What Marco Rubio Has To Say About Romney And 'Obama's Gifts'

“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people,” Romney told hundreds of donors during a telephone town hall. “In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups.” Romney went on to detail the particular “gifts” the president had spread around. Young people surely went for Obama because he offered a plan to partially forgive college loan interest. Latinos were bought off, of course, because Obama had approved “amnesty,” Romney's term for the the executive order that prevents deportation of some young people brought to the U.S. by their immigrant parents. African Americans, and all the others, went with the president because he offered “free healthcare,” via Obamacare, “in perpetuity.”

The potential 2016 hopeful told POLITICO that he hadn't seen the full context of Romney's comments, and downplayed them as simply "an analysis to donors." But he said, "our mission should not be to deny government benefits to people who need them," but the party should work to ensure "less people need government benefits.""I don’t want to rebut him point by point," Rubio said of Romney. "I would just say to you, I don’t believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don’t want to work. I’m not saying that’s what he said. I think we have millions of people in this country that are out of work and are dependent on the government because they can't find a job."