Sen. Marco Rubio fired back at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate over speaking Spanish in the campaign, even though it was Jeb Bush who was the target of Trump’s derision on using the language.
Advertisement
A new video released by the campaign Monday shows Bush speaking in Spanish and his wife, Columba Bush, speaking in English in her most expansive comments to date on her husband’s behalf. We’re going to get to many of these issues, but before we end this block, Ms. Fiorina, I do want to ask you about this. And if they get their news in Spanish, I want them to hear that directly from me. This is important knowledge for doing business with foreign entities.
“But he taught me that in Spanish, because it was the language he was most comfortable in”, Rubio said.
Finely crafted, beautifully delivered answers like the one Rubio gave are part of the reasons why many Democrats will tell you he’s the one Republican candidate they truly fear, not only for his innate talents but for the possibility – not the certainty, but the possibility – that he could pull significant numbers of Hispanic voters into the Republican column.
The case for multilingualism can also be made for national security, an area Republicans deeply care about. We have celebrations with the family and we keep our traditions. Although the U.S State Department subsequently implemented a special immigrant visa program for Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters, the creation of this class of refugees is a testament to the power of language politics, and an example of the fallout from American insufficiencies in this area. Several times, he’s said that English should be the language spoken in the United States.
Isolationist tendencies have a long history in America, and desires like those professed by Palin, Graham, and Trump to hear only English around them come under this category.
Advertisement
The world has changed. “We all have the same interests, the same feelings”.
