USA Today recruits a Rutgers professor to parrot the moderate/progressive opinion that poor Marco Rubio got in trouble because he decided to be reasonable about immigration reform and thus pissed off the Republican base of rightwing whack jobs, and had to back off to appease them:
Rubio might have been naive in thinking that his contribution to the immigration reform bill would commend him to all Republicans. Nor could he have foreseen that he would be forced to disown the comprehensiveness in favor of the piecemeal approach favored by the House GOP.
But in his honest effort to help shape what he considered good public policy, he ran afoul of an unforgiving political climate that penalizes bipartisanship and rewards staunch party loyalty.
Rubio can only hope that yielding to realization that his approach would fail in the House will be seen not the action of a flip-flopper but of any person faced with changed circumstances who concludes that discretion is the better part of valor.
Well, Rubio isn't nearly as trusted as he once was, and it's because at first he seemed like a conservative firebrand willing to take on the estbalishment, like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and, to a certain extent, Rand Paul. But then he turned out to be just another politician who tells us what we want to hear when he needs our votes, then gets elected and tries to court the mainstream press and please Washington party certain.
I'd be happy about his abandonment of "comprehensive reform" if I believed it. I don't. Use us once, shame on you, use us twice . . .
