If you haven’t yet heard of Marco Rubio, you may soon.  He’s a 38-year-old Cuban-American from Miami who is challenging former Florida Governor Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.  Rubio is a rising star in the conservative movement, and is widely regarded as having come from nowhere to offer a serious challenge to Crist.  Hard right conservatives love him for his passion, his wit, and his hatred of all things reasonable moderate sane “socialist.”

Yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference here in Gomorrah Washington (a brief aside:  if conservatives hate DC so much, why do they hold all their big meetings here?), Rubio, in the words of one journalist, “wowed” the crowd, acting as if he already had secured the nomination.

What caught my eye (h/t) were two excerpts from his speech (transcript here):

[Crowd chants "Marco! Marco! Marco!"]

RUBIO:  That cheer — I don’t know what that one was, but that Marco cheer always worries me because I’m always afraid that someone is going to starting screaming, “polo,” and would ruin the speech.

[audience laughter]

RUBIO: . . .Now, Americans are also looking for clear alternatives on the issues of national defense. As I said earlier, there is no greater risk to this country than the risk posed by radical Islamic terrorists. Let me be clear about something. These terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

We will punish — we will punish their allies, like Iran — and we will stand with our allies, like Israel. We will target and we will destroy terrorist cells and the leaders of those cells. The ones that survive, we will capture them.

AUDIENCE: Waterboard them!

RUBIO: We will get important — remember the Marco Polo thing I told you? [audience laughter and cheers.]  We will capture them, we will get useful information from them and then we will bring them to justice, in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo — as I said, in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo, not a civilian courtroom in Manhattan.

Ohhhh I get it Marco — it’s not waterboarding, it’s Marco Polo!  A game!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Such a kidder, that Marco.  Did uncle Dick give you a big bear hug for that one?

Such a kidder.  Wonder how long before Rubio becomes the new Scott Brown?  I mean he’s young, good looking, “outspoken,” and, oh yeah, new.  Will we even have to wait until November before the Presidential whispers start?  All he needs now is a pickup truck.  Because he certainly has the whole ignoring the constitution thing down pat.

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