Jim, well done and well said. Without question a tour de force foreign policy speech! What’s interesting is that it was not all that different than JD’s speech last year at the same conference. Of course, the response then was very different than the standing ovation that Rubio received proving, yet again, how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say. To be fair, Rubio also offered a positive roadmap and vision which is why the speech soared. Thanks Jim.
Thanks for this, Jim. Great summary. The ideas that Marco has laid out set a vision for the future. They give the Europeans reason to hope, and reasons to act in the interest of not just themselves, but in the interest of nations outside their immediate borders. The US, Australia, Canada, and England should encouraged by this speech. I would expect the US to put teeth behind this vision.
Great article and great speech. I had the pleasure of attending CPAC in 2009 and then Senator Rubio gave what, in my opinion, was the best speech of the convention. His compelling life story, sincerity, brilliant mind, good looks, and stage presence led me to say, “he will be president someday day” to others at the convention and friends back home in Santa Barbara. I was never happy about President Trump labeling him “Little Marco” but recognized it’s all just politics. I am so proud to have him as our Secretary of State.
Thank you Jim, for making a strong argument as to why Marco Rubio should be our next President. Voters should not make the mistake that Marco is just going to fall into line, and be happy with being Vance’s running mate. No, there is the case to be made that Rubio is a stronger candidate, with more worldly experience than JD. There must not be a coronation during the next Republican primary cycle by assuming it will be a Vance/Rubio ticket by default.
Indeed, Rubio has struck a chord with so many concerning US policies, allies and adversaries alike. He correctly pegs “Environmentalism” as a “Climate Cult,” in that the US environmental policy (up to now) has hindered our economic growth and development for years. Come to think of it, there are several “cults” influencing our society. Gender cults, race cults, DEI cults, anarchy cults to name but a few, but the goal is the same. Yell loud enough, disrupt as much as possible, jump up and down, riot and destroy property in order to get their way and influence others.
Rubio correctly points out the enormous contributions European influence has made towards the success of our country, by wait for it…white people! Boy, you would never hear that on CNN!
Great article, Jim. I've always believed in Marco as being trustworthy and not one to steal money from the taxpayers. My choice for the next Pres. is Rubio Marco; he's a savvy one. In my opinion, he's a notch above Trump because Trump tends to be a loose cannon. Marco is straight as an arrow. He doesn't throw around BS.
Thanks Bill, Marco was my choice in 2016 until Trump made him look young and inexperienced (which, at that time, he was!) and when he dropped out I joined the Trump train. I'm thrilled that Marco has proven himself as a serious and thoughtful diplomat with a backbone, and so, though JD's story is compelling, I'd be happy with either man as president. I do think that Marco will wear a little easier on the public than JD and has a real shot at the nomination. But, of course, it's way too early to think about such stuff. Besides, where does JD go if he loses to Marco? With a Vance/Rubio ticket we'd get the best of both men.
Always saw Trump as the necessary junk yard dog to break up the deep state status quo. But now we get introduced to Trump's very fine mop up crew, that will reassemble this country into something greater.
We had to break eggs first, to make this omelette. That was the lesson Trump #45 learned, good and hard. My guess is Vance may well put his very young family, ahead of any 2028 ambitions. Nothing more destructive for children, than getting raised in the Wash DC toxic soup.
Thanks for the article. I had only caught bits and pieces of that speech, but taken as a whole. It really was a great one. Little Marco has grown up and is definitely a contender for the presidency in my mind. The Republican Party has a strong field if they can only bring some some of the RINOs on board or better yet get rid of them.
Scott, Yes Rubio and his entourage probably felt that what NATO and EU members were looking for most of all from the U.S. was assurance that we and they were still in the same camp. Rubio delivered exactly what was needed at precisely the time when it would be most desired. Talk about "reading the room!"
FEAR - of being called colonizers, racists, xenophobes... etc. We just want to uphold Western CIVILIZATION. Well said, Mr. Rubio! " “We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history. What we want is a reinvigorated alliance, one that is not paralyzed into inaction by fear..."
Lou, well, he was on a short list that I used and, though I had my doubts, figured I'd include him because he was a lib. A lying lib yes, but aren't they all?
Rubio has gone way up in my estimation lately. It was his comments at the Charlie Kirk memorial in Arizona that really impressed me. He spoke as a man who had the courage to endorse Charlie and his views, and even more importantly, who has a passionate personal Christian faith. If America has a future president as strong and America-first as Trump, with a strong and unapologetic personal Christian faith, I would be enormously more optimistic about the prospects for our nation. I believe that his Munich speech and his Arizona speeches both told us what we need to know about Marco Rubio.
Carla, if you use grok or any ai, just ask it for a transcript and it will lead you to a governmental site that will e-mail it to you. I'd have to go back to find out what it was but you can do the same.
In a pure American genre, this was a bottom of the ninth, based -loaded home run speech. The torch indeed has passed to a new generation. There were so many memorable phrases we can now all embrace, as touchstones for our shared co-existence on this planet.
.........".He added that armies don’t fight “abstractions.” That they fight for a people, a nation, a way of life". ...........
I am reminded in the epic and game-changing WWII Nazi Germany Barbarossa campaign, when millions in the homeland rose to defend 1000 year old Mother Russia; not "communism".
Happy 250th Anniversary, America. Time to remember, celebrate and protect our own shared 1000 year old plus antecedents.
A different take on Rubio’s speech…just for your consideration of all points of view:
“ In his speech to the conference yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was less confrontational than Vance was last year, but the message was the same. He attacked all three of the pillars on which the U.S. has previously stood in foreign affairs. Global trade has ruined the U.S. economy, he said, while international institutions have undermined sovereignty, and “a climate cult” has imposed energy policies that are “impoverishing our people.”
He focused, though, on “mass migration,” which he claimed “threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.” He called for Europe to join with the U.S. in rejecting the tenets of the post–World War II vision, claiming that “[w]e are part of one civilization—Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”
His description of that shared heritage reflected the Trump administration’s fantasy past. It was all white and Christian, quite weirdly erasing the Indigenous Americans who were central to the development of a peculiarly “American” identity in the eastern colonies of North America and the reality that the vast majority of the American West was Indigenous, Spanish, and Mexican for hundreds of years before it became part of the United States in 1848.
Rubio’s version of the U.S. did not include Black Americans at all, even though they were among the first inhabitants of the colonies that became the U.S., and even though he called out the Rolling Stones, who built their body of work on that of Black American blues musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, as part of “western civilization.” Rubio even ignored his own family’s arrival in the U.S. from Cuba in 1956, rooting his own heritage not in the modern migration from Latin America to the U.S. that the administration is criminalizing, but in eighteenth-century Spain.
Entirely ignoring the threat of autocratic Russia against Europe, Rubio pushed Europe to abandon the values of democracy in favor of imperialism. He said the U.S. had “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline” and urged Europe to work with the U.S. for a return to western “dominance.”
From Munich, Rubio will travel to Hungary to visit with Orbán, who is facing an election on April 12, following a stop in Slovakia, whose leader is also a Trump ally.
Rubio’s version of history echoes that of the Nazis during World War II and ignores the strength of the real multicultural history of the United States. European leaders wanted no part of it.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas rejected the ideology behind Rubio’s speech. “Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” she said. She noted that other nations want to join the E.U. and those that are already members want the E.U. “to take a stronger role in the world: To defend our values. To take care of our people. To push humanity forwards.”
Kallas disputed the argument that the postwar order is economically backward compared to autocracy, noting that since the fall of the Soviet Union, nations that have joined the E.U. have grown economically more than twice as fast as Russia. She reiterated the value of international trade and security partnerships, and she reminded the audience that “the vast majority of countries also want the same thing: stability, growth, and prosperity for their people. The best way to get there is to go together.”
As Merz had done, Kallas called for Europeans to assert their own agency to protect “not only our excellent living standards, health and happiness, but the lessons we have learnt from our own history.”
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said in Munich that Trump “has betrayed the West, he’s betrayed human values, he’s betrayed the NATO charter, the Atlantic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and warned he is modeling himself after Putin.” Heather Cox Richardson
Elaine, Not sure of your point. Of course the response of the Left to any acknowledgement that the U.S. is and has been a great country that owes its provenance to European christianity, among other things. We expect nothing less and, happily for us, we don't care what people like Heather Cox Richardson have to say any longer!
He was talking to Europeans, not central or South Americans, indigenous peoples of America or Islanders. He was not giving a history lesson, but clearly showing the ties between Europe and the United States. It was not a class at university to discuss every point of interest in the development of the United States. Your criticisms are unwarranted.
Elaine, Formal land "ownership" was only introduced by the English, who had a long history of recorded and perfected land title. Before this formal English ownership system, one "owned" only what one could defend. Which is all the "indigenous" populations had to offer, among each other as well.
You misappropriate Western civilization, when you claim "indigenous persons" owned the land prior to European settlement. Just the opposite. Early settlers in fact did buy land from local populations - their property transactions are part of the documented history of the early colonies. But more importantly, the English system of recorded land ownership and perfected title finally brought peace; not pillage to the United States of America.
Sooo you are saying the Election Losers are still seeing things as....well..Election Losers. Got it. That could be why you are...drum roll here...Election losers..Notice a common theme?
Shame on you for throwing Heather Cox Richardson under the bus just because you disagreed with her. Next, Why did Rubio bow down to the ruthless dictator of Hungary, Orban? We must include another, by the name of Putin! Please show some respect to other points of view!
Dear Rudholms, What I meant was that most of us beaten and battered conservatives who've been beaten and battered by the Left over the past, oh, fifty years, have finally decided that what they say doesn't matter any longer, that's all.
Jim, When I met you a couple years ago at the Muni Golf Course, you seemed open enough to feel that different points of view would be acceptable to you. Also, what about my question regarding Dictators of the World that Trump seems so enamored with? Thank you for your reply.
Doug and Audrey, That's easy. President Trump agrees to speak with and deal with whoever is in power, without apology. Even tyrants sometimes do the right thing. FDR, after all, had to play nice with Stalin in order to win the war.
Jim, well done and well said. Without question a tour de force foreign policy speech! What’s interesting is that it was not all that different than JD’s speech last year at the same conference. Of course, the response then was very different than the standing ovation that Rubio received proving, yet again, how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say. To be fair, Rubio also offered a positive roadmap and vision which is why the speech soared. Thanks Jim.
Thanks for this, Jim. Great summary. The ideas that Marco has laid out set a vision for the future. They give the Europeans reason to hope, and reasons to act in the interest of not just themselves, but in the interest of nations outside their immediate borders. The US, Australia, Canada, and England should encouraged by this speech. I would expect the US to put teeth behind this vision.
Isn’t that what trump has been spouting? Isn’t that what America first means? That we just think of ourselves?
Thank you for the reprint of Rubio's speech. It was insightful and impressive!
Great article and great speech. I had the pleasure of attending CPAC in 2009 and then Senator Rubio gave what, in my opinion, was the best speech of the convention. His compelling life story, sincerity, brilliant mind, good looks, and stage presence led me to say, “he will be president someday day” to others at the convention and friends back home in Santa Barbara. I was never happy about President Trump labeling him “Little Marco” but recognized it’s all just politics. I am so proud to have him as our Secretary of State.
Thank you Jim, for making a strong argument as to why Marco Rubio should be our next President. Voters should not make the mistake that Marco is just going to fall into line, and be happy with being Vance’s running mate. No, there is the case to be made that Rubio is a stronger candidate, with more worldly experience than JD. There must not be a coronation during the next Republican primary cycle by assuming it will be a Vance/Rubio ticket by default.
Indeed, Rubio has struck a chord with so many concerning US policies, allies and adversaries alike. He correctly pegs “Environmentalism” as a “Climate Cult,” in that the US environmental policy (up to now) has hindered our economic growth and development for years. Come to think of it, there are several “cults” influencing our society. Gender cults, race cults, DEI cults, anarchy cults to name but a few, but the goal is the same. Yell loud enough, disrupt as much as possible, jump up and down, riot and destroy property in order to get their way and influence others.
Rubio correctly points out the enormous contributions European influence has made towards the success of our country, by wait for it…white people! Boy, you would never hear that on CNN!
Great article, Jim. I've always believed in Marco as being trustworthy and not one to steal money from the taxpayers. My choice for the next Pres. is Rubio Marco; he's a savvy one. In my opinion, he's a notch above Trump because Trump tends to be a loose cannon. Marco is straight as an arrow. He doesn't throw around BS.
Thanks Bill, Marco was my choice in 2016 until Trump made him look young and inexperienced (which, at that time, he was!) and when he dropped out I joined the Trump train. I'm thrilled that Marco has proven himself as a serious and thoughtful diplomat with a backbone, and so, though JD's story is compelling, I'd be happy with either man as president. I do think that Marco will wear a little easier on the public than JD and has a real shot at the nomination. But, of course, it's way too early to think about such stuff. Besides, where does JD go if he loses to Marco? With a Vance/Rubio ticket we'd get the best of both men.
Always saw Trump as the necessary junk yard dog to break up the deep state status quo. But now we get introduced to Trump's very fine mop up crew, that will reassemble this country into something greater.
We had to break eggs first, to make this omelette. That was the lesson Trump #45 learned, good and hard. My guess is Vance may well put his very young family, ahead of any 2028 ambitions. Nothing more destructive for children, than getting raised in the Wash DC toxic soup.
Thanks for the article. I had only caught bits and pieces of that speech, but taken as a whole. It really was a great one. Little Marco has grown up and is definitely a contender for the presidency in my mind. The Republican Party has a strong field if they can only bring some some of the RINOs on board or better yet get rid of them.
FYI…full speech (no commercials)…one of America’s best speeches by a Great Statesman on foreign soil…put [them] on notice…
https://x.com/aureliusstoic1/status/2022667548408398033?s=61
Thank you, Jim for condensing Rubio's speech.
It means you can teach reality and then have it spread.
One can hope the people will see honest and reality based ideas.
Mr. Buckley ... good one
Scott, Yes Rubio and his entourage probably felt that what NATO and EU members were looking for most of all from the U.S. was assurance that we and they were still in the same camp. Rubio delivered exactly what was needed at precisely the time when it would be most desired. Talk about "reading the room!"
FEAR - of being called colonizers, racists, xenophobes... etc. We just want to uphold Western CIVILIZATION. Well said, Mr. Rubio! " “We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline. We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history. What we want is a reinvigorated alliance, one that is not paralyzed into inaction by fear..."
Jim, can you explain why you included Noam Chomsky as some foreign policy guru, a known anarchist Communist, who even most liberals think is nuts.
Lou, Though I am pleased that you say "who even most liberals think is nuts." I thought he was an honoured member of the liberal cabal!
I was being overly generous to the liberal cabal.
Lou, well, he was on a short list that I used and, though I had my doubts, figured I'd include him because he was a lib. A lying lib yes, but aren't they all?
Rubio has gone way up in my estimation lately. It was his comments at the Charlie Kirk memorial in Arizona that really impressed me. He spoke as a man who had the courage to endorse Charlie and his views, and even more importantly, who has a passionate personal Christian faith. If America has a future president as strong and America-first as Trump, with a strong and unapologetic personal Christian faith, I would be enormously more optimistic about the prospects for our nation. I believe that his Munich speech and his Arizona speeches both told us what we need to know about Marco Rubio.
Outstanding! I tried to share this on FB, but couldn’t get it done. Anyway you can share it?
Carla, if you use grok or any ai, just ask it for a transcript and it will lead you to a governmental site that will e-mail it to you. I'd have to go back to find out what it was but you can do the same.
In a pure American genre, this was a bottom of the ninth, based -loaded home run speech. The torch indeed has passed to a new generation. There were so many memorable phrases we can now all embrace, as touchstones for our shared co-existence on this planet.
.........".He added that armies don’t fight “abstractions.” That they fight for a people, a nation, a way of life". ...........
I am reminded in the epic and game-changing WWII Nazi Germany Barbarossa campaign, when millions in the homeland rose to defend 1000 year old Mother Russia; not "communism".
Happy 250th Anniversary, America. Time to remember, celebrate and protect our own shared 1000 year old plus antecedents.
A different take on Rubio’s speech…just for your consideration of all points of view:
“ In his speech to the conference yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was less confrontational than Vance was last year, but the message was the same. He attacked all three of the pillars on which the U.S. has previously stood in foreign affairs. Global trade has ruined the U.S. economy, he said, while international institutions have undermined sovereignty, and “a climate cult” has imposed energy policies that are “impoverishing our people.”
He focused, though, on “mass migration,” which he claimed “threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.” He called for Europe to join with the U.S. in rejecting the tenets of the post–World War II vision, claiming that “[w]e are part of one civilization—Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”
His description of that shared heritage reflected the Trump administration’s fantasy past. It was all white and Christian, quite weirdly erasing the Indigenous Americans who were central to the development of a peculiarly “American” identity in the eastern colonies of North America and the reality that the vast majority of the American West was Indigenous, Spanish, and Mexican for hundreds of years before it became part of the United States in 1848.
Rubio’s version of the U.S. did not include Black Americans at all, even though they were among the first inhabitants of the colonies that became the U.S., and even though he called out the Rolling Stones, who built their body of work on that of Black American blues musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, as part of “western civilization.” Rubio even ignored his own family’s arrival in the U.S. from Cuba in 1956, rooting his own heritage not in the modern migration from Latin America to the U.S. that the administration is criminalizing, but in eighteenth-century Spain.
Entirely ignoring the threat of autocratic Russia against Europe, Rubio pushed Europe to abandon the values of democracy in favor of imperialism. He said the U.S. had “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline” and urged Europe to work with the U.S. for a return to western “dominance.”
From Munich, Rubio will travel to Hungary to visit with Orbán, who is facing an election on April 12, following a stop in Slovakia, whose leader is also a Trump ally.
Rubio’s version of history echoes that of the Nazis during World War II and ignores the strength of the real multicultural history of the United States. European leaders wanted no part of it.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas rejected the ideology behind Rubio’s speech. “Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” she said. She noted that other nations want to join the E.U. and those that are already members want the E.U. “to take a stronger role in the world: To defend our values. To take care of our people. To push humanity forwards.”
Kallas disputed the argument that the postwar order is economically backward compared to autocracy, noting that since the fall of the Soviet Union, nations that have joined the E.U. have grown economically more than twice as fast as Russia. She reiterated the value of international trade and security partnerships, and she reminded the audience that “the vast majority of countries also want the same thing: stability, growth, and prosperity for their people. The best way to get there is to go together.”
As Merz had done, Kallas called for Europeans to assert their own agency to protect “not only our excellent living standards, health and happiness, but the lessons we have learnt from our own history.”
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said in Munich that Trump “has betrayed the West, he’s betrayed human values, he’s betrayed the NATO charter, the Atlantic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and warned he is modeling himself after Putin.” Heather Cox Richardson
Elaine, Not sure of your point. Of course the response of the Left to any acknowledgement that the U.S. is and has been a great country that owes its provenance to European christianity, among other things. We expect nothing less and, happily for us, we don't care what people like Heather Cox Richardson have to say any longer!
He was talking to Europeans, not central or South Americans, indigenous peoples of America or Islanders. He was not giving a history lesson, but clearly showing the ties between Europe and the United States. It was not a class at university to discuss every point of interest in the development of the United States. Your criticisms are unwarranted.
By all means. Let's just reduce the USA to the lowest international common denominator.
Nice DEI take.
Elaine, Formal land "ownership" was only introduced by the English, who had a long history of recorded and perfected land title. Before this formal English ownership system, one "owned" only what one could defend. Which is all the "indigenous" populations had to offer, among each other as well.
You misappropriate Western civilization, when you claim "indigenous persons" owned the land prior to European settlement. Just the opposite. Early settlers in fact did buy land from local populations - their property transactions are part of the documented history of the early colonies. But more importantly, the English system of recorded land ownership and perfected title finally brought peace; not pillage to the United States of America.
Thank you Elaine for your well written and factual response.
Sooo you are saying the Election Losers are still seeing things as....well..Election Losers. Got it. That could be why you are...drum roll here...Election losers..Notice a common theme?
Actually the whole country, because of the outcome ,is in fact losers.
Shame on you for throwing Heather Cox Richardson under the bus just because you disagreed with her. Next, Why did Rubio bow down to the ruthless dictator of Hungary, Orban? We must include another, by the name of Putin! Please show some respect to other points of view!
Dear Rudholms, What I meant was that most of us beaten and battered conservatives who've been beaten and battered by the Left over the past, oh, fifty years, have finally decided that what they say doesn't matter any longer, that's all.
Jim, When I met you a couple years ago at the Muni Golf Course, you seemed open enough to feel that different points of view would be acceptable to you. Also, what about my question regarding Dictators of the World that Trump seems so enamored with? Thank you for your reply.
Doug and Audrey, That's easy. President Trump agrees to speak with and deal with whoever is in power, without apology. Even tyrants sometimes do the right thing. FDR, after all, had to play nice with Stalin in order to win the war.
Such as Maduro, Xi, Khamenei, Assad, etc...???