Republican Senate hopeful Marco Rubio is getting a little help on the campaign trail from a questionable customer.
At an event Wednesday near Orlando, Rubio was introduced to a crowd of 200 by evangelical David Barton, whose claims to fame include orchestrating the push to change Texas textbook standards to paint the far right in a positive light and helping to develop the radical Texas constitution.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Barton “has declared the separation of church and state to be mythical, claiming that Thomas Jefferson, when he coined the phrase, meant for the wall to be ‘one-directional’ — designed to protect the church from government interference but never intended to remove Christianity from government.”
Barton is no stranger to Florida politics. He was recently listed as a “prominent endorser” of Daniel Webster, who’s challenging Alan Grayson in Florida’s eighth district.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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