Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said on Wednesday that when it comes to what public policy issues are a priority, there is an enormous gap between everyday people and the elites in government, media and academia.
“I would challenge you that politics today is a lot less about ideology and a lot more about the disconnect between the people who make our laws and the people that live underneath them,” Rubio said in an interview with CBS Miami. “If you want to understand 2010, 2014, 2016, and I believe, future elections, you have to understand that there is an enormous gap between what public policy elites—people in government, the media, and academia—are focused on, and what everyday people care about. And they’re not lined up.”
Rubio added that people in politics spend too much time fighting over things that don’t matter in the “real world.”
“So I think there’s a sense across the American political spectrum that the people in office spend all their time fighting for things that don’t matter in the real world. And the things that matter in the real world aren’t getting enough attention,” Rubio said. “And so they want to send people that are going to blow it up, that are going to basically force change in the status quo, and the more the established figures in politics attack you, the stronger it makes you in the eyes of the people that want to see something different.”
It’s interesting to think what politics would be like if the news media were trustworthy.