What is Marco Rubio thinking? In Miami, it's Zika time.
Business is down. Real estate sales are slowing. Zika is hitting South Florida hard, but progress has been halted by Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio's political gamesmanship.
Why didn't Senator Rubio vote to fully fund an emergency response to Zika months ago? He isn't leading Congress from the front, he's not even leading from behind. Marco is nowhere.
The first local spread of Zika came in Miami -- Rubio's backyard. The first domestic Centers for Disease Control travel advisory was issued in Miami-Dade and Hillsborough.
Everyone knew Zika was going to be an emergency for Florida's tourism and real estate economy as well as a public health crisis, but Rubio and the GOP leadership let Congress go on a seven-week vacation without funding the race against Zika.
All Rubio has to show after a seven week vacation is another partisan vote that was never going to pass the Senate because of GOP riders inserted like poison pills.
Rubio is as fatalistic about his own Senate seat as he is about Zika.
Why did he allow the latest Zika funding bill to be defeated with riders like a law permitting the Confederate flag to be flown at VA cemeteries. Like using Zika to attack Planned Parenthood.
Dammit, Marco. Your constituents don't care about scoring conservative points through the addition of poison pill amendments. Your constituents want Zika funding. Put up a clean bill!
What Florida voters need to understand when Rubio faces Patrick Murphy in the November election is that Rubio's weakness on Zika is just par for the course.
Marco Rubio is not just weak on Zika; his politics are weakening Florida.
The same happened when the EPA tried, years ago, to prevent the toxic algae crisis that is overwhelming Florida's waters today.
The EPA recommended tightening down on excessive fertilizer from Big Ag impacting waterways loved by millions of Floridians.
Since it is GOP heresy to empower the EPA, Marco Rubio opposed restricting polluters and today Republican districts are stewing in pollution as a result. Now Florida rivers and bays are swamped with toxic algae, because ... that's right ... Marco Rubio did what is wrong for Florida.
When he needed to put the gas to the metal, years ago, to use federal resources to solve a crisis on the horizon, instead he went to wine and cheese receptions hosted by his biggest campaign contributors, Big Sugar polluters.
The same way Marco Rubio has been an ineffective leader on solving toxics problems in Florida water, he is also powerless on Zika.
Marco Rubio is running for an office, the U.S. Senate, that he already said he doesn't really enjoy and rarely shows up to. That is why voters should return Rubio to the private sector -- where he promised to go after winning only 15 percent of the GOP presidential primary vote in his home state only to flip-flop when his big campaign contributors from polluting industries begged him to stay.