Since my New Year's prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I've been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes.
You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Republicans may be stupid but the GOP isn't about to commit suicide. The other candidates are all weighed down by enough baggage to keep a 747 on the tarmac indefinitely.
For his running mate, Romney will choose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Why do I say this?
First, Romney will need a right-winger to calm and woo the Republican right. Tea Partiers are attracted to Rubio -- an evangelical Christian committed to reducing taxes and shrinking government. Rubio's meteoric rise in the Florida House before coming to Congress was based on a string of conservative stances on state issues.
Rubio is also a proven campaigner, handily winning four House elections starting in 2002, and then beating popular incumbent Republican governor Charlie Crist in the 2010 Republican primary -- with the help of Tea Partiers.
Moreover, he's only 40, thereby giving the GOP ticket some youthful vigor.
And he's Hispanic -- a Cuban-American -- at a time when the GOP needs to court the Hispanic vote.
Rubio's only baggage is the "son of exiles" controversy -- his suggestion that his parents were refugees forced out of Cuba by Castro when in fact they moved to the United States before the Cuban revolution.
But this isn't the sort of slip that would keep him off the ticket. In fact, Romney has defended Rubio, saying "I think the world of Marco Rubio, support him entirely and think that the effort to try to smear him was unfortunate and bogus."
Finally, and most critically, Florida is a crucial swing state. Rubio would help deliver it.
So it will be Obama-Clinton versus Romney-Rubio.
And what's my prediction for Election Day? Obama-Clinton hands down.
I warn you, though. Political predictions, economic forecasts, and astrology differ in only one respect. Astrology has a fairly good record of being correct.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
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Obama can contrast his policy of unrestricted travel and remittances for Cuban Americans with Rubio's unabashed allegiance to the hard line anti-Cuba exile agenda.
He would gain even more support in Florida and nationwide if he took steps now to further expand travel opportunities for the rest of us.
Additional analysis here http://thehavananote.com/2011/12/day_cuban_people_won_thanks_president
(FYI Rubio was a state legislator, not a US Representative. He is also a practicing Catholic.)
John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
Marco Rubio is a of course, a plausible candidate for Vice President. After all, there is a need to provide an element of "ethnic appeal" to a party that has no ethnic appeal. Nevertheless, Rubio-like Cuban-Americans do not speak for all Cuban-Americans. And most Americans, hyphenated or not, are unlikely to vote for a replay of Cuban history on American soil.
And many whites as indicative of the tea baggers who created so many terrible, racist poster's when they were having their gatherings. Of course, race plays a part! Anyone who denies this is looking through rose colored glasses!
The attempt to de-humanze the right with racist allegations will not succeed because people can see through the fabrications and the motives.
Now, OWS, is not there to dehumanize; they are their to call out Wall. st. and banksters and how the pipeline of money is flowing from these 1%'ers to Congress, in fact, making many of them, their ilk, part of congress to be able to sway laws and regulations to their way of thinking, their GREEDY strategy. Take, take and more take!
www.graceastrology.com
If you had refrained from this level of immaturity, you would have had a pretty decent article. Maybe next time.
"when in fact they moved to the United States before the Cuban revolution"
Rubio's parent's emigrated in 1956. The Cuban Revolution began in 1953 and lasted until 1959. The actual controversy (assuming you are interested in being factually accurate instead of wrong) involves Rubio stating that his parents were forced to leave by Castro in 1959. In reality, his parents fled in 1956 before Castro took control.
Of course, I'm puzzled why the left is so fixated on this non-issue. If this is all they have against Rubio then I really look forward to him becoming President in 2016 or 2020.
The larger issue for Democrats is they have no policy. They have no platform they will actually fight for. Obama is a feather.
I think his policies are terrible (because he is a Bush clone) but he seems like a nice guy. I bet he is a fine father. He is probably a great lawyer. But his motivations are with Wall Street. And that is how his policies have failed.
However, you put the cart before the horse. You assume that Romney emerges from the primaries with more than enough votes to win a first round ballot at the Republican convention. My predictive orb suggests that Romney may not cross that threshold before the Republican convention. If, and this is a big IF, the anti-Romney forces can coalesce around one or two nominees, then we can look forward to a brokered convention.
At that point, pressure would be strong for a candidate such as Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie to bite the bullet and allow their names to be thrown into contention. Then, and only then, will a Republican convention choose a candidate not named Romney.
How good a fit is a Romney-Rubio ticket. Both are liars who construct a mythology about their pasts in order to softsoap the rest of us into believing that these are men of integrity and ability. Romney was able to win in Massachusetts by running as a moderate. He was able to independently enrich himself at the expense of many workers laid off in companies that were run into ground by mismanagement. .