Subject: Correct The Record Sunday July 13, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:05:00 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

**

*Correct The Record Sunday July 13, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Politico: Dan Malloy shrugs off Hillary Clinton fee flare-up
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/dan-malloy-hillary-clinton-108843.html#ixzz37MDOLXH5>*

“UConn has emphasized that her fee to speak there was covered by a private
donor.

Malloy, a fellow Democrat, said the media ‘made a lot of ”the fee
controversy but that the speech was a “successful event.”

‘I don’t think it would be a controversy if she wasn’t a likely candidate
for president,’ Malloy said in Nashville, where he was attending a meeting
of the National Governors Association.”

*Washington Post: The Fix: What’s the American political landscape looking
like? [Excerpt]
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whats-the-american-political-landscape-looking-like/2014/07/13/ab025ca2-0a9f-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html>*

*“*Hillary is running. No, she hasn’t made a final “go” decision. But the
rollout of her memoir “Hard Choices” — and the aggressive pushback from her
team to negative stories about said rollout — makes her intentions about
the 2016 election quite clear. Clinton will enter the Democratic primary as
an overwhelming favorite, a far greater favorite than she was at this time
in the 2008 election. But, as her troubles during the rollout of her book
suggest, some of the problems that dogged her in 2008 are still around.”

*Los Angeles Times: Martin O'Malley warms up in Iowa for possible
Democratic run in 2016
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-martin-omalley-president-2016-20140713-story.html>*

“Fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton says she hasn't decided whether to
run, and neither, O'Malley says, has he. In the meantime, he is running one
of the most vigorous noncampaign campaigns of any 2016 possibility in
either party — raising money, stumping in early-voting states such as Iowa
and New Hampshire, traveling abroad to boost his foreign policy credentials
and honing a message that might be characterized, for brevity's sake, as
compassionate competence.”

*AP: Massachusetts Sen. Warren hits road for Democrats
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/13/elizabeth-warren-democrats_n_5581603.html>*

“Warren's profile has made her a go-to campaigner for Democratic Senate
candidates, in part because as a newer arrival on the political stage she
is free of some of the political albatrosses carried by other top Democrats
like President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.”

*Politico: Governors to 2016ers: Take our advice
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/national-governors-association-2016-election-108844.html>*

*“*The former secretary of state is formidable but beatable, Republican
governors argued. So much so, they said, that her presence in the
Democratic field is unlikely to keep any GOP contenders from jumping

‘I don’t think Hillary is going to dissuade anybody on the Republican side
from running,’ Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said. ‘She has strengths and she has
weaknesses, and she has some significant weaknesses.’”

*The Economist: Lexington: Marco Rubio and the safety net
<http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21606852-republican-party-should-take-florida-senators-ideas-seriously-marco-rubio-and>*

*“*Mr Rubio is only 43, so he is probably not experienced enough to take on
Hillary Clinton in 2016. But right now he is the most effective
standard-bearer for conservatives who worry more about reducing poverty and
long-term unemployment than about waging culture wars and cutting income
tax. Whoever wins in November, these thoughts are worth taking seriously.”

*Articles:*

*Politico: Dan Malloy shrugs off Hillary Clinton fee flare-up
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/dan-malloy-hillary-clinton-108843.html#ixzz37MDOLXH5>*

Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy is shrugging off any suggestion of controversy
surrounding Hillary Clinton’s paid speaking gig at UConn in April, saying
it’s getting attention only because she may run for president.

A firestorm erupted after reports that Clinton had received a $251,000
speaker’s fee at a time when the University of Connecticut system was
raising tuition for students.

Clinton’s similar fees to speak at other universities also have come under
criticism this year. She has said the fees she receives from the
universities go toward the Clinton Foundation.

UConn has emphasized that her fee to speak there was covered by a private
donor.

Malloy, a fellow Democrat, said the media “made a lot of ” the fee
controversy but that the speech was a “successful event.”

“I don’t think it would be a controversy if she wasn’t a likely candidate
for president,” Malloy said in Nashville, where he was attending a meeting
of the National Governors Association.

“Has anyone ever questioned the fee paid to anyone who wasn’t a candidate
for president?”

*Washington Post: The Fix: What’s the American political landscape looking
like? [Excerpt]
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whats-the-american-political-landscape-looking-like/2014/07/13/ab025ca2-0a9f-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html>*

The dog days of summer are upon us, and, with it, an extended slowdown in
politics — as Americans spend their time working on their tans rather than
studying up on the latest fights in the nation’s capital. Things won’t pick
up in earnest again until after Labor Day, when the political campaigning
reemerges in full force.

As we head into this break, it’s worth pausing to review and figure out
exactly what we’ve learned about the American political landscape — as it
relates to the 2014 midterm and 2016 presidential elections, the hopes (or
lack thereof) for legislative accomplishments and the fate of President
Obama’s second term.

Here are eight things I’ve learned.

[…]

5. Hillary is running. No, she hasn’t made a final “go” decision. But the
rollout of her memoir “Hard Choices” — and the aggressive pushback from her
team to negative stories about said rollout — makes her intentions about
the 2016 election quite clear. Clinton will enter the Democratic primary as
an overwhelming favorite, a far greater favorite than she was at this time
in the 2008 election. But, as her troubles during the rollout of her book
suggest, some of the problems that dogged her in 2008 are still around.

[…]

*Los Angeles Times: Martin O'Malley warms up in Iowa for possible
Democratic run in 2016
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-martin-omalley-president-2016-20140713-story.html>*

The visit had all the trappings of a full-fledged presidential campaign: a
speech at the state Democratic convention, a pep talk to door-knocking
volunteers, breakfast with labor leaders, appearances alongside the party's
candidate for governor.

The only thing absent was a formal announcement by Martin O'Malley that he
was, in fact, seeking the White House in 2016. But unlike a certain other
much-chronicled, vastly better-known prospect, Maryland's two-term governor
makes it no secret that, if not officially running for president, he is at
least actively striding in that direction.

Fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton says she hasn't decided whether to
run, and neither, O'Malley says, has he. In the meantime, he is running one
of the most vigorous noncampaign campaigns of any 2016 possibility in
either party — raising money, stumping in early-voting states such as Iowa
and New Hampshire, traveling abroad to boost his foreign policy credentials
and honing a message that might be characterized, for brevity's sake, as
compassionate competence.

"People want problem-solvers," O'Malley, a former Baltimore mayor, said in
a late-night interview after the first of two well-received speeches to
Democratic activists in Des Moines. "They want leaders that will bring
people together to solve problems, not people that will take their ideology
and try to beat round pegs into square holes."

Noted for his data-driven approach to policy, starting when he used
computer analysis to chart citizen complaints and fuel millions of dollars
of new efficiencies in city government, O'Malley is a devout Roman Catholic
grounded in the Jesuit emphasis on social justice. His religious faith, he
suggests, informs his secular beliefs.

"The numbers aren't abstractions," he said of his reverence for statistics.
"The numbers are very real human beings and individual stories."

Like many native to the information age, O'Malley is fluent in the language
of entrepreneurship, multiplatforms and changing technologies. His
numbers-crunching success fighting crime, cleaning Chesapeake Bay and
shaping up Maryland's bureaucracy could be a model for the federal
government, he says, though it may be a challenge translating that into a
resonant rallying cry: At times O'Malley can sound like a walking
PowerPoint slide, holding forth on "silos of human endeavor" and "a cadence
of accountability."

His record is one to make liberals swoon, even if he prefers the
less-freighted "progressive" label.

Under O'Malley, Maryland has banished the death penalty, toughened gun
laws, raised the minimum wage, and approved same-sex marriage, the use of
medical marijuana and in-state tuition at public colleges and universities
for people in the country illegally.

He has also, as Republicans are eager to point out, pushed through numerous
tax hikes, including increases in Maryland's sales, gasoline and tobacco
taxes as well a boost in the income tax on better-off residents.

O'Malley parries criticism by touting the state's enviable record on job
creation, income growth and other yardsticks of economic well-being.

"Hope drives belief. Belief drives action. And action achieves results," he
said in his speech to delegates at the state Democratic convention, a mix
of partisan exhortation, self-promotion and the maxims one might hear at a
business administration seminar.

Should he run for president, O'Malley's job performance, starting in 1991
as a member of the Baltimore City Council, would obviously be examined in
great detail. A corruption, sex and drug scandal in Baltimore's city jail,
which festered when he was governor, is a particularly troublesome part of
the O'Malley record. More recently, his claims to competence have been
undercut by Maryland's troubled Obamacare exchange, which failed at an
estimated cost of well over $100 million.

A lawyer by training, O'Malley has spent a lifetime steeped in politics. He
grew up one of six children in the prosperous Maryland suburbs of
Washington, where his parents met at national Democrat Party headquarters.

O'Malley and his wife, Katie, met in similar fashion, on the campaign
trail. The daughter of J. Joseph Curran Jr., the longest-serving attorney
general in Maryland history, she is now a state district court judge.

Informed opinion is divided over whether O'Malley will ultimately follow
through and mount an uphill challenge to Clinton. (If she opts out, the
Democratic contest will be thrown wide-open.)

He enjoys a good personal relationship with the former first lady, U.S.
senator and secretary of State, whom he supported over Barack Obama in
2008, and said in the interview that he had "a great deal of respect ... a
great deal of admiration" for Clinton.

Iowa, as he knows, would be an ideal testing ground for both.

In 1984, an upstart Gary Hart nearly wrestled the Democratic nomination
away from former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, a commanding
front-runner at the time, much as Clinton is today. The Colorado senator
began with a surprisingly strong performance in the Iowa caucuses; one of
his state volunteers was a young O'Malley.

Seeing Hart's experience up close "sort of demystified that a bit for me,"
O'Malley said of seeking the White House, "and made me realize that real
human beings offer themselves in this service."

He has not pressed the generational argument, but his appearance —
vigorous, fit, handsome in a plain-vanilla way and just 51 years old,
compared with Clinton, who is 66 — means he doesn't have to. Others draw
the contrast for him.

"It's really about young, up-and-coming Democrats," said Rose Mary Pratt,
66, a retired state worker who turned out on a sunnySaturday morning to
hear O'Malley address a group of Democratic canvassers in Beaverdale, one
of Des Moines' most liberal neighborhoods. "I'm Hillary's generation. I'm
looking for who's our replacement material."

Deciding whether to seek the White House, O'Malley said over the 10 p.m. din
of a hotel lounge, involves a characteristically methodical approach:
"Multiple conversations. A lot of reading. A lot of listening. Some
talking. But mostly listening."

Hart, who has kept in touch with O'Malley since leaving the Senate, offered
his take from his law office in Denver.

Whatever the odds, "if he believes that he has something to offer and a
unique point of view, of course" he should run in 2016, Hart said in a
telephone interview. "Why not?"

*AP: Massachusetts Sen. Warren hits road for Democrats
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/13/elizabeth-warren-democrats_n_5581603.html>*

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is quickly becoming a top Democratic fundraiser and
campaign powerhouse, hitting the road on behalf of candidates in key races
the party will need to win to retain control of the U.S. Senate in November.

Since March, the Massachusetts Democrat has stumped for candidates in Ohio,
Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Kentucky and has trips planned this week
for West Virginia and Michigan. It's a hefty schedule for a freshman
senator who not long ago was teaching law at Harvard.

Along the way, Warren has found her brand of economic populism resonating
far from her home in the liberal enclave of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Part of Warren's economic pitch is legislation she sponsored that would let
college graduates refinance their student loans at lower interest rates, an
effort blocked by Senate Republicans.

Warren found a receptive crowd during a recent campaign stop at the
University of Louisville with Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky
secretary of state hoping to unseat Senate Republican Leader Mitch
McConnell.

Warren said the Kentucky race is "about a man who stood up and filibustered
the student loan bill."

"When you've got a choice between billionaires and students, Mitch
McConnell says it is more important to protect the billionaires," Warren
told the crowd. Senate Republicans blocked Warren's student bill last month
on a 56-38 vote that fell short of the 60 needed to advance the proposal to
a debate.

McConnell's campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore was quick to highlight
Warren's awkward fit in coal country, noting that she supports the federal
government's efforts to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, restrictions
many in Kentucky oppose.

McConnell had criticized Warren's bill when it came up for a vote, saying
it won't make college more affordable or reduce the amount of money
students will have to borrow.

"The Senate Democrats' bill isn't really about students at all. It's really
all about Senate Democrats," he said. "They want an issue to campaign on to
save their own hides this November."

Cast by critics as a typical Northeast liberal, Warren, 65, grew up in
Oklahoma in a family which she said lived on "the ragged edge of the middle
class" — an experience that she said helped forge a lifelong interest in
advocating for working families trying to get a fair deal in an economic
and political system that Warren argues is rigged against them.

Warren found herself thrust into the national political spotlight during a
grueling 2012 campaign against incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown. It
was the most expensive campaign in Massachusetts history with both
candidates raking in tens of millions in donations.

Warren's profile has made her a go-to campaigner for Democratic Senate
candidates, in part because as a newer arrival on the political stage she
is free of some of the political albatrosses carried by other top Democrats
like President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

In March, Warren attended a fundraising reception and dinner in Cleveland
for Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Days later she attended a student rally and
fundraiser for Minnesota Sen. Al Franken in Minneapolis. Next were
fundraisers in May for Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Washington Sen. Patty
Murray.

Now, Warren is continuing her fundraising efforts, with a planned Monday event
with West Virginia Democratic Senate hopeful Natalie Tennant. Tennant, West
Virginia's secretary of state, is vying with U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito
for the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Capito is
favored and holds a hefty cash advantage.

Capito's campaign has also been quick to target Warren, calling her "one of
the staunchest opponents of coal and West Virginia's way of life."

Warren has conceded that she and Tennant — who, like Grimes, has criticized
Obama's plans to limit carbon emissions from the coal industry — don't
agree on everything, but can come together on economic issues facing
struggling families.

Later in the week, Warren is scheduled to attend a fundraiser with Michigan
Democratic Senate hopeful Gary Peters who is facing off against Republican
Terri Lynn Land. Peters and Land are competing to replace Democratic Sen.
Carl Levin, who's also retiring.

Warren has also sent out fundraising emails to her supporters on behalf of
Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia (Michelle Nunn), South Dakota (Rick
Weiland) and Iowa (Bruce Braley).

Warren's rising political star in the Democratic Party has garnered the
attention of Hillary Clinton, in part because Warren has been seen by some
as a possible alternative candidate for president in two years, even though
Clinton has yet to announce and Warren has repeatedly said she's not
interested in running in 2016.

Warren has been flexing her fundraising prowess in the party by using her
political action committee — the PAC for a Level Playing Field. The
leadership PAC has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars which she's used
to support Democratic Senate candidates and party committees including the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Julian Zelizer, a political history professor at Princeton University, said
Warren is crafting a national political profile while also testing whether
a populist economic message can win broad support across the party.

"Part of this is for her to build her stature, but she is also a believer,"
Zelizer said. "She could stumble but ... she's still new and she doesn't
have the baggage of someone like a Hillary Clinton."

*Politico: Governors to 2016ers: Take our advice
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/national-governors-association-2016-election-108844.html>*

The White House is 600 miles away — and the election to occupy it more than
two years out — but presidential intrigue was as prevalent here this
weekend as barbecue and Tennessee twang.

Several potential 2016 contenders showed up at the annual summer meeting of
the National Governors Association, which has long served as a stage for
glad-handing and relationship-building for those who seek the presidency.

Vice President Joe Biden, who delivered a speech, and Maryland Gov. Martin
O’Malley were the notable Democratic possibilities. On the GOP side, New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made
appearances. Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, meanwhile, is set to
swing through the area Sunday afternoon.

Most governors at the meeting were reticent to size up the potential 2016
field or talk about their colleagues’ ambitions. But some did offer a few
friendly — and occasionally bipartisan — pointers for those who choose to
run.

Here are a few:

Don’t be afraid of Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state is formidable but beatable, Republican
governors argued. So much so, they said, that her presence in the
Democratic field is unlikely to keep any GOP contenders from jumping

“I don’t think Hillary is going to dissuade anybody on the Republican side
from running,” Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said. “She has strengths and she has
weaknesses, and she has some significant weaknesses.”

Herbert argued that Clinton’s time as secretary of state would be a
liability and that voters might also hesitate to put former President Bill
Clinton back in the White House.

“There needs to be more substance than we just want the first woman
president,” he said.

Governors also noted that the same party rarely wins three presidential
elections in a row, and some wondered whether Hillary Clinton would
ultimately decide against putting her family through another campaign.

Welcome a competitive primary.

Whether or not Clinton runs, both sides should welcome a hard-fought
primary, if only to keep the eventual nominees battle-tested, sharp and not
complacent, some governors argued.

“I’ve told my fellow Democrats in our state, the reason right now we’re a
strong Republican state is we have strong competitive primaries,” said
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican. “Competition is good for all of
us. I don’t think it’s going to help Secretary Clinton if she runs if she
has no opposition.”

Heineman listed a handful of Democrats that have been talked about as
possible Clinton rivals — O’Malley, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and
former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

“It would be interesting, quite frankly, for both parties to have really
competitive primaries,” he said.

The Republican side, meanwhile, appears destined to be competitive whether
the GOP leadership likes it or not, with a slew of potential candidates
testing the waters and no apparent standard-bearer.

Hang out with the governors.

Utah’s Herbert said gatherings of governors such as this weekend’s
conference are an ideal place to forge alliances that can be useful in a
presidential election.

“Certainly having governors — the leaders of the states and probably the
highest-profile elected position in any state — more so than any of the
congressmen or senators, certainly gives you a leg up with that respective
state,” he said.

Governors said they’d heard from the potential candidates among their ranks
but refused to say who had been the most aggressive or toward which camp
they were leaning.

Asked whether he’d picked sides yet, Herbert said, “I’m not going to
comment on that,” although he added that he thinks the next president of
the United States should be a governor.

Heineman, the Nebraska Republican, added that the likelihood that at least
two or three Republican governors will run for president puts governors who
aren’t running in a tough position.

“You’ve got to decide, do you want to take sides or not?” he said. “I want
to see how they perform at the national level. That requires a different
sophistication in terms of message, in terms of fundraising.

“Most governors are going to want to watch and see how they perform.”

Consider running if you’ve had “diverse” experiences.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, said his party would be wise to
promote candidates with a vibrant range of experiences. “It’s a great
diverse country and I love it,” he said.

In particular, Nixon — who says he is a Clinton supporter — argued
forcefully for Democrats to feature a candidate “from the heartland.” Such
a contender would provide some much-needed beyond-the-Beltway perspective.

“That heartland voice of people that get up early, work hard, have solid
values needs to be heard in Washington, D.C.,” he said.

He declined, however, to say if he was talking about himself.

Voters are “looking for people who understand what they’re going through,”
added fellow Democrat Jack Markell, the governor of Delaware. “I think
[Clinton] could be that person. And I think Vice President Biden could be,
too.”

Try not to talk about 2016 right now.

That was the advice from Walker, who’s considered among the GOP governors
likely to launch a presidential bid.

He noted that, after all, there’s another important election coming up in
November, in which both sides are fighting hard for control of the Senate.

“Any Republican who’s talking about anything other than [the 2014
elections] is doing a disservice to both the party and the country,” the
Wisconsin governor said.

“There’s too much at stake in the U.S. Senate election to be focused on …
anything but this November’s election.”

*The Economist: Lexington: Marco Rubio and the safety net
<http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21606852-republican-party-should-take-florida-senators-ideas-seriously-marco-rubio-and>*

MARCO RUBIO’S shoulder is sore. The junior senator from Florida has just
had a cortisone injection to ease the pain from an old football injury.
Congress is not short of square-jawed jocks. Given that politics often
resembles a professional sport for the over-40s, this may be no
coincidence. Mr Rubio, who won a college football scholarship, is an
extreme case: his autobiography contains 26 references to the Miami
Dolphins (apparently the first draft had many more). This mania for running
back and forth can overshadow another, distinctly un-jock, interest of Mr
Rubio’s, which is in social policy.

Over the past few months, while many of his colleagues have devoted
themselves to mauling the president, he has proposed a series of government
interventions to improve the lot of cash-strapped Americans. His aim is to
have bills ready to go if Republicans take control of the Senate in
November. This is not the first thing people associate with Mr Rubio, who
came to national prominence when he defeated Florida’s governor, Charlie
Crist, in a Senate race in 2010. At the time he was described as the first
Tea Party senator, which implied a desire to burn down government and pour
salt on the ashes. This was mistaken.

Though Mr Rubio fitted the description of a young insurgent, his background
is not that of an anti-government crusader. He first ran for public office
aged 26, becoming a member of the city commission in West Miami, a town of
6,000 people. His tenure is remembered, if at all, for the introduction of
a bicycle-mounted policeman. When Alberto Gutman, a state senator of
distinctively Floridian heritage (he described himself as “Jewban”: ie,
Jewish and Cuban) was indicted for a distinctively Floridian crime
(Medicare fraud), opening up positions further down the food chain, Mr
Rubio was elected to the statehouse aged just 28. His nine years there were
mostly spent turning the agenda of Jeb Bush, a centrist Republican
governor, into law. He also showed a wonkish streak, travelling around the
state holding rather earnest-sounding “idea-raisers”: 100 proposals that
emerged from them were subsequently turned into a book.

When he arrived in the Senate Mr Rubio was hailed as a future saviour of a
Republican Party struggling to appeal to Hispanic voters, on the basis that
his parents had left Cuba in 1956. An already difficult task was made
harder when he had a fight with Univision, the biggest Spanish-language
network, in 2011. It became impossible when House Republicans declined to
consider an immigration reform bill that Mr Rubio, along with three other
Republicans and four Democrats, had put his name to. He has since concluded
that a law to address the 12m undocumented migrants in the country will be
impossible until the border is secure and the criteria for deciding who
gets to come change from prioritising family reunification to favouring
workers.

This will not win over the voters that the GOP had hoped Mr Rubio would
magically deliver: even young Cubans, who have long stood out among Latinos
for their attachment to the Republican Party, have started to switch their
loyalties to the Democrats. On climate change, too, Mr Rubio is hardly a
breath of fresh air. Most scientists, he says, agree that man is to blame,
but he sees no point in imposing heavy economic costs on Americans for
uncertain benefits.

If Mr Rubio is going to rescue his party from anything it is from an overly
narrow view of what government ought to do. Both Mr Rubio’s parents worked
at low-wage jobs—his father as a bartender, his mother at Kmart—but were
able to provide a life for him and his siblings that was within touching
distance of the middle class. In the years since then, he argues, a mixture
of globalisation and automation have held down wages for low-skilled
workers, making it harder for people without university degrees to repeat
what his own parents managed to do.

Mr Rubio has various proposals for addressing this, including a federal
wage subsidy to top up the incomes of the low-paid. He wants to help more
students go to college, but also thinks the federal government should
experiment with hiring people without degrees for white-collar work, as an
example to other employers. Some of these ideas are unlikely to fly, such
as a scheme to allow students to sell a share of their future income in
exchange for money to fund tuition up front. But they show an urge to
innovate that the GOP’s Congressional wing has been missing.

Does a safety net give people courage to soar?

This is daring stuff in the context of today’s Republican Party because it
envisages a role for government that many conservatives would find
distasteful. Where Republican orthodoxy suggests saving poor people from
welfare dependency by mercifully reducing the amount of money they receive,
Mr Rubio aims to cut welfare spending by reducing the demand for it,
keeping funding at the same level but handing anti-poverty programmes over
to the states to figure out what works. “I don’t take my children to the
circus very often,” he says, “but when I do I have noticed that acrobats
tend to be much more daring when they have a safety net beneath them.” Such
support “is essential for the success of the free enterprise system”.

It is hard to imagine some other Republicans with presidential ambitions
saying anything like that. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of
Texas, for example, often give the impression that the only thing standing
between America and a restoration of the upwardly mobile society of the
1950s is a more faithful interpretation of the constitution. Mr Rubio is
only 43, so he is probably not experienced enough to take on Hillary
Clinton in 2016. But right now he is the most effective standard-bearer for
conservatives who worry more about reducing poverty and long-term
unemployment than about waging culture wars and cutting income tax. Whoever
wins in November, these thoughts are worth taking seriously.