President Obama isn't trying to portray himself as a centrist now that he's won his second term, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Thursday.
Rubio said that Obama would not have delivered the speech,
laced with nods to the president's liberal base on issues like climate change and same-sex marriage, if he had not been elected to his last term in office.
"Well let me tell you this: I'll bet you the president wouldn't give his inaugural speech before the election. I bet you he wouldn't say some of the things he said in the inauguration before the voting took place," Rubio, considered a strong potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said on Fox News. "The bottom line is that for the last four years the president has tried to portray himself as a centrist who believes that government should be limited. Now that he's won his second and final reelection, he no longer pretends to be that.
"He is an unabashed believer that more government is the right answer, and I look forward to the debate because that's one he can't win."
Rubio also blamed Obama for the nation's economy contracting in the fourth quarter of 2012. A day earlier the Commerce Department
released a new estimate saying the country's gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.1 percent.
"In the last three months of last year the American economy shrunk and it shrunk under this president because of his policies," Rubio said.
Mark Zandi, the top economist at Moody's Analytics, said that the economy shrank for a number of reasons. Zandi specifically mentioned an increase in defense spending.
"The collapse in government spending is payback from the big defense spending increase in the third quarter," Zandi said.
