Actually, Marco Rubio Is The One Pitting Americans Against Each Other

Igor Bobic

He criticized Obama's mosque visit as being divisive. But Rubio's rhetoric on Muslims is the real problem.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed President Barack Obama's visit to a mosque on Wednesday, during which the president denounced anti-Muslim rhetoric, for "pitting people against each other."

But Rubio, who often advocates for religious liberty and speaks of his faith on the campaign trail, is the one engaging in divisive rhetoric.

After Donald Trump said he would consider shutting down U.S. mosques in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, which were carried out by Islamic extremists, Rubio declined to discount the idea in an interview on Fox News: 

It’s not about closing down mosques. It’s about closing down any place -- whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site -- any place where radicals are being inspired. The bigger problem we have is our inability to find out where these places are, because we’ve crippled our intelligence programs, both through unauthorized disclosures by a traitor in Edward Snowden, or by some of the things this president has put in place with the support even of some from my own party to diminish our intelligence capabilities.

“So whatever facility is being used -- it’s not just a mosque -- any facility that’s being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States should be a place that we look at.”

In contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the notion of shutting down mosques and creating a database of Muslims "just wrong."

During the last Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Rubio suggestedthat radical Muslims who have not turned to violence do not have a right to free speech under the First Amendment because the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State is "unprecedented."

"Radical Muslims and radical Islam is not just hate talk, it's hate action. They blow people up. Look at what they did in San Bernardino, look at the attack they inspired in Philadelphia ... where a guy shot a police officer three times, told the police 'I did it because I was inspired by ISIS,'" he said. 

On the matter of Syrian refugees, Rubio has been all over the place. In September, the senator said he was open to admitting Syrian and Iraqi refugees because of America's historical role of harboring the oppressed. A month later, after the Paris attacks, Rubio ruled out refugees entirely because, he claimed, the U.S. is not adequately able to vet them.

Since then, Rubio has moderated his stance to allow widows and orphans.

"Does common sense still apply? Of course it does. A 5-year-old orphan, a 90-year-old widow, a well-known Chaldean priest -- these are obviously common-sense applications, and you can clearly vet them just by common sense," he said.

As Rubio grows closer to consolidating the establishment wing of the GOP ahead of the New Hampshire primary, he is increasingly viewed as the more sensible, moderate choice to bombastic candidates like Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But his rhetoric on Muslims seems to suggest he is anything but.