leave their footprints on Romney's back as they chase their own ambitions. If it were anything else, you'd see Jindal telling Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, not Romney, to shut up.

But you aren't.  

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Some conservatives are having a tough time with President Barack Obama's reelection. Take social conservative leader Franklin Graham. In an interview with Newsmax.com, the Rev. Graham, a prominent evangelist and son of top-dog evangelist Billy Graham, maintained that Obama's victory will put the country further along a "path of destruction." And he suggested it would take a "complete economic collapse" to place the United States on a better course and return it to godliness.

Graham equated the Obama years with a national rejection of God. "In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God," he said. "We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any kind of a public forum." Oddly, Graham ignored the fact that he and other shepherds of the Christian right have griped about such matters for much longer than four years. It didn't start with Obama.

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