Rubio Votes in Favor of US Government Default

Florida Senator Marco Rubio was one of a minority of 18 US senators–all Republicans–to vote against the Reid-McConnell deal to re-open the US government and avoid default on the country’s debt.  He was joined in that vote by fellow Teabaggers Rand Paul and, of course, Ted Cruz, whose demagoguery created this whole sorry mess.

Rubio has definitively cast his lot with the radical Tea Party wing of the Republican party whose demented (and, in my opinion, racist) hatred of President Obama has led them to the point of being willing to shut down the US government and harm the creditworthiness of this country.   Even with this episode now over, they have done great damage and wasted billions of tax dollars for absolutely no good reason.  And they will probably try to do it again when this stopgap deal expires.

By the way, the two South Florida Republican representatives in the House of Representatives—Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart—both voted in favor of the Reid-McConnell compromise.  Apparently, they decided that a “No” vote would not go over well in a part of the state that delivered Florida’s electoral votes for President Obama twice.  However, ten of their GOP colleagues from Florida did vote NO (one didn’t vote) like the majority of the Republican representatives in the House, showing that they would rather plunge the country into financial chaos than…wait, what was it they wanted?  Hard to tell, because it kept changing from minute to minute.

Rubio is an embarrassment, and the Democratic party should start now to defeat him for re-election in 2016.