Marco Rubio, an adult baby thumb posing as a thirst trap for your mildly conservative cousins, does not appear to be long for the Republican presidential primaries—particularly as it’s predicted that Donald Trump will cream him Tuesday in his home state of Florida. Yet Rubio’s ex-friends still feel the need to kick him while he’s down, apparently because he’s such a low-scoring, absentee, disloyal, “lying” slacker and pure stoner-style lazyman.
According to a Tampa Bay Times profile, Rubio will likely fail because, during his political rise, he was a total user who’d curry favor with big-name donors and politicians and then conveniently lose their number once they’d helped him. Also, he was really shitty at actually showing up for the jobs he badly wanted:
Mornings in a conference room on the third floor of the Capitol, usually over light breakfast and coffee, Fasano and his team sat around a table and ran through pending legislation, laying out strategy. “Where’s Rep. Rubio?” Fasano would often ask, eliciting familiar laughter.
“He was never anywhere to be found.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, House Speaker Tom Feeney formed a special committee, and Rubio landed one of 12 highly desired spots. Florida, where some of the attackers had taken flying lessons, was on edge and the committee was to explore a range of policies to tighten security across the state, from tourist attractions in Orlando to better tracking of foreigners. But there, too, Rubio missed work, failing to show for six out of 15 meetings, according to records obtained from the state.
Even 9/11 couldn’t rouse Rubio to his duties! But no mind because, as the profile paints him, he’s always up and on to the next job as surely as a player on a Tinder rampage. In 2002 he gunned for House speaker by promising to more evenly allocate funds to schools in less urban areas, and on that promise, he won. Yet he never made good on that promise, leading Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez—instrumental in his win—to renounce him.
“When I confronted Marco, he swore up and down that he would get that back as soon as he became speaker,” said Martinez. “It told me he would sell his soul to reach his objective. He’s disloyal to his own people, the people who gave him his start.”
[...]
Martinez said Rubio would call him all the time but suddenly stopped in 2005 when Martinez left office. A couple of years later, Rubio asked to meet for lunch at a Latin American cafeteria in West Miami. He was thinking about running for Miami-Dade mayor and wanted help. Over a Cuban sandwich, Martinez let him have it: “I wouldn’t support you for dog catcher.”
The profile is full of stories like that, political operatives who Rubio once called upon to leverage his rising career but now, rejected and used, are more than willing to speak about how fucked over he made them feel. This includes the Tea Party, who anointed him as a conservative of the future and then reneged when they found him flip-floppy on immigration issues.
“The lying has cost him greatly. It was betrayal, frustration,” said Joyce Kaufman, a South Florida radio host and tea party activist who promoted Rubio during the campaign. “They all love you when they need you.”
The profile is truly an embarrassment of disses, even inadvertently so. This includes the damning and utterly embarrassing fact that Rubio was terrible in school, earning Fs while his family lived for a time in Las Vegas, and graduating high school with a 2.1 grade point average.
What a sad, low point to go out on—but his old friends seem to think he deserves it.
Contact the author at julianne@jezebel.com.