Rubio casts himself as conservative peacemaker

One day before the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio on Sunday said he is the only candidate who can unify the divergent factions of the conservative movement.

{mosads}“We cannot win if we are divided, if we are fighting against each other,” Rubio said at a rally in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “And so we must bring – not just the party, but the conservative movement – back together, and I will.”

“No one running for president can bring the conservative movement and the Republican Party together faster or better than I can,” he added.

In his speech, the Florida senator highlighted policies supported by social conservatives, foreign policy hawks and small-government libertarians.

If elected, he promised to fight against abortion rights, strengthen America’s military and repeal many of President Obama’s executive orders, which he said violate the Constitution.

“What this country needs is a Republican Party built on the principles of limited government and free enterprise and a strong national defense,” he said.

Rather than take shots his fellow GOP primary candidates, Rubio aimed his fire on Democratic primary candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president of the United States,” he said, pointing to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.

“Hillary Clinton put highly classified information on her private server because she thinks she’s above the law,” he added. “The emails and the classification of the emails are so sensitive, the State Department can’t even release them. That’s reckless, that’s lawless.”

“If someone on my staff did that, they would be fired and prosecuted. No one is above the law. Maybe she thinks when she gets elected president, which is not going to happen, she’ll just pardon herself.”

Rubio also called Sanders a “socialist” who could not even be elected president of Sweden.

“Bernie Sanders is a socialist,” he said. “This is usually a slur in American politics. He admits he’s a socialist. As I said the other night, I think he’s a good candidate for president of Sweden.”

“And then I had these young men from Sweden in the audience that came up to me, and I thought they were going to be mad because of what I said about Sweden, and they said, ‘Why would you do that to our country?’” he added. “So I take it back, they don’t want him either.”

Rubio said he is the most electable Republican running for the party’s nomination.

“I’m asking you to caucus for me, because if I’m our nominee, we win,” he said. “The Democrats know this. This is why Hillary Clinton and her super-PAC and the Democratic National Committee, they attack me more than any other Republican, because they know that if I’m our nominee we win, and we have to win.”