Florida’s Marco Rubio blasts Obama in GOP address

As Mitt Romney goes for the kill in Tuesday’s Florida primary, the man who could be on Romney’s short list for vice president delivered the weekly Republican address Saturday.

Marco Rubio, the young first-term Cuban American senator from Florida, is viewed as a rising Republican star and as someone who could deliver the votes of a key state and attract Latino and other minority voters to the GOP.

“It’s an exciting contest and I know that passions are high,” Rubio said of the battle between Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.

Rubio attacked President Obama’s State of the Union address, while also using the opportunity to introduce some details of his political biography to the unfamiliar.

He employed the GOP’s latest line of attack, contending that Obama’s economic policies had deepened the recession and restated a common Republican complaint that the president is waging “class warfare.”

“The bottom line is this president inherited a country with serious problems. He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse,” he said. “President Obama has a year left in the White House. So what are his plans now to make things better? What does he plan to do now, that he didn’t do before? Well we got our answer Tuesday night. He plans to divide us against each other. To pit Americans against other Americans in the hopes of generating enough votes to get reelected.”

In the address, Rubio showed why he could be an effective campaigner for a GOP presidential candidate (or a candidate for the office himself one day) by telling a story about immigration and working-class aspirationalism in a defense of free enterprise.

“My father was a bartender. And I thank God every night that there was someone willing to risk their money to build a hotel on Miami Beach and later in Las Vegas where he could work,” Rubio said. “I thank God that there was enough prosperity in America so people could go on vacation to Miami or Las Vegas. Where people felt prosperous enough to have weddings or bar mitzvahs and, by the way, could leave tips in my Dad’s little tip jar. Because with that money he raised us. And he gave me the opportunity to do things he never had a chance to do.”

Rubio has downplayed speculation about his being the vice presidential nominee. “I do not think or believe that I will be vice president of this country,” Rubio said earlier in the week.

He has stayed neutral in the presidential primary but has ties to both Gingrich and Romney. His chief of staff worked on Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and his Senate campaign manager now works for Gingrich.