Memo from Sen. John Cornyn to U.S. Senate Republican Leadership:
With less than 70 days until the General Election, it’s clear that Marco Rubio is the only candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Florida who understands that Washington is broken and who will fight tirelessly to challenge the direction of the current administration.
As the son of hardworking Cuban immigrants who came to this nation to build a better life for their family, Marco Rubio has lived the American dream, and he has earned the trust and respect of his fellow Floridians with his determined leadership by championing lower taxes, economic empowerment, better schools, and a more efficient, effective government.
After a costly and contentious primary battle, the Democrats chose liberal Congressman Kendrick Meek as their party’s nominee today. As a lifelong Democrat hand-picked by his national party leaders and the Obama White House, Kendrick Meek has spent his career brazenly rubberstamping Nancy Pelosi’s reckless spending agenda in Washington. During the current Congress, he has voted with the Democrat leadership in Washington more than 98 percent of the time, and he has proudly campaigned with President Obama and is backed by embattled Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid.
While Meek is an unabashed liberal, Governor Charlie Crist has made it clear that he will simply say or do anything to win an election, as his positions seem to move wherever the most politically-expedient wind blows.
Within a few short months, Charlie Crist has espoused different positions on the Democrats’ massive health care bill. Back when he needed Republican votes, he talked about being pro-life and filled his website with pro-life language. Now that he needs Democrat votes, he has scrubbed all pro-life language from his site and now claims to be pro-choice. Crist switched his position on off-shore drilling while vying for a Vice Presidential nod in 2008, and then switched it back again after leaving the Republican Party. And he flip-flopped on whether he supported President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after abandoning his Republican primary bid.
Both Crist and Meek have championed President Obama’s failed economic policies, but at least Meek was honest about it. After campaigning in support of the stimulus, Crist later went on to deny ever backing it, and then flipped back again to support it. The stimulus has been a $787 stimulus debacle, and Florida ranks last in the nation in per-capita stimulus funding. As the St. Petersburg Times reported, the state’s unemployment rate “translates to more than one million jobless out of a labor force of 9.2 million. Add in discouraged Floridians not counted as looking and part-timers unable to find full-time jobs, and the broader unemployment rate would be 19.8 percent.”
Thanks to Meek’s promise to continue backing President Obama’s failed agenda and Crist’s endless flip-flopping on the issues, it’s no wonder even the Democrat polling firm Public Policy Polling reported today that Marco Rubio leads both candidates in a head to head match-up this November.
The choice in November is clear: If voters like the direction that Washington is moving, they should cast their vote for Kendrick Meek or Charlie Crist. But if they believe that the Democrat-controlled Congress and Obama White House are moving our country in the wrong direction, they should vote for Marco Rubio – a real leader who will fight for accountability in Washington.
