Larry Kudlow: Newsmax's Ruddy Right About Rubio

Conservative talk show host Larry Kudlow says he agrees with Newsmax Founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy about the "bad political approach" being used by Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio in contrasting the future with the past.

"He [Ruddy] wrote a pretty good column saying basically, Marco Rubio's got the story wrong," said Kudlow on his nationally syndicated WABC radio show Saturday morning.

The Florida Republican senator is "talking about how we don't want to go back to yesterday; we want to go to tomorrow. We don't want old things; we want new things," Kudlow commented. "Chris says, basically, what does that mean?"

"The contrast of past versus future added a nice rhetorical device to his speech, but it’s a bad political approach that will neither win Rubio the nomination nor help the Republicans in 2016," Ruddy wrote. "While I agree Marco Rubio is the future of the GOP and a breath of fresh air on the national scene today, he is not answering the real cry of conservative and independent voters."

Kudlow agreed, saying that "maybe some old things are good, maybe some new things are not good. What we need are problem-solving solutions, not cliches like yesterday versus tomorrow... I think that's a really good point on Chris Ruddy's part."

Rubio's announcement speech on Monday, which was "unfortunately overshadowed by Hillary Clinton's so-called announcement speech," was overall a good speech, Kudlow said.

"I don't happen to agree with all his policies, particularly tax policies, but putting that aside, he really harped on this issue of let's look at tomorrow not yesterday," said Kudlow. "We need new things not old things. The trouble is, I don't know what those things are."

Some of Rubio's backers, said Kudlow, "believe we must not replicate the 90s or the 80s. We need new ideas for the 2010s."

But he disagrees.

"If it worked in the 90s and the 80s, say lower marginal tax rates to provide greater incentives to grow and form businesses, let's say deregulation, let’s say limits to spending, let’s say a sound dollar. If those things worked in the 80s and 90s, we should go back to them in the 2010s."

And there were some very good policies in the past that should not be abandoned.

"Adam Smith wrote in the 18th century, 1776. That doesn't mean we neglect his principles, his free market principles," said Kudlow. "Or our Founding Fathers in the 18th century, they had some pretty darned good ideas, does that mean we neglect them? If John F. Kennedy cut tax rates in the 60s and launched a huge boom, does that mean we reject him, because it was yesterday?"

He urged listeners to take a look at Ruddy's column, which he called "very good," with its point that "we need solutions, not a timetable for yesterday.