Oh, go ahead, destroy Marco Rubio

What’s the positive side that compensates for all this? Wherein lies the greatness of Marco Rubio, the shining achievements that overshadow his colossal immigration misadventure? Is he going to bring world peace? Sure, he’s against Obamacare and overregulation and abortion and tax increases.** So are a lot of Republicans, Republicans who haven’t shown a proclivity to go over to the other side when it counts. Has he ever run a state? Is he a brilliant thinker? Carroll, who’s punctured Rubio’s immigration misstatements as effectively as anyone, doesn’t…

Responding to Carroll on Twitter, I rashly wrote that Rubio was a “Florida pretty boy who doesn’t vet.” Then I realized that Bill Clinton had been an Arkansas pretty boy who didn’t vet. And that didn’t turn out badly (in my book). So what’s the difference between Clinton and Rubio? They’re both liars–good ones. I think it’s that Clinton’s lies tended to be mainly about his personal life. When it came to policy, he was relatively honest, at least compared with his predecessor and successor. He said he wanted to reform welfare, he said why he wanted to reform welfare, and damn if he didn’t reform welfare. Rubio is more in the Bush tradition–voters are too dumb to understand the real policy choices so you have to give them some phony red-meat reasoning. (Tell them, for example, that the 1991 Gulf War was about “jobs.”)