Just curious - what good Republican is still out there?

Rubio is someone I would consider relevant to a discussion about what "good Republican" might still be "out there."

I am curious about whether you think that the Post story last week will have any effect on his seemingly bright political future. Assuming for the sake of argument that Obama is re-elected in 2012 - probably a 50-50, 51-49 proposition or so - Rubio would probably be a serious GOP contender in 2016.

Does this story, then, matter? Could it be used against him to generate distrust? The closest I can recall to this - and there are probably a million examples - is when Bill Richardson told people he was drafted by the Oakland Athletics, but was not. I don't think that it really made a blip, though I'm not sure that Richardson was ever a serious candidate. On a more serious note, you had some candidates for state offices that fabricated or exaggerated their military backgrounds.

Or, perhaps even more relevant, I wonder whether the timeline was so important to his narrative that the revelation takes some steam out of his sails? Or is this, hypothetically, like finding out that Obama's roots were in Nebraska rather than Kansas? A distinction without a difference, in other words.

 

It's just showernozzle masturbation material for some democrats....

 

I do think newspapers should make a habit out of diligently fact-checking the back stories that candidates present.

 

This is why I'm starting to wonder if the "good Republican" the thread title asks about - if he/she exists - might be letting the birther/tea partiers/flavors of the day run out of steam, then run in 2016 and take advantage of a clear field, much like Obama did?

 

I dated a first generation Cuban immigrant for a long time. To her parents -- who had their property taken by Castro and escaped in, I think 1964 or so, there was a big difference between the people who left under Batista worried about their future and the people who left under Castro. Kind of a street cred of a thing -- did you go to the battlefield or were you in the reserves. The timing matters within that community.

 

Absolutely. I'm married to a first-generation Cuban whose parents left a couple years before Castro. Around '55 or '56, as I recall. To me, there's a very distinct difference there within the Cuban community.

The Cuban exiles who had prospered most in the corrupt Batista regime have been the most virulent anti-Castros because, well, they lost the most.

The Castro exiles and pre-Castros who left during the Batista regime certainly don't speak with one voice. They have very different ideas about reconciliation with Cuba and the politics surrounding it.

I don't know of any Cubans who, in retrospect, like Castro, but the majority will tell you that Batista needed to be overthrown, too.

 

Good Republican out there = Sarah Palin (ducking)