Marco Rubio officially joined the president and vice-president on Air Force One on Thursday, in his capacity as a Florida senator – demonstrating national unity in one of the bleakest weeks in US history.
.
Where the Charleston killings stirred bitter memories of racial violence,the murder of 49 people and wounding of 53 at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando represented America’s deadliest mass shooting, one the world’s worst homophobic atrocities and a seeming recurrence of jihadi-inspired domestic terrorism all in one sickening blur.
At first the political response appeared only to add to the heartache. Within hours of last Sunday’s attack by Omar Mateen – a 29-year-old Muslim American whose father emigrated from Afghanistan
Donald Trump delivered an anti-immigration speech that was shocking, even by his standards, for its apparent suggestion that Obama was to blame. When the Washington Postreported his subsequent insinuation that the president harboured a secret agenda somehow linked to the attack, he banned the newspaper from covering his campaign.
But just as some in Europe are now hoping that the assassination of the British MP Jo Cox could mark a turning point in the anti-immigration mood surrounding Britain’s referendum on EU membership, Trump’s response to Orlando looks as if it may mark a high water point in the nationalist tide that has engulfed the US presidential election.
Coming swiftly after his criticism of a judge’s Mexican heritage, Trump’s apparent blanket attack on Muslim Americans was too much for many Republicans in Congress.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he “was not going to be commenting on presidential candidates”, even though campaigning is now in full swing. Bob Corker, another elder statesman recently seen as Trump’s most likely running mate, said he was “discouraged” by the words of his party’s presumptive nominee.
In this context, Rubio’s appearance aboard Air Force One alongside Obama and Joe Biden was more than just a Florida courtesy. Something had snapped.
This was the same Senator Rubio who, as a Republican presidential candidate, had spent much of the year attacking Obama as unfit to lead. This was perhaps the fiercest critic of White House foreign policy throughout the 2016 campaign, coming to the scene of an Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack and making clear he stood with the president, not his party’s likely nominee.
This weekend, rumours are swirling again in Washington of one final bid to deprive Trump of his place as the Republican nominee when the party convention meets in Cleveland next month.
Late on Friday Sean Spicer, communications director of the Republican National Committee, was forced to remind plotters that Trump has “bested 16 highly qualified candidates and received more primary votes than any candidate in Republican history”.
“All of the discussion of the RNC rules committee acting to undermine the presumptive nominee is silly,” he insisted.
Yet many Republicans fear not just the prospect of losing the White House in a landslide this November, but also ceding control of the Senate and House of Representatives. If Trump is at the top of the ballot, their party’s brand could be tarnished for a generation.
Democrats are compiling a growing list of GOP figures willing to back their nemesis, Hillary Clinton, rather than contemplate Trump any longer.
It is not just disarray in the Republican party that is bringing Washington’s political establishment slowly back together. Obama himself is undergoing a renaissance in popularity, hitting his highest approval ratings since 2012 just as Trump hits new record lows.
At the last midterm elections, in 2014, not even Democratic senators would be seen with Obama, such was his reputation for repelling moderate voters. The Senate was lost. But now, even the most hawkish of Republicans would rather be seen with the president than the titular head of their own party.
Images of Rubio and the Obama shaking hands on the tarmac were all the more surprising amid rumours – confirmed this weekend – that the Florida senator was about to change his mind about not standing for re-election this November.
“No hug. No hug. I might run again,” ran a spoof caption on a viral video of the two appearing to come close to an actual embrace – something that once nearly sank the career prospects of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, after hurricane Sandy.
No comments:
Post a Comment