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Recently, Republican Senator and future Presidential Timber Marco Rubio compared<\/a> a speech by President Obama to that of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153left-wing 3rd world leader.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the first time Rubio has drawn upon the comparison. Last year, he described<\/a> an Obama speech advocating the cloture of a small number of upper-bracket tax deductions as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the kind of language you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect from the leader of a Third World Country.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d At other times, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called<\/a> Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arguments \u00e2\u20ac\u0153more appropriate for some left-wing strong man than for the president of the United States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n It is no longer terribly newsworthy for even the most respectable Republicans to equate Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies with dictatorships. But Rubio appears to be fixated on a particular kind<\/i> of dictator, the Third World strongman. What could explain this odd fixation?<\/p>\n Rubio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents, of course, emigrated from Cuba. His father first left in the waning days of the Batista regime, but some members of his family returned and then fled when Fidel Castro took power. Rubio inaccurately represented his family as having fled Castro, but in his defense, it seems likely that he grew up believing the rise of Castro precipitated their arrival in America, or at least the revolution loomed large in their story of how they could never return to their homeland. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They wanted to live in Cuba again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rubio has said<\/a> of his parents, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They tried to live in Cuba again, and the reality of what it was made that impossible.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Cuban \u00c3\u00a9migr\u00c3\u00a9 politics famously lean right, but there seems to be more going on in Rubio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heated imagination than standard anti-communism. The former colonies of Spain and Portugal traditionally feature massive disparities of wealth, which in turn create a poisonous dynamic in which elites cling ferociously to their wealth, while pro-redistribution politics often take the form of crude or even violent populism. The U.S. is not as unequal as Latin America, but the gap between us is shrinking, and conservative politics in the United States have increasingly given off more than a whiff of the panicked fear of the grasping mob that would be familiar in Batista\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cuba or any other economically stratified former Spanish colony.<\/p>\n That political style, automatically equating any pro-egalitarian politics, however mild, has become Rubio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hallmark. In 2010, Obama proposed a fee to make large financial institutions repay the federal government for a portion of their TARP bailout (here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an endorsement<\/a> by Earlier this week,\u00c2\u00a0I spoke out<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0against President Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrongheaded decision to place an onerous and punitive new tax on the financial institutions Americans rely on to loan them money to buy homes, safeguard their money, and fund their businesses. Since then, I have been subjected to vicious attacks from Democratic party operatives, liberal bloggers, and even some in the media\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n This is life in Obama, Reid, and Pelosi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s America, where not only is free enterprise attacked, but so too is anyone who dares to defend it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It is actually fascinating that Rubio equates the mere existence of criticism from political commentators and the opposing party as a dangerous and frightening development. He may not advocate any policy agenda of suppressing dissent, but he clearly envisions an ideal place where he can defend the interests of his country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wealthiest industry without incurring any bothersome opposition (or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vicious attacks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Rubio defines this nirvana of yore as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153America,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but the panic it represents is more rooted in the political culture of Latin American oligarchy.<\/p>\n Read more posts by Jonathan Chait<\/a><\/p>\n Filed Under:Marxist guerrilla<\/s> Brookings Institution fellow Douglass Elliott). Rubio opposed the fee, a position that drew criticism from liberals. Rubio seemed to view the mere existence of disagreement as an outrage, writing in National Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n
\n the national interest<\/a>
\n <\/strong>,politics<\/a>
\n ,marco rubio<\/a>\n <\/p>\n