Aug 11, 2010 9:17 am US/Eastern Rubio & Crist Against Repeal Of 14th Amendment
Reporting Tim Kephart

It took seven different attempts over eight days to finally get an answer from Marco Rubio's campaign; but Rubio finally acknowledged that he, like Governor Charlie Crist, doesn't support a repeal of the 14th Amendment.

Rubio's stance puts him on the other side of the aisle from GOP leaders and some Tea Party leaders.

The campaign finally made the announcement late Monday afternoon. CBS4's Tim Kephart first posed the question to the campaign last Monday.

The issue exploded after multiple GOP lawmakers including John McCain, Jeff Sessions, John Boehner, and others first signaled their willingness to repeal the 14th Amendment. Ironically, the passage of the 14th Amendment was a key accomplishment of the Republican Party after the Civil War.

"I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the [14th] Amendment had in mind," Sessions told Politico.com, "but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen."

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads as follows: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Senator McCain said last Tuesday that he supports the concept of holding Congressional hearings to discuss a repeal of the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment was originally enacted to guarantee that states could not deny citizenship to former slaves. It's also become known as the equal protection amendment and has opened the door to landmark legislation and court decisions including Brown vs. Board of Education; Roe vs. Wade; and many others.

Independent Florida U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist's campaign sounded understandably stunned when CBS4's Tim Kephart asked about Kyl and Graham's stance last Monday. The Crist campaign is solidly opposed to any such repeal of the 14th Amendment.

The sentiment expressed by GOP leaders, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, is gaining traction amongst some in the Republican Party and in conservative circles in the political arena.

The extreme view takes aim at the children of illegal immigrants whose parents often stay in the U.S. after a child is born in this country. Some call the children, "anchor babies."

But the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment to deal with the immigration issue is so extreme to most people, that even Lou Dobbs, who made a living on fighting immigration, said that overturning the amendment is too much.

"The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the Senators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important," Dobbs said on Fox News.

If a movement to overturn the 14th Amendment gained enough momentum to actually reach the legislatures of states across the country, it could wreak havoc in American society.

The second clause of the 14th Amendment determines how representatives to the House are selected.

Specifically, part of the 14th Amendment removes the 3/5 clause in the original constitution that allowed for African-American citizens to be counted as 3/5 of a person.

In addition, if the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment were to be removed, there's nothing that would stop a more conservative Supreme Court from reversing any landmark decision that utilized the 14th Amendment.

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