RUTHFULLY YOURS

If you’re Marco Rubio, and you’ve launched your campaign on a theme of sunny optimism and cheery confidence that America’s best days are ahead of it, how do you adjust when the GOP electorate seems to be eagerly embracing the mad-as-hell-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore style of Donald Trump?

You take it head on.

“People are rightfully angry and upset,” Rubio said to “yeah!” responses here at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit in Columbus, Ohio.

“It’s good to let that anger motivate us, but we can’t let that anger define us,” Rubio said.  “We’re not an angry nation. We’re a hopeful nation. What nation would you trade places with? Where would you rather be? This is still a great nation. But we’re just not living up to our potential.”

Rubio began by focusing on how “the economy is changing faster than ever before. The largest retailer in America, Amazon, doesn’t own any stores. One of the biggest transportation companies in America, Uber, doesn’t own any cars. Our policies are outdated. Big government and more regulation have never worked – and they’re a disaster in the twenty-first century.”

Rubio spent a good portion talking about education reform, from the need for a refocus on vocational training, “We need to give people the skills for the best-paying jobs… I promise you this: A welder makes a lot more money than a Greek philosopher. The market for Roman philosophers has tightened significantly in the past 2,000 years, and our students need to know that.”

“We don’t need a common core curriculum to push that through that,” Rubio continued, asserting that the education reform had to be directed at the state and local level, with the federal government working “at the margins. I’m for curriculum reform, at the local and state level.” He explained Washington money always comes with Washington control.

Rubio criticized the “monopoly on higher education” where colleges and universities are inflexible to students who need to work, raise children, or have other competing constraints on their time. “Their message is, ‘You need to change to fit in with us, we’re not going to change to fit in with you.’”

“Of course, we still need four-year colleges and universities. How else would we have college football?” Rubio quipped. “Although I think the welders could probably field a good team.”

Rubio also spent significant time discussing foreign policy and the threats facing America. “The Chinese can hack into our computers – one in particular,” he said as the audience chuckled.

Rubio called Vladimir Putin “a gangster in Moscow is trying to not just divide Europe but destroy NATO.” He noted ISIS is not just in Iraq and Syria, but in Libya, where he predicted the group will “springboard across the Mediterranean into Europe.” And he included North Korea in his list of five major threats: “We have – I don’t use this world lightly — a lunatic in North Korea who possesses dozens of nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach the West Coast.”