Daily Beast
By Gideon Resnick
January 28, 2016
Marco
Rubio and Ted Cruz reminded the audience at Thursday night’s GOP debate
about the party’s original big issue in this campaign: immigration.
Touting
his disavowal of the Gang of Eight bill, a bipartisan piece of
legislation for comprehensive immigration reform, Cruz went on the
attack against Rubio, one of
the co-authors of the bill.
“Ask
people like Jeff Sessions and Steve King and Rush Limbaugh and Mark
Levin, all of whom say—as Jeff Sessions said, responding to these false
attack attacks just recently
in Alabama—he said if it wasn't for Ted Cruz, the Gang of Eight
Rubio/Schumer bill would have passed. But because Ted stood up and
helped lead the effort, millions rose up to kill it,” Cruz said, listing
some of his biggest fans and referring to himself in
the third person.
Rubio wasn’t having it and called Cruz a fake conservative.
“This
is the lie that Ted's campaign is built on and Rand [Paul] touched upon
it—that he's the most conservative guy and everyone else is, you know,
everyone else is a
RINO [Republican in Name Only],” Rubio said.
“The
truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign you've been willing to do or
say anything to get votes. You worked for George Bush's campaign. You
helped design George W.
Bush's immigration policy. When you got to the Senate, you did an
interview with CBS News … you said on the issue of people here
illegally, ‘We can reach a compromise.’”
And of course, Rubio had to refer to Cruz’s main rival in the race, notably absent from the room: Donald Trump.
“Now
you want to trump Trump on immigration,” Rubio said. “You can't—we're
not going to beat Hillary Clinton with someone who's willing to say or
do anything to win an
election.”
Cruz
has come under fire from fellow Republicans for waffling on immigration
when it was politically convenient over the years. And he’s gone on the
offensive recently
against Rubio, launching an ad campaign that accuses the the Florida
senator of “betray[ing] our trust” for helping to author the Gang of
Eight bill.
Rubio,
hoping to bring the issue of immigration back to the fore in a debate
that included a surprising amount of substantive talk, also tussled with
fellow Floridian
Jeb Bush, despite having largely similar views on the issue for many
years.
Fox
News moderator Megyn Kelly challenged Rubio for opposing citizenship
for undocumented immigrants during his 2010 Senate campaign, before
eventually sponsoring the
'Gang of Eight' immigration bill after he joined the Senate. The Gang
of Eight immigration reform package included a pathway to citizenship.
Rubio stumbled at her question, saying that he only opposed "blanket
amnesty."
Bush,
who supports a legal status for undocumented immigrants, said Rubio
abandoned the package as soon as he felt it was becoming unpopular. It
was an odd exchange between
two Republican candidates who both, at one time or another, supported a
legal status for immigrants who entered the country illegally.
"You
shouldn't have cut and run," Bush told Rubio, though the two have had
similar positions on immigration over the years. "Now it's harder and
harder to actually solve
this problem."
"You are not going to be able to ram down the throat of the American people your approach," Rubio responded.
Without
the specter of Trump, the man against whom the other candidates could
direct their attacks, it seemed that Rubio and Cruz were fishing for a
fight. And they ended
up taking it back to where it all began.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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