Gary Varvel for February 18, 2013

Latinos, like all of us, are individuals first.

Portrayal of Democrats in desperation is false. The reality is the r/w, republicans and tea partiers are the desperate ones. The message that rubio put forth was the same exact message that mittens lost the election with. the response didn’t even match well the message from President Obama.

Let’s get a few things straight about “latinos” please …

1. There are LOTS of different kinds of latinos, each with their own culture and prejudices. If you compared a Mexican and a Cuban, e.g., both might be insulted and consider you ignorant.

2. Hispanic surnames don’t prompt latinos to jump through hoops of fire any more than Allen West or Michael Steele, Condaleeza Rice or that pizza guy made black people do it.

3. Latinos tend to LIKE government in America because they or their ancestors left a place that was corrupt, racist and full of hollow promises. This place—even with our dysfunctional government—is a paradise compared to many of the hispanic countries and latinos know that. The GOP is anathema to this concept.

If they just turned up the volume they’d walk away.

Does no one vet these cartoons? Latinos haven’t been gravitating to Rubio. His policies are terrible not just for Latinos, but for America at large. Exit polling shows that Latinos are more liberal than the average American on every issue, including abortion rights. In what fantasy land is Rubio enchanting Latinos? Why choose him over a liberal Latino whose policies make actual sense?

Obama didn’t win in 2008 because he was black – he won because he wasn’t in the same party as George W Bush. No matter who the Democrats chose, that candidate would have won, because the Republican leadership at the time had pretty much bankrupted the country. If you weren’t rich in 2000, your life did not improve by 2008, and the number of unemployed compared to 2000 meant most had less than before W took office. Obama won in 2012 because the Republicans still could not convince enough people they had a satisfactory solution to the problems we faced. “I’m not Obama” was about as effective as Kerry’s “I’m not Bush” platform. Even if Rubio is the candidate – he will not be able to win on race alone. It is the Republican party that will need to change to convince all those people for whom welfare is the only thing keeping their families from starving to death under a bridge to vote for him. Demonizing the poor and telling them their problems are all their fault will not win their votes. Rubio CAN win if the PARTY separates itself from the right wing extremists of the Tea Party and offers up some genuinely workable fiscal solutions that does not involve severing the lifeline of the poor. I don’t see a particularly strong candidate on either side yet, but I don’t generally vote for a candidate as much as the platform. Both sides have a few years to come up with a solid plan for 2016-2020, and I’ll wait to see which one makes the most sense then. Until that point, potential candidates shouldn’t make their moves too soon; best to make the opposition scramble for dirt on them as opposed to having three years to drag their names through the mud.

The GOP “water boy” is carrying another empty GOP bucket. As the term “Latino” has no real meaning other than a surname, how is it a group? Black, yellow, white, from almost any country in the “western” world; Europe, North America, South America, even African or Asian ancestry, it IS perhaps the most absurd “label” out there.

Because blacks didn’t vote 75%+ for all Democrats, even for Bubba Clinton.

Not playing dumb just countering Harrison’s erroneous comment about Democrats.

Are you truly so obtuse you don’t get it?

Rubio is lucky everyone’s busy talking about the ‘aqua lunge’. Rubio’s actual speech was pretty much the same stuff that Romney & Ryan lost an election on.Rubio has already been in trouble for embellishing the story about his parents fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist oppression. They moved to the U.S. 2 years before Castro returned.Then we have him dodging the question when asked how old he thought the Earth was. Not exactly the most impressive pre-candidate…

I happened to look at comments about Rubio on another site & found this precious gem:“Rubio’s birth/family story is irrelevant. It’s a smokescreen for the real issue. Marco Rubio is NOT a natural born citizen and is, therefore, not eligible to be on any presidential ticket (ditto Bobby Jindal). Neither man’s parents were U.S. citizens therefore they are NOT eligible to be POTUS or VEEP ; the exact same problem Obama has. If Rubio and Jindal are true patriots and supporters of the Constitution, one or both of them will immediately call a press conference and announce that he is not a ‘natural born citizen’ because his parents were not U.S. citizens and that he cannot accept any invitation to join a presidential ticket.”This is what you guys get for tolerating birthers.

Just a con wet dream.

It’s from an alternate reality where embracing conservative Cubans (you know, the guys who helped Nixon break into the Watergate 40 years ago) gives you influence with people with roots in Mexico, Central America, Puerto Rico and South America (who you keep trying to deport, even if they were born here).

Don’t drink the water! It will give you Washington “Tourista”.

Judas-goat: That’s an expression I was totally unaware of, cool; thanks!

Reread Uncle Joe’s comment and notice the quotation marks and the last sentence.