We all remember Marco Rubio as the quintessential Young Man in a Hurry™. We’ll get back to that in a moment, but just now he has seized our attention by talking, at a moment both critical and fragile, sober sense about foreign disruptors in our midst.
This is as you would expect (or at least hope) of the senior U.S. Senator from the nation’s third-largest state.
In the aftermath of the bloodthirsty attacks on Israeli civilians and international visitors by Gaza-based Hamas raiders, Rubio wants their foreign-national sympathizers, advocates, organizers and activists among us removed from the United States.
His push began Saturday with a letter to the Secretary of State Antony Blinken, making plain his righteous disgust, but also, importantly, the basis in law for his demand.
“Following its brutal and unjustified attacks on Israeli civilians, Hamas, the Iranian-backed terrorist group, declared a global ‘day of rage’ and called for its supporters to commit acts of violence across the globe. Many of those who organized demonstrations in support of Hamas, which is a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), are living, studying, or working in the United States on visas. Current law prohibits supporters of terrorism entry into the United States,” Rubio’s office noted.
Rubio subsequently elaborated on his position in a series of somber media appearances; today, he filed a resolution summoning the Senate to take action.
MARCO RUBIO: “Cancel the visa of every foreign national out there SUPPORTING HAMAS and get them out of America.”
Do you agree? YES or NO? pic.twitter.com/ElGrapXX3s
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) October 16, 2023
For the record, Rick Scott, Florida’s lanky junior senator, agrees.
Totally agree with @marcorubio. If you love terrorists, you hate America. If you hate America, you don’t belong here. It’s simple.
These people threaten Americans and need to go. https://t.co/6tB75ARlni
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) October 14, 2023
In all of this, Rubio’s position dovetails precisely with his unequivocal support for Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. As he told CNN’s Jake Tapper:
“I don’t think there’s any way Israel can be expected to co-exist or find some diplomatic off-ramp with these savages. …
“[T]hese are people, as you’ve been reporting and others have seen, that deliberately targeted teenage girls, women, children, the elderly, not just for rape and murder, but then dumping their bodies off in the streets of Gaza where the crowds can then defile their lifeless bodies. … [J]ust horrifying things, and I don’t think we know the full extent of it yet. … [T]here’s more to come in the days and weeks ahead.
“You can’t exist. They have to be eradicated.
“And you pointed out the difficult challenge. This is going to be incredibly painful. This is going to be incredibly difficult. And it’s going to be horrifying, the price to pay.
“But even more horrifying is allowing a group like this to continue to be a viable group operating from a space that they control. I wish, you know, in an ideal world, people will tell you that there is, but I just don’t — I don’t see any other option. It’s a terrible option, but it remains the only option.”
Eradicated there. Deported from here. And, significantly, emphatically rejecting Rep. Jamaal “Fire Alarm” Bowman’s proposal to “welcome refugees from Palestine.”
At a time when we’re apparently unable to secure our border and vet those who’ve spilled across, Rubio said, even the most generous nation in the world is “in no position to accept additional refugees, especially from a region with as high a risk of terrorism.”
On all of this, no daylight passes between Rubio’s granite-jawed position and that of Gov. Ron DeSantis, GOP candidate for president, veteran of the Iraq war and, with the expansion to Israel of DeSantis Airlines, one of the early heroes of the Siege of Gaza.
As DeSantis told Guy Benson’s radio audience:
“You don’t have a right to be here on a visa. You don’t have a right to be studying in the United States and we have a right to defend our people. And I think that having that is a huge problem,” DeSantis said. …
“We’ve brought people in from other parts of the world. I mean, some of the people from Somalia have gone on to commit terrorist attacks in places like Minnesota, they’ve been arrested for terrorism. …
“It’s not saying everyone in the Gaza Strip is a member of Hamas, although they did elect Hamas back in the day. And I guarantee (that) support amongst the population in the Gaza Strip for those attacks on Israel probably is very, very high in terms of public opinion. But it doesn’t even matter if they’re part of that. I mean, if they have this embedded in their worldview, which they do. And it’s sad and it’s nasty but it’s true.”
Two voices, one hymnal.
So, about the YMIAH: At the tender age of 44, eight years past his tenure as the innovative speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and five years years into his first restless term as a U.S. senator, Rubio cannonballed into the frothy pool of Republican presidential hopefuls — a look-a-me party that included his friend and mentor Jeb Bush and some guy named Trump.
Despite early promise, Rubio’s bid ended unceremoniously when he finished a distant second in his home state’s GOP primary in March 2016 — which, happily, was sufficiently early to reenter the campaign to keep his Senate seat. He won that, and, having settled into the work of a proper statesman, breezed to his third term last November.
Where are we going with all this? Right here: Rubio has long been in the leadership of the Senate committees on Foreign Relations and the Intelligence, putting him in a position to both learn about and influence the nation’s role in the world. His recent headline-grabbing remarks demonstrate he plainly wields an America-first point of view, one DeSantis clearly endorses.
(This, incidentally, is another thing we appreciate about DeSantis: An idea doesn’t have to have come from him to be praiseworthy.)
Long past his days as a rising star (who once schooled, in real time, the babbling Trump when he fumbled Hugh Hewitt’s debate question about America’s nuclear triad), we don’t doubt, at a lively 52, Rubio keeps the embers of ambition burning.
Here, then, is a prediction wrapped in a fervent hope: If voters come to their senses and put Ron DeSantis in the White House in 2024, the then-former Florida governor won’t have to reach very far to tab his administration’s first Secretary of State.
Marco Rubio, native-born son of Cuban refugees and thoughtful, if realistic and hard-nosed, student of international relations, would be an ideal fit. And from there … well, once upon a time, future President Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State.
