(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In a ridiculed tweet Marco Rubio sells his soul for the chance to be Trump's nobody [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-05-30 I would do anything for love, but I won't do that” — Meatloaf What Meatloaf means by “that” is open to interpretation. Some say the songwriter was leaving it to the listener’s imagination. But the lyrics seem clear that he meant he would not quit thinking of his lover — “But I'll never stop dreaming of you.” In Marco Rubio’s case, there is no dispute — he will never stop dreaming of Trump. And he proved it yesterday with a toadying tweet the unctuous Uriah Heep would have scorned as too obsequious. Rubio is not Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, or a right-wing media propagandist on a mission to convert outrage into bank. He is a US Senator and a lawyer. I do not expect him to tell the truth — he is a politician. But I do expect him to be less hyperbolically bullshitty. “Sham trial”? Like those used “against political opponents by the political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union”? Complete and utter crap. Judge Merchan is not a free agent. He does not have carte blanche to declare Trump guilty. That is the jury’s decision. A jury that Trump’s lawyers vetted and agreed to. If Merchan denied Trump his constitutionally guaranteed rights — or if his instructions to the jury were against the law — the defense can appeal a guilty verdict. This eventuality is a moot point, as Trump will appeal any guilty verdict. If Trump gets no joy from New York’s appeals courts, he can still take his case to the US Supreme Court. Trump’s unaccountable conservative enablers in that ivory judicial tower have already flown flags indicating their support for the insurrectionist. If they were not in the tank for tyranny, they would have already dismissed the idea that a President is free to commit crimes. Rubio once hid his craven opportunism. In 2016, he warned of the danger of a Trump presidency: “If you listen to the way he describes himself and what he’s going to do, he’s going to single-handedly do this and do that without regard for whether it’s legal or not,” But the 2016 GOP primaries have been erased from the MAGA memory. Rubio has sloughed off Trump’s “ Little Marco ” slur as foreplay. When the sweaty Senator challenged the size of Trump’s junk with a sniggering “ small hands mean … “ slur, he was just playing hard to get. Think of it as a boy in love yanking the pigtails of the girl of his dreams. It was an inexperienced lover’s clumsy come-on. The ‘love them and leave them” Trump knows how to play the political romance game. He puffed his chest, and the high-heeled Rubio collapsed on the fainting couch, wrote the big guy’s name on his sneakers, and never stopped dreaming of walking down the aisle prepared to swear he would honor and obey until his dying day. And say “I do” to Trump’s offer of the Vice-Presidency. In his desperation to be somebody, Rubio sacrificed his honor, good name, and any claim to a spine. Today, in an article published by Bloomberg, Marco Rubio Sold Out for a Chance to Be Trump’s VP politics and policy columnist Mary Ellen Klas brutally analyzes Marco’s perfidy. As she says in the piece’s introduction: The Florida senator who once said leadership is telling people what they need to hear is now just another enabler of the former president. Klas knows Rubio well. She was previously Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief — and was in the position when the 34-year-old Rubio won the election to be the Florida House Speaker in 2005. He was then a star in the making, a strong man with a future. Now, he is a weak wannabe, desperate to hitch a ride on someone else’s star. Klas explains Rubio’s career arc from leader to supplicant. She enumerates how Marco went from someone in 2006 to a desperate roll of the dice to be Trump’s nobody in 2024. “Popularity is not leadership. It never has been,” he proclaimed [in 2006] before a crowd of Republican politicians and business executives. “Leaders tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.” This is the same Rubio who, in a May 19 appearance on Meet the Press, refused to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. Instead of telling Donald Trump and the former president’s supporters what they needed to hear — that he would accept the results of a legitimate and fair election — Rubio told them what they wanted to hear. He repeated the Trump fiction that refuting the legitimacy of the 2020 election results was no different than Democrats raising concerns about voter suppression and Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s a false equivalence, and Rubio knows better. But as he emerges as a front-runner to be Trump’s vice presidential pick, there are two things to take from these comments: Rubio is good at delivering platitudes, and he will say whatever it takes to get the job. Next, Klas outlines the ‘skill’ set needed to be Trump’s number two. However, it is well established that Trump isn’t seeking an ordinary running mate. He wants what Harvard Kennedy School’s leadership guru Barbara Kellerman calls an enabler — the people on Trump’s team “who on a regular basis facilitated and sometimes even exacerbated his bad behavior.” These are people who not only won’t stand up to Trump’s nihilistic tendencies, but their passivity, weakness and slavish adherence to him encourage it. Klas then poses a question. Would Rubio be an enabler, or would he demonstrate the clarity of judgment that he believed made a good leader 18 years ago? We know the answer — assuming the question was not rhetorical. It is safe to say that, after his political emasculation in 2016, Rubio will never be the ‘good leader’ he promised in his youth. Now, he waits on tenterhooks to see if he can assume the position of good follower. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/30/2243629/-In-a-ridiculed-tweet-Marco-Rubio-sells-his-soul-for-the-chance-to-be-Trump-s-nobody?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/