An Open Letter About/To Senator Marco Rubio on the Eve of the Senate Trial Verdict

In 2016, I was a proud supporter of Senator Marco Rubio’s campaign for the Republican nomination for President. I put a Rubio sign in my front yard. I blogged about my support for Rubio. I encouraged people I knew to turn out for Rubio at the Minnesota caucuses. I attended the Minnesota caucuses, where my precinct voted overwhelmingly for Rubio. Although Donald Trump carried primaries nearly everywhere else that day, the good people of Minnesota stood for principle and character, giving the strong win to Marco Rubio.

In 1980, I was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, as part of the Montana delegation that put Ronald Reagan over the top for the nomination. In 2016, I thought I saw in Marco Rubio another powerful leader of principle and character. Rubio integrated conservative values with equal opportunity. Rubio spoke openly of his Christian faith and how it provided moral guidance to his political role. He saw faith and people of faith as playing a key role in promoting the common good for people of all faiths and beliefs. I saw him as offering us the best of a person of deep faith and positive spirit in seeking political office.

After the tragedy of Trump’s nomination and then the start of the long four-year downward spiral of the Trump presidency, Rubio’s moral standing appeared to falter, not by words or action but too often by silence. From time to time, Rubio would return to his first values and separate himself from this or that of the worst of Trump’s outrages. Indeed, I often defended Rubio to others who were dismayed by the Trump perversion of the conservative movement.

No more.

Barely a month ago, we watched a defeated president call for his extremist followers — the White Nationalists and conspiracy theory crazies that Trump had welcomed for four years — to join him at what he promised would be a “wild” rally on January 6 to overturn the election results. Once again drawing on his repertoire of violent imagery, Trump enraged the crowd and then sent his crazed mob down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Repeating word-for-word what Trump had told them, the mob chanted Trump’s slogans and lies as they attacked the citadel of democracy. We watched the Trump mob beat police officers with Trump flags.

When Trump’s long-delayed response came hours later, he said of these domestic terrorists who were acting in his name, “We love you. You’re very special.”

Documenting history is a moral obligation if we are ever to learn from mistakes and aspire to something better. Over the past few days, the impeachment managers have done exactly that. As graphic and disturbing as was the video and documentary evidence, we as citizens were rightly called to bear witness along with the Senate to Trump’s inflammatory words and to the Trump mob attack on the Capitol.

Then we learn what Marco Rubio thinks about this. He branded the whole thing as “stupid.” To be sure, he said that Trump bore responsibility for what happened. But he nonetheless said that he wanted to end it as soon as possible and, indeed, even before any evidence was presented. And Rubio promised to join most of his fellow Republicans in the Senate in giving Trump a pass for the most dangerous attack on American democracy in more than a century. In fairness, however, Rubio said this before we saw the full story in living color.

I pray that Marco Rubio will think carefully about what he now has seen. I hope that he did not turn his eyes away, but watched carefully and thoughtfully. I urge him to draw on the conscience that he spoke of during his 2016 presidential run. Please consider, Senator Rubio, that you may be on the wrong side in dismissing the infamous events of 1/6 as something to rush past “at the first chance” to “end” this. Do not allow others behind the scenes to sweep away the broken glass, while you fail to demand that justice be rendered against the president who shattered the windows of American democracy.

Now is the time. Later recognition that this opportunity was lost is simply too late. It’ll be too late for history, which will not look kindly on those who hastened to move past this outrageous episode. It’ll be too late for our country which needs a new beginning. It’ll be too late for the Republican Party which has tolerated a faction that accepts political violence and desperately needs to move on to a different and more uplifting path.

Please surprise me, Senator Rubio. Please let us see the same man of principle, character, and conscience that inspired me in 2016. Prayerfully and regretfully, but firmly, vote to convict Trump. Let the truth set you free.