Rubio, who lied about family “fleeing” Cuba, hints Obama is socialist while introducing Romney

10/27/2012 4:33pm by 1,917

GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida played the “oppressed immigrant” card today against President Obama, subtly suggesting that the President is a socialist, while introducing Mitt Romney today.

“The president’s just not a supporter of the free enterprise system,” he said, adding, “This isn’t the first time I’ve said it, and I believe it with all my heart.”

You can always tell when a Republican is out of arguments.  They invoke socialism and communism.

Marco Rubio lying again about Cuba

Sing it, girl.

The irony of Rubio’s dig about socialist tyranny is that Rubio was caught last year lying about his family’s own history of supposedly fleeing communist dictatorships (they didn’t).  He claimed his parents fled Castro’s Cuba when in fact his family left before Castro even arrived.  Rubio also got a few other details wrong about his family’s “oppression,” which is odd since his parents were around a long time and never corrected their son’s lies about the year they immigrated, and under what conditions.

It’s kind of a big deal when you say you fled Castro’s Cuba, but in fact, you simply left pre-Castro Cuba, no fleeing involved.  People like Rubio do a disservice, and dishonor, the people who actually have lived under communist tyranny, and who actually did flee a system that was quite literally trying to kill them.  I visited the Soviet Union at its height in the early 1980s, and it was a nasty trip, and a scary place.  I also visited East Berlin and traveled in East Germany – again, nasty place.

For man-children like Marco Rubio to invoke communism – and make no mistake, that’s what he really means, communism – to describe Mitt Romney’s differences with President Obama, only goes to show that Marco Rubio hasn’t yet learned his lesson about lying about history, and dishonoring the memory of those who actually did fight against actual tyranny.  Covering pre-existing conditions isn’t tyranny, Marco, unless you’re a fascist.

So when Rubio says that President Obama’s ideas are “the ideas of countries people come here to get away from,” it’s not clear if Rubio means real countries or the make-believe countries he seems to prefer.

But either way, it’s clear that Rubio is now playing the Romney racism card.  And a long card it is.  From my previous posts we learn that first, Mormons have a long history of racism that lingers until today.  Then you have Romney surrogate John Sununu playing the race card just this week about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama.

More Romney racism from my previous posts:

But it’s not the first time Romney has played the race card.  Remember when, out of nowhere, Romney invoked Rev. Wright earlier this year.

Or the time NBC’s Chris Matthews finally stood up to GOP party Chair Reince Priebus’ race-baiting on behalf of the Romney campaign.

Our own Jon Green did a more in-depth analysis of Romney’s pandering to the nation’s racial subconscious.

Or Romney’s embrace of Ted Nugent and his racism.

Or Mitt Romney’s birther “joke,” intended to inflame the “he’s not like you and me” bigotry of the far-right that controls the GOP, and his embrace of birther Donald Trump and Jerome Corsi.

And then there’s this.

If Mitt Romney has Marco Rubio playing the race card in the same week that Sununu played it, then this is part of the Romney strategy, which was something we saw in 2008 as well – remind the public that Barack Obama is black.  It’s a sign that Romney isn’t very happy with his chances of winning. But it’s also a sign that Romney recognizes the electorate is divided along racial lines, and he’s happy to pander to America’s prejudice.

It’s an odd thing for a man who’s a Mormon to do, pander to prejudice, because the Mormons have faced prejudice for so long. But I guess in the end it’s not so odd when you consider the virulent intolerance that far too many Mormons practice in attempting to force Christians and others to live under Mormon doctrine.

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@aravosis | Facebook | Google+. Editor of AMERICAblog, joint JD/MSFS from Georgetown, worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, and as a stringer for the Economist. A frequent TV pundit, he has been on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline & Reliable Sources. Full bio and .

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