Good for Marco Rubio and Rick Perry blasting Donald Trump's stupid comments

Marco Rubio didn't hold anything back when he recently went after Donald Trump's comments:

Trump’s comments are not just offensive and inaccurate, but also divisive. Our next president needs to be someone who brings Americans together – not someone who continues to divide. Our broken immigration system is something that needs to be solved, and comments like this move us further from – not closer to – a solution. We need leaders who offer serious solutions to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system. . . .

Previously Rick Perry had similarly taken Trump to task (from the video here):

I don’t think he’s reflecting the Republican party with his statements about Mexicans. I think that was a huge error on his part.  And number 1 it is wrong. . . . He painted with a very broad brush and that is the problem. . . . Where he tried to say that Mexicans are bad people, they are rapists and murderers. . . .

Take what Trump says about trade is wrong. 

While I'm a Republican, right now, some in the Republican Party are working overtime to hand more power to President Obama.  These same people are turning their backs on the American workers and businesses. It's unbelievable.  

"I learned a long time ago, a bad deal is far worse than no deal at all.  And the Obama Trans-Pacific Partnership and fast-track are a bad, bad deal for American businesses, for workers, for taxpayers. It's a huge set of handouts for a few insiders that don't even care about our great, great America.  

Congress has to stand up and defeat this raw power grab. With the dismal Obama track record, why should a Republican Congress give him more power and gut the Constitution to do it? It's just crazy. Tell your congressmen and senators, vote no on fast-track.

This trade deal is a "bad deal for American businesses"?  Not allowing trade is a handout to specially favored companies that one allows to charge higher prices.  Can trade deals be set up to still protect certain companies from competition?  Sure, but when you have even more firms protected you have even more firms that are given special favors.  There is not a specific example in any of Trump's comments.

Other wrong Trump claims include his promise that he will be able to get the Mexicans to pay for the fence (see starting at 1:14 into video) or to get them to pay for the cost of illegals in the US.  On the nutty getting them to pay for the fence by taxing their products being put into the US, does Trump understand that would abrogate our treaties and also start a trade war?  It is just an irresponsible statement.

Trump also claims that Mexicans in the US actually commit crimes at a higher rate than others. As far as I can tell, he doesn't back up anything that he says.  

It isn't clear how conservatives will react to Trump's views on other issues.  He has said some reasonable things on guns, but he has also made statements that would concern many.

"It’s often argued that the American murder rate is high because guns are more available here than in other countries. Democrats want to confiscate all guns, which is a dumb idea because only the law-abiding citizens would turn in their guns and the bad guys would be the only ones left armed. The Republicans walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions. . . . I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today’s Internet technology we should be able to tell within 72-hours if a potential gun owner has a record." -- Donald Trump in his book The America We Deserve (2000).

While Trump owns a number of guns and describes himself as "a gun person," he either doesn't know much about guns or he is willing to make things up.  On so-called assault weapons, Trump noted "who needs them except criminals and police?"  It is possible that his heart is in the right place, but that he is simply misspoken.  I hope that is the case.

From 2011 to this year, Trump also kept on forcefully pushing the crazy birther claim that Obama was actually born in Kenya (see here, here, here, here, and here).

The problem is that with so many Republican candidates in the race, someone can be doing very well with 14% of the vote.

Trump is also not someone to greatly respect private property rights.  He has an apparently long history of using the government's eminent domain power to take other people's property.

UPDATE: Note every group in the population contains rapists.  The question with Donald Trumps comments is whether illegal immigrants from Mexico commit rape at a higher rate than other groups in the population.  Here is Donald Trump's defense of his claim:

LEMON: I read [the stats], that’s about women being raped. It’s not about criminals coming across the border entering the country. 

TRUMP: Somebody’s doing the raping, Don. I mean, you know, somebody’s doing it. You say it’s women being raped. Well, who’s doing the raping? Well, how can you say such a thing?

Even if the evidence eventually supported Trump's claim, this is a lame defense of it.

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