As we’ve stated, FL Senator Marco Rubio is the neoconservative horse in the Republican race. His original backer Norman Braman says that the US must remain strong militarily so it can support Israel– and Rubio visited Israel for the first time in 2010 with Braman, days after he was elected to the Senate.

There’s further evidence that Rubio is bought by pro-Israel forces, and that our press is unwilling to talk openly about the Israel lobby. The New York Times reports that Paul Singer, an “influential billionaire” has thrown his support to Marco Rubio. The piece never uses the word “neoconservative” and only mentions Israel three times in passing, and states that Singer has no litmus tests. But he clearly has a litmus test on ferocious support for Israel.

Eli Clifton has documented Singer’s extensive contributions to rightwing pro-Israel groups:

It has not only been AIPAC, Rubio, and the American Enterprise Institute… that have enjoyed Singer’s largesse… The Israel Project (TIP), now headed up by AIPAC’s former chief spokesperson Josh Block, has received increasingly large contributions from the billionaire. Singer gave $500,000 to the group in 2007 and $1 million in the 2012 tax year (the year Block took over the group’s leadership and the last year for which there are publicly available tax filings). That makes Singer one of TIP’s two largest donors since Block arrived.

Clifton has also tracked the “Jewish billionaire”‘s support for astroturf Christian Zionist groups:

Singer, a director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, is a huge donor to various groups that promote a hawkish line on Iran policy.

The New York Times leaves out Singer’s back story and Norman Braman too, in its coverage of Rubio’s score:

In a letter that Mr. Singer sent to dozens of other donors on Friday, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Singer described Mr. Rubio — who was elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave but has been embraced by the party’s Washington elite — as the only candidate who can “navigate this complex primary process, and still be in a position to defeat” Hillary Rodham Clinton in a general election…

Jeb Bush lost the Paul Singer primary in part because of his relationship to Jim Baker, who criticized Israeli settlement growth as an impediment to peace in a speech to J Street. The Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Confessore refers obliquely to that incident.

Mr. Rubio has aggressively embraced the cause of wealthy pro-Israel donors like Mr. [Sheldon] Adelson, whom the senator is said to call frequently, and Mr. Singer, who both serve on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, an umbrella group for Republican Jewish donors and officials. Mr. Bush has been less attentive, in the view of some of these donors: Last spring, he refused to freeze out his longtime family friend James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, after Mr. Baker spoke at the conference of a liberal Jewish group. The lobbying of Mr. Singer intensified in recent weeks as Mr. Bush’s debate stumbles and declining poll numbers drove many donors to consider Mr. Rubio anew. Last week, Mr. Bush’s campaign manager, Danny Diaz, and senior adviser, Sally Bradshaw, flew to New York to make personal appeals on Mr. Bush’s behalf, in the hopes of heading off an endorsement of Mr. Rubio, according to two people close to the former governor’s campaign.

The Times also fails to state that Rubio has promised to reverse the Iran deal on his first day as president.