Marco Rubio, when asked about the religious liberty fight between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, chose not pick up on the religious liberty theme, but he did very effectively reinforce Cruz’s central charge that Trump cannot be trusted on judges:
The next president of the United States has to be someone that you can trust and believe in to appoint someone just as good as Scalia — plus there may be at least two other vacancies. So you ask Mr. Trump to respond and say that he would, and he says that he would. But the bottom line is, if you look at his record over the last 25 or 30 years, on issue after issue, he has not been on our side.
Now, if he’s changed, we’re always looking for converts into the conservative movement. But the bottom line is that, if you don’t have a record there to look at and say, ‘I feel at peace that when Donald Trump is president of the United States, he’s going to be firmly on our side on these issues.’
In fact, very recently, he was still defending Planned Parenthood. He says he’s not going to take sides in the Palestinians versus Israel. These are concerning things.
And so, yes, I have a doubt about whether Donald Trump, if he becomes president, will replace Justice Scalia with someone just like Justice Scalia.
Thanks Sen. Rubio!
I know I am hypersensitive on this stuff because I’ve watched for years as GOP politicians decide to cave rather than to fight on anything the Left decides is “antigay.” Rubio suddenly bringing in Israel into the Scalia debate was particularly odd. This was a missed chance for Rubio, who is the most eloquent Republican on the public stage, to shine in putting the “face of the victim” before the American people, from the Little Sisters of the Poor to Kelvin Cochran.
But good on Rubio for tag-teaming with Cruz to raise the reality that Donald Trump is not the guy you can trust to replace Justice Scalia.
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project.
