Rubio’s “suicide mission”...As the Republican primary season moves beyond the Super Tuesday showdowns, the rhetoric directed at front-runner Donald Trump is escalating from both leaders within the party hierarchy as well as from rival candidates. While former Republican nominee Mitt Romney eviscerated Trump during a news conference in Utah on Thursday, a Super PAC favoring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been running ads in Missouri and Florida in an attempt to portray the billionaire businessman as a racist bigot.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity found the ad so outrageous he spent a segment of a television interview Wednesday with former Nixon White House speechwriter and political provocateur Pat Buchanan denouncing the piece — and denouncing Rubio in the process.
Using footage from the now-famous Trump interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, the ad condemns Trump for appearing to hesitate to renounce support from former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
Blowing past the fact that a candidate doesn’t, or certainly shouldn’t, have control over what a supportive PAC might say or do, Hannity asked Buchanan if Rubio’s decision to use racism as a weapon against a fellow Republican meant Rubio is on a “suicide mission” to stop Trump at any cost — whether to his own political career or to his party’s prospects in November.
“What is his goal here?” Hannity asked. “In other words, is his goal to win? Or is his goal to prevent Trump or Cruz from getting 1,237 delegates?”
Buchanan, himself a former candidate who challenged the Republican Party’s elite in a fiery 1992 primary campaign, said the ad’s motive was clear.
“This is not a general election strategy, it’s not even a good nomination strategy, but it is a good strategy if the objective of you and your supporters is to bring down Trump, no matter how you have to do it, because we can’t accept him. There’s a lot on the media, there’s a lot here in the establishment in Washington, there are a lot of folks in the party who would be delighted to see Donald Trump taken down.”
Hannity said the anti-Trump effort by the GOP establishment is now “orchestrated, well funded and well organized.” The party elites, he said, are panicked that 14 of the 15 primaries have been won by “insurgent candidates” — meaning Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Hannity acknowledged that he “liked the old Marco Rubio,” who was “a tea party guy in 2010.” But something has changed in the Florida senator, he said.
“When he runs an ad like this involving the KKK, when Donald Trump had disavowed it again and again and again, this is way beyond the pale of what I would expect in a primary,” he said.
Check out the interview here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxcY7sJ0yUUhttp://www.tpnn.com/2016/03/03/sean-hannity-cant-take-it-anymore-absolutely-slams-rubio-pac-for-this-anti-trump-ad/
