On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio said he would skipping a Romney campaign retreat this weekend in order to spend more time with his family.
“It’s unfair to the Romney campaign to say I was excluded, because that’s not accurate,” he said Thursday. “I was invited to go.
Of course, skeptical readers will assume Rubio is being less than forthcoming. After all, who really wants to spend time with their family? Well, it turns out Rubio does. On Monday — days before word leaked that he wouldn’t attend the conclave — he told me this:
No matter how important my responsibilities are at work — in the senate or out on the campaign trail — I have an essential obligation to my children and my family — no less than the one my parents had for me. Just because I’ve had some degree of worldly success doesn’t mean that somehow that comes at the expense of my obligations to my family. And I recognize in the book [that] my father and my grandfather were better men than me … they deserved to have success. But there were circumstances that made that impossible for them. But because I’m an American son, I have those opportunities. And part of my obligations moving forward is to ensure that those same chances are there for my kids when they grow up.
(Emphasis mine.)
Listen to our full conversation here. Or download the podcast on iTunes.
