Breaking up with Marco Rubio over illegal ballot lies is not so hard to do

Dear Marquito, it’s over.

This may come as a shock, but we’re through. And it’s not me. It’s you. Sorry (not sorry) but you are just not the man I thought you were.

In four short years, you’ve gone from being fiercely independent and #NeverTrump because you knew he was a fraud to helping him defraud the voters and undermine and delegitimize the U.S. electoral system. And now the one who looks like a fraud is you.

I have to admit, that’s a long way from when I first laid eyes on you as a West Miami Commissioner. I had no idea what you were destined for. You looked 12. But then, less than two years later, you ran in a special election for State House 111 against Spanish-language newsman Angel Zayon and yowza! A star was born!

Like everyone else, I took notice. ¿Quién es esté?

You still had those boyish looks. But now you were quickly becoming a savvy politician who was able to get the coveted Speaker position by the virtue of your early arrival and charismatic charm and then ran for Senate against a popular Republican governor, going against the GOP establishment’s wishes, and ended up making him change parties. I laughed and cheered.

Your goodbye speech on the House floor was so powerful it got me hooked on politics. This was more than government. This was drama. This was storytelling. It was my first time listening to a goodbye speech from a politician — but not my last. And it’s still probably the best. You do have a way with words. I’ll give you that.

It’s what made me fall in political love with you years later, in the middle of your 2012 speech about immigration reform at a NALEO conference in Orlando. The gist: Neither Democrats nor Republicans, frankly, were the least bit interested in solving the illegal immigration problem because it was a source of (1) votes and (2) millions in campaign financing. As long as the American people gave politicians these two things, you said, immigration would remain a driving force in politics, and not be fixed.

You blew me away with your bluntness and turned me into a super fangirl that annoyed the living hell out of my more liberal or progressive pals. I fiercely defended you. I told them both Democrats and Republicans feared and respected you because you called them on their BS. I told them you transcended parties. I may have lost friends. I know I lost work.

You convinced me to vote for Mitt Romney in 2016. Did you know that? It was all you. You were there at my first Republican National Convention. I thought you were the shining star of the event. I predicted then that you would become the first Latino president of the United States.

I bought your book. I bought your other book. I stood in line for you to sign it. I followed you around from event to event, happily posting photos of us, the happy couple, on my social media. I even read your book (okay, I tried).

When you ran for president in 2016, I supported you in the primary early on. I was proud when you called Donald Trump a conman. I went to all your events in Miami and parked blocks away and walked in the rain to welcome you home to a rally with our old friends at the West Miami Community Center. I bought merch. For me and for my dad.

I was so excited thinking the first Hispanic president would be a cubanito from Miami whose mother once worked at the same Westchester K-mart as I did after school at St. Brendan’s my senior year.

But then Donald Trump won and I don’t know what happened. Did it break your heart? Because you were just never the same again. Little by little, you became Little Marco. Instead of a driving force of independent thinking you were suddenly a blind follower.

Could it be that you were spineless all along?

Maybe I should have seen it coming. Yes, I also blame myself for giving you too much benefit of the doubt.

First, you failed to take any sensible position on gun reform after your own constituents were obliterated in violent mass shootings — 49 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and then 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland two years later in 2018. These are your people. But you never stood up for them.

Then you watched, mute, as the Trump administration stripped little children — babies, toddlers — from their illegally entering parents at the U.S. border just to hold them in chain-link cages where they kept warm with aluminum blankets. I cried for days. You were so cold. And you still haven’t done anything to reunite more than 500 children with their families.

You stood silently by again as your president refused to reject the supremacy of any race and, in fact, said offensive, hateful things about women and soldiers. Soldiers! Nobody expected you to defend Muslims. Okay, maybe, in my heart of hearts, I did. But soldiers? How hard is that?

I have tried to ignore your blind spot. Your “filter,” if you will. You are like the old Cubans in my family so I can be very understanding. And tolerant. Just like I’ve more recently tried to ignore your love affair with those creepy Biblical verses you tweet with no context.

But this blatant enabling of Trump’s fabricated attacks on the democratic process es el colmo ya. I would have thought it was beneath you to promote the propaganda that is undermining America’s confidence in the electoral system and the world’s confidence in America’s democracy. I never, ever would have believed that you would hand this gift to dictators and tyrants around the world who are happy to see a divided U.S. and chaos in our leadership. It was unfathomable that you would not only accept but defend and propagate the notion that our election was stolen and that it is okay to keep the president elect from the tools he is rightfully due access to in the transition process.

That’s unforgivable. And it seems I’m not alone in that opinion. The responses on the twitter video you posted Tuesday defending the baseless accusations from a desperate dictator in training is stacked with people who voted for you or donated to one of your campaigns who now feel ashamed that they did. Nice job!

This was your last chance — you could have called for the traditional transition access to be granted while the frivolous lawsuits work their way through the courts. You consciously chose not just to stay silent, which would be bad enough, but to come out swinging in defense of the indefensible.

Yes, we had already drifted apart, but the moment has come to cut you completely out of my life. No te quiero ver ni en pintura.

Don’t call. Don’t text. And, please, don’t run for office again.

Donald Trump, Marco Rubio

Breaking up with Marco Rubio over illegal ballot lies is not so hard to do added by Ladra on November 11, 2020
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