Rebooting Reagan for 2010

"I don't care if Republicans or Democrats are in charge, if you allow politicians to spend money, they'll do it." -Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio, one of the many promising new faces in the conservative movement, discusses his own race for the Senate in Florida, and also the future of the Republican Party in an interview featured in The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Rubio says he won't shy away from social issues if asked. He is pro-life and says he would support a Senate filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee under some circumstances. But his campaign is staking out an updated version of the Reagan agenda. "We're focused on jobs and national security," he says, "because those are the great and profound national issues of our moment and that's what 95% of our campaign is based on."

Front and center is the idea that, fiscally, the federal government is running off the rails. That Washington should be "taking borrowed money to fund the general operation of government," he says, "and that somehow the government will build so many roads and bridges that everyone will have a job for the next 30 years is absurd."

Which leads to Job One: To get spending under control in Washington, Mr. Rubio would support a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, something Florida already has in place. "I don't care whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge," he says. "If you allow politicians to spend money, they'll do it."

Amen to that.