Marco Rubio, the man who hopes to deny Gov. Charlie Crist the Republican Senate nomination in Florida next year, is blasting his party’s leadership in Washington for “shrill” rhetoric that he blames on “laziness.”
In an interview with TPMDC this morning, Rubio said he’s gaining traction against Crist because he’s taking a different tack from national Republicans.
“In essence, that shrillness is a product of laziness,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to defeat people intellectually than it is to smear them. That’s true on both sides, by the way.”
Rubio’s criticism came in response to advice Jeb Bush delivered to the Washington GOP establishment this morning on MSNBC. Bush told his party “It’s out of the mainstream to be shrill.”
Rubio doesn’t necessarily agree that the tone is out of the mainstream. He said the political culture in Washington has left the GOP (and Dems) to “too quickly resort to demonizing the individuals on the other side.”
“I don’t want to be a part of that and I’m not going to contribute to it,” he said.
Rubio said that if Republican leaders don’t refocus their attention toward offering an “alternative” to Democrats on health care and other issues rather than “just the opposition” to them, the party risks irrelevancy.
“I believe the Republican party is the natural home for that alternative view,” he said, “but it’s not the inevitable home. We have to earn that.” That means “electing people to office who are going to go to Washington, DC and not just stand up and fight against Barack Obama and the Democratic congress, but in fact offer up a compelling vision of America’s future and how to get us there,” he said.
Rubio said it was the parties themselves that are responsible for the shrill tone in D.C. these days, not the radio and television personalities that are often blamed. Rubio declined to criticize either Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh for their tone, claiming that as radio personalities “that’s their job.”
“Some of the most outrageous things I’ve heard in the past six weeks have come from the left,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to blame Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann for that but I’m sure I could if i wanted to. I blame Alan Grayson for the things he says.”
Rubio just announced a nearly $1 million fundraising haul and has spent the summer being a thorn in Crist’s side as President Obama’s slipping poll numbers have polarized the GOP against the moderate governor. Across the state, county GOP groups have held straw polls favoring Rubio over Crist and right-leaning national figures have followed their lead. Earlier this week, Karl Rove came down on the Rubio side of the debate, donating $1,000 to the campaign.
Crist’s entrance threw a monkey wrench into his original plans for the race, he said, but claimed his steady progress on the money front show he’s risen to the challenge.
“We kinda had to refocus onto a different kind of campaign based on the circumstances of this race,” he said. “I think it’s proved fruitful in the short term. But we’ve got to keep it up though.”
