Earlier this week, we were slightly surprised to hear Senator Marco Rubio admit in the pages of the The Economist that the Republican tax bill was a complete and total scam. Despite his party’s insistence that a giant corporate tax cut would ultimately benefit the middle class, Rubio said in an interview that rather than spending their boatloads of cash on average workers, corporations, shocker of shockers, “bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses,” and “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.” Which is another way of saying—cover your ears Paul Ryan— that trickle-down economics, the theory on which the bill was based, is utter horses--t. And while it would’ve been a tad more meaningful for Rubio to have come to this realization a little earlier, to have pulled a crazy stunt and voted against the bill, or to have not introduced a tax plan in 2015 that was extremely similar to the one passed last year, the mere fact that he was saying these things aloud seemed, if not subversive, then at least bordering on insubordinate, given the G.O.P.’s feelings about the upward re-distribution of wealth. A massive tax cut for corporate America not actually trickling down to the middle class? That’s the kind of talk that will land you in some deserted warehouse on the outskirts of Virginia with Mitch McConnell brandishing a cat o’ nine tails, The Levin Report thought to itself. Of course, just days later, Rubio has taken it all back.

“On the whole, the tax cut bill helps workers,“ the invertebrate lawmaker’s op-ed for The National Review begins. “It’s just not massive tax cuts to multinational corporations that do it,” it continues. “Overall, the Republican tax-cut bill has been good for Americans. That is why I voted for it. But it could have been even better for American workers and their families.” Rubio then goes on to to mildly criticize the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” saying the corporate rate could’ve been slightly higher than 21 percent, and that the bill would have been better if it had increased the child tax credit. Overall, though, he takes pains to make clear that he’s fully behind this thing and was a naughty little boy who misspoke when he made his heretical statements to The Economist.

Unfortunately, the piece was apparently only supposed to be seen by Republican leadership and Rubio’s corporate donors, and not members of the wider public who might have the audacity to recognize the about-face for what it is: the sort of time-honored flip-flop we’ve come to expect from the Florida senator. Which, we assume, is why this happened:

Screw you, intern! How dare you accurately report Rubio’s change of heart. Marco doesn’t know what they’re teaching in college these days, but back when he was a co-ed, no one could reasonably read the words “the tax cut bill helps workers,” and come to the inexplicable conclusion that a guy who said just days prior, “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker,” was walking back his criticism. When Rubio said the tax bill “has been good for Americans,” he was clearly sticking to his original thesis that the tax bill hasn’t done anything for average Americans. So hightail it back to the quad, ya jerk.

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