Sen. Marco Rubio says that while he laments missing Senate votes to campaign for the White House, the majority of Republican-backed legislation sent to President Obama’s desk will never get a signature.
“We do, I think, a very good job in our offices of serving our constituents and their interactions with government,” said Rubio on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We will certainly be there for most votes and many votes. There will be some I will miss. And I will miss them because I’m campaigning so that in the future those votes actually mean something. Far too many votes today in the Senate are predetermined.”
“We know what the outcome’s going to be,” added Rubio, who passed Donald Trump to lead the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings. “It’s being done for messaging purposes. But it’s never going to pass. Because even if you could find enough votes to pass it, the president would veto it. I want to become president so we can actually start turning some of these ideas into law, into policy. And so when we’re away, that’s what we’re doing.”
“Face the Nation” host John Dickerson brought up the issue when referring to the third GOP debate. Jeb Bush suggested that Rubio should stop missing so many Senate votes, after which Rubio fired back and questioned his motives. Dickerson asked Rubio if he agreed with people who think he put Bush in his place.
“Well, I don’t know. He said something, I had to respond,” said Rubio. “And I feel obviously what I said is something that I believe. I do believe that Jeb has been convinced by people around him that he needs to attack me in order to be more successful. I don’t personally agree with it, but I’m not running his campaign. What I control is my campaign.”
Rubio added that his campaign would not “badmouth” Bush or any other Republicans.
“I want to be the nominee, but someone on that stage is going to be the Republican nominee,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything that makes it easier for Hillary Clinton or whoever the Democrat nominee is to defeat the Republicans.”
Dickerson also asked Rubio about his ideas for defeating the Islamic State and Russia’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. The host mentioned that Donald Trump has said “no American assistance” and is all for the Russians fighting the Islamic State instead of the U.S.
Rubio replied that in order to successfully defeat the Islamic State, “American assistance at a significant level” is required. He cast doubt on the Russians’ intentions in Syria, saying that they are attacking “non-ISIS rebels” as well so “they can turn to the world and say that their only choices are either [Syrian president Bashar] Assad or ISIS.”
“In an ideal world, you would be able to work with Russia to defeat radical jihadists,” said Rubio. “But that’s not their goal immediately. Their immediate goal is propping up Assad because it’s a client state for them.”
