Senator Marco Rubio says that the top issue in the US today is jobs, jobs, jobs, but that didn’t stop Gretchen Carlson from asking Rubio about one job in particular. Dick Morris says that the GOP nominee for president has to select Rubio as a running mate in 2012 to lock up the Latino vote, referring to the situation as “an arranged marriage — the bride is chosen, the groom to be named later.” Rubio laughs it off and says he will not be the running mate in 2012 no matter how many proposals he receives:

Rubio stayed on message for most of the interview, arguing that tax increases won’t solve the revenue side of the ledger in the budget crisis. If Washington wants more revenues, it has to set a friendly environment for the investors that will create jobs:

CARLSON: So I have seen your op-ed in which you say we’re being sold the wrong message that we need a balanced approach with regard to the debt talks. In what way?

RUBIO: Well, we do need a balanced approach. I think the President’s got the wrong balance. We can’t possibly raise enough taxes, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t possibly raise enough taxes to even make a dent on the debt. The only way to generate revenue for government that’s enough so that we can make a run at this debt is to grow the economy to create jobs. That’s what I mean when I say what we need are not new taxes, what we need are new taxpayers. What we need is job creation and more people working. More people working means more people paying taxes. The way you do that is through regulatory reform and by simplifying the tax code, you lower the tax rate for everybody by getting rid of many of these unjustified exemptions that are the result of good lobbying, not good public policy.

Rubio may not be the running mate in 2012, but if he remains as cool and effective as he has been since taking office in January, he may be looking for a running mate not so far off in the future.