Rubi-uh-oh

Now that Trump has gone off the neocon reservation, the Republican establishment has fixed on Marco Rubio.

Rubio further differentiated himself from Trump and “America Firsters” in a Weekly Standard feature article inauspiciously titled, “The Republican Obama.” In an interview for the story, Rubio stakes out a decidedly neoconservative position on the increasingly failed state of Libya. According to Rubio, the bloody chaos is not a result of the vacuum created by intervention, but because President Obama failed to “help quickly bring the civil war to a decisive conclusion.”

In other words, Obama’s intervention did not go far enough.

In October, The Wall Street Journal detailed Rubio’s ever-hardening line on Putin which is, by subtle extension, an attack on Trump’s foreign policy bona fides. Rubio said, “We are barreling toward a second Cold War, and strong American leadership is the only force capable of ensuring that peace and security once again prevail,” and promised that “under my administration, there will be no pleading for meetings with Vladimir Putin. He will be treated as the gangster and thug that he is. And yes, I stand by that phrasing.”

Rubio's campaign slogan is "A new American Century." Sound familiar...?

Yes, Rubio has gone “Full-Neocon” and the echoes of grand designs past don’t stop with his blatant campaign slogan. On Nov. 5, Rubio gave a sweeping speech in New Hampshire outlining his defense policies that could, according to an expert at the Cato Institute, add upwards of $1 trillion dollars on top of current budget projections over the next decade.

It was that extra trillion dollars that GOP hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, attacked as “not conservative” in the FOX Business Debate. Rubio responded predictably by labeling Paul as an “isolationist.”

But Sen. Paul highlighted the key difference between the Tea Party and Rubio, who is not a real conservative in the fiscal sense. Rather, Rubio is a neoconservative armed with global aspirations and a staggering military-industrial wish-list to boot.

Basically, Rubio wants us to believe that the Department of Defense needs a massive build-up. It seems that our poor, under-funded military still uses bi-planes and muskets and muzzle-loading cannons.

The afore-linked article details the shadowy network of PACs pushing the Gospel According to St. Marco. Much of the big, big money is now going to Rubio -- Sheldon Adelson money, Paul Singer money, Norman Braman money. Neocon billionaires hope to buy the election.

This is Marco’s moment. Like the neoconservative brand he has franchised, Rubio has been waiting for the catalyzing event he can leverage into to transformative program to “rebuild” the world’s largest military and extend its already global-spanning reach.

That would be Paris. And if Paris doesn't do the job, something worse may happen.

On a personal level, Rubio is the most robotic candidate I've ever seen. He's about as real as Pinocchio was before the Blue Fairy showed up. Puppet pols of this sort always remind me of the old Mossad motto (which we learned about from Victor Ostrovsky): "An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought."

A large portion of the Republican electorate sees Rubio the same way I do. I'm talking about the libertarian faction and the "old school" conservatives. The argot they use may differ from yours and mine, but -- bottom line -- they don't much care for the neocons and their marionettes.

Alas, what alternative will they have in the general election?

Right now, Hillary leads Rubio in a head-to-head matchup, at least according to one poll. Interestingly, the same poll gives Bernie Sanders an even larger lead.

Obviously, I consider Hillary Clinton preferable to Rubio. I don't think she wants war; like Obama, she will head down the "neocon lite" path, using every trick short of war. And she will not engage in massive deficit spending to increase our already-bloated military. That's important, and don't pretend otherwise.

But the choice between Rubio and Clinton will be bitter. Either way, we're going to get burned: It's just a question of how much of your skin is going to get melted off.

The people hunger for a real alternative to the neo-consensus. Maybe Jim Webb really will run as an independent? And maybe he'll take Trump's lesson in the virtues of blunt talk?

By the way: Shortly after the 2012 election, I wrote this:

My prediction: 2016 will come down to a battle between Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. In that match-up, Rubio has the advantage.

That old piece offers other predictions, most of which turned out to be hilariously wrong. Don't read those parts, okay?