The paranoid style, part infinity
By 
Randy Barnett is a Georgetown University law professor, who is well known for both his libertarian views and his insider status among DC conservatives (he was the academic point man in the battle to interpret the Affordable Care Act out of existence). He is currently one of many people on the right trying to come up with a way to stop Donald Trump. In the course of describing his plan to the National Review’s readership, he had this to say about Marco Rubio:
I have never met Marco Rubio, but shortly after he was elected to the Senate, I was lecturing in Germany to a group of European liberal students. (In Europe, “liberal” means libertarian.) I played for them a YouTube clip of Senator Rubio making a seven-minute floor speech extolling the exceptionalism of the United States as a land of opportunity. I used the clip to make two points. First, the fact that they had never heard of Rubio showed that they live in a left-wing media cocoon. Unless they cultivated reliable online sources, they would never have a complete picture about the American political scene.
It’s of course a central tenet of contemporary conservative faith that the dreaded Mainstream Media is hopelessly biased in its coverage of American politics. Still this is a bit much, given that this is somebody who is supposed to be the epitome of a Thoughtful Conservative, as opposed to say a random caller to a right-wing talk radio show.
Think about who Marco Rubio was “shortly after he was elected to the Senate,” i.e. five years ago. At that point it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have made anybody’s list of the 100 most prominent politicians in America. Heck, he might not have cracked the top 500 then. He was a 40-year-old freshman senator that nobody outside of Florida had ever heard of: I certainly couldn’t have told you who he was at that time (although I suppose I’m helping in my own small way to help spin the very left-wing media cocoon that envelops me, so res ipsa loquitur I guess.).
Nevertheless, the fact that a bunch of German college students hadn’t heard of this guy is supposed to be evidence of the perfidy of the MSM! For comparison’s sake, here’s the complete list of contemporary German politicians I can name:
Angela Merkel
Helmut Kohl
That’s it, and I wouldn’t want to bet that Kohl is actually still alive or anything.