Sen. Marco Rubio won himself points last week when his wa💦rning in September that Russia may launch air strikes in Syria proved prescient. Yet he’s earned fewer points for equally astute comments he made in August about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fellow Republicans — and Democrats, too — would be as wise to heed those remarks as 🐻the ones about the Middle East.
In a much overlooked interview with Fox’s Megyn Kell⛄y, Rubio sympathized with some BLM claims about how law-enforcement and the criminal-justice system mistreat African-Americans. And, one could add, behind BLM’s gripes is a goal not much different than what the Tea Party wants: accountability from public officials.
Democrats have had a rough time partnering with BLM. At a conference of progressives this summer, Sen. B🦋ernie Sanders fled from BLM activists. Ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was forced to apologize for declaring that “all lives matter.”
Eventually, Democrats defaulted to their traditional views on race — which is generally a bit short of what BLM demands. Republicans and conservatives, meanwhile, also rushed to embr♕ace the “all lives ꦑmatter” trope and, more recently, linked attacks on police officers to BLM itself.
On Fox, though, Rubio did neither. Instead, in a feel-your-pain moment worthy 🤡of Bill Clinton, he conveyed the experiences of a black friend: “I have one friend in particular who’s been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I’d be wondering what’s going on here. I’d be upset about it. So would anybody else.”
Of course they would. Ind𝓰eed, a major reason for the backlash over sto🅠p-and-frisk here in the city is that police stopped many innocent black residents repeatedly in the name of “safety.”
Rubio also acknowledged the inequity of the c🅘riminal-justice system for poor, minority youth. He noted that many accused blacks are left to the whims of overwhelmed public defenders, who urge them to plead out, even though doing s꧟o leaves them with records that stain them permanently.
The 43-year-old Republican senator’s sensitivity to these issues suggests his-oft declared love of hip-hop (he rushed to see “Straight Outta Compton” on its opening weekend) may be more than just lip service. If so, Rubio may be able to serve𒈔 as a bridge between two social movements that have more in common than either realize.
In 2014, Black Lives Matter selected a false icon in Michael Brown. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice corroborated Police Officer Darren Wilson’s version of events in the fatal encounter in Ferguson, and destroyed the myth that Bro💞wn had his hands up and was trying to surrender when🍃 Wilson shot him.
Yet, multiple subsequent encounters caught on film involving cops and blacks — Walter Scott in South Carolina, Sandra Bland in Texas, J🍌ames Blake in Manhattan — raised legitimate questions about police tactics with respectಞ to African-Americans.
At the same time, Kalief Brow꧒der’s suicide after spending three years at Rikers without a trial brought scrutiny of the criminal-justice part of the equation.
Yes, blue lives 🔜unquestionably matter. But here’s the thing: Police officers — and those overseeing the judicial systꩵem — are public servants whose actions can and should be fairly reviewed.
In that regard, BLM is dramatically different from its left-wing predecessor, the Occupy Wall Street non-movement, with which it is occa🐼sionally compared. BLM actually has a greater similarity to, yes, the Tea Party, in that both ultimately demand account🧸ability from their elected leaders.
BLM activists and Tea 🅘Partiers are both tired of the same old platitudes meant to buy off voters. And, notably, both have stood up and confronted politicians closer to their own ideological sens🌺ibilities before going to war with the other side.
While ang༒ry with President Obama, the Tea Party went after moderate Republicans before tossing out Democrats in 2010 and 2014. Similarly, BLM upended the progressive Net Roots conference this summer — getting in the faces of Sanders, O’Malley and eventually Hillary Clinton last month. (Hmm: Maybe it should be called the Black Tea Party.)
Rubio is well-suited to capitalize on this. Though he rode the Tea Party wave to victory in 2010, he’s not actually a Tea Party candidate in the way, say, Sen. Ted Cru♈z might be. He straddles the line between the establishment and insurgents.
That could help him speak to the BLM and show some support for its inherent message: that politicians need to be held accountable for the performance of their underlings. And he can do that, even asꦬ he’s managed to engage the Tea 🐬Party and take up its cause.
At the end of the day, Black Lives Matter is more a left-wing movement, so Rubio isn’t likely to campaign for its support. Nonetheless, standing up for pu🦋blic accountability at all levels of government may resonate across the ideological spectrum.