Marco Rubio dances around the question of fiscal responsibility hypocrisy on Face the Nation.

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Mitch Perry at Creative Loafing watched Bob Schieffer yesterday on Face the Nation ask Rubio --The Question-- about his free-spending ways with the GOP credit card.

Schieffer: You preach fiscal responsibility. But your opponents say you don’t live it. They say you’ve been deeply in debt for much of your life, that sometimes you put your own personal expenses on your Republican party credit card, how do you answer those critics?

Rubio: They’re false. The Republican Party of Florida has never paid for my personal expenses, and as far as debt is concerned, you know what they call debt? A mortgage. Yes, I bought a home using a mortgage, I bought two homes, one here and one in Tallahassee. A vast majority of Americans watching this program would be shocked to learn that buying a home with a mortgage is somehow irresponsible. And the other debt I have was a student loan. My parents worked very hard but they couldn’t save enough money to send me to law school so I had to borrow money and I paid my student loans every month that provided me my education.

But I think my opponents say that because they’re wrong on the ideas. They have absolutely no ideas on the critical issues facing our country, so they want to make personal attacks against me, the centerpiece of their campaigns. But this election is too important. Because at stake is the very identity of our country. Are we gonna remain exceptional? Or are we going to become like everybody else? Americans want to remain exceptional, and they’re looking for candidates that will fight for them.

Rubio’s appearance came after a Mason-Dixon poll released on Saturday showed him looking better than ever in his chances to go to D.C. next January. The Miami resident now leads Charlie Crist 40%-28%, with Kendrick Meek at 23%.

The big shift MD reports is that independent voters have shifted in a serious fashion from Crist to Rubio:

In August, independent voters backed Crist over Rubio by a margin of 44 percent to 31 percent. In the new poll — conducted from Monday through Wednesday — Rubio leads 38 percent to 27 percent among independents.

So, is Florida GOP Chairman John Thrasher celebrating this new poll as the result of his as yet unsubstantiated attacks against Governor Crist, via the GOP "audit", claiming to find "unauthorized spending" by Crist on the GOP dime during a trip with his family to Disney, when Crist has since produced a receipt his wife kept of their trip and the fact that Crist was never issued a GOP credit card in the first place? Wait 'til this gets out, Mr. Thrasher. And it will.

Last week the state GOP released a forensic audit of party expenditures and did its utmost to tar Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican running for the Senate as an independent.

The report did show Jim Greer, Crist's selection for state GOP chair, and some others spent wildly. But Crist never had a GOP credit card, and he produced a receipt for a Disney World stay that state GOP Chairman John Thrasher had questioned.

The audit did not address - or reveal - spending prior to Greer's tenure, though Rubio had a credit card then, and that is when the home repairs apparently took place.

..... Tampa Tribune Editorial, Sept. 24

Creative Loafing also makes the point I've been contemplating:

Last Friday we wrote that we were curious how independents would feel about stories that appeared in the media last week about Marco Rubio regarding his free-spending ways — not just on his own personal expenses, but also that he was more involved than he has let on regarding the Florida Legislature approving over $33 million in funding for an extravagant court house built for the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee, which a grand jury has since been called to investigate.

The Mason Dixon poll was conducted last week, before those revelations were published.

Rubio's latest numbers just may be a hall of mirrors. We will see with the next Mason-Dixon poll, when voters have had the chance to read these three devastating articles.



Somehow, I don't see too many thinking voters tolerating the graft, irresponsibility and rank hypocrisy of this magnitude in a candidate for US Senate.

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1. can't control his own finances so how the hell can he do a whole state n/t