Marco Rubio on
the cover of Time

Senator Marco Rubio today vowed that he will vote against the immigration reform bill that he co-authored if the amendment allowing US citizens to sponsor their Cuban born partners is not removed.

'If this bill has something in it that gives Cubans immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm done,' Rubio said on Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show.

'I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly. I don't think that's going to happen and it shouldn't happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is.'

Does that sound bigoted? Why, yes it does. But of course Rubio wasn't really talking about Cubans, he was talking about gay couples. I take license to make my point.

We wouldn't countenance this kind of talk if he targeted Cubans or Jews or the Irish, so why should it be any different when it comes to gays?  In every respect Rubio's manifest bigotry is astonishing.

So much for the big tent GOP.

Recall that at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year Rubio said that opposing marriage equality 'doesn't make you a bigot.' Well, I can list you a good 1, 497 reasons why it actually does make you a bigot, Senator Rubio.

And THIS at a time when the GOP are claiming they're serious about welcoming all Americans into their party? Was Rubio even watching Mitt Romney's epic rout in November? Did he noticed the sea of disappointed faces at the GOP's election headquarters? Does he really want to hitch his political future to that rapidly sinking political Titanic?

Rubio must know how bad he's going to sound in the political attack ads in 2016 when this kind of backward bigoted posturing is going to sound even worse than it already does. Has Rubio grown tired of politics? Does he see no future in it?
  
The amendment that would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay unauthorized immigrants who would seek legal status under new rules in the bill was introduced this week by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (one of the few remaining political leaders in Washington with political acumen and a functioning conscience, apparently).

Leahy refuses to play the Clintonesque game of political expedience, as though this was 1993 not 2013. He's smart to know the difference.

Even by the end of the year Rubio's move to deny gay couples equal treatment will be political Kryptonite. By 2013 it could prove fatal to his presidential ambitions.