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WHO TO BELIEVE? RUBIO OR CRUZ?


By: Amanda Carpenter | December 17th, 2015
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Marco Rubio supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; that is known. And Rubio is now seeking to undermine Ted Cruz’s credibility on immigration issues by saying Cruz supports a path to legalization for illegal immigrants.

So, who to believe? Rubio, whose campaign is working hard to knock holes in Cruz’s record, or the record of the man himself?

At the top level, this much should be clear to anyone. Rubio’s Gang of Eight legislation, which included a path to citizenship and was supported by many Democrats, the White House, and moderate Republicans, was defeated. Why? Because Ted Cruz and others, such as Jeff Sessions, Mike Lee, and a vast array of conservative activists worked together to expose the fact that it was an amnesty bill and kill it.
Rubio was for it, Cruz was against it.

There is a reason the Gang of Eight wasn’t the Gang of Nine. Cruz wasn’t a member of it, no matter how much Rubio wishes that were the case today.
People forget that the Gang of Eight bill contained both legalization and a path to citizenship. The key to taking down the bill was to demonstrate it would provide citizenship to millions of illegal aliens. Which also took down the path to legalization that Rubio claims Cruz wanted all along.


In the course of killing the bill, Cruz proposed a series of amendments in committee designed to make clear the legislation did contain a path to citizenship, which many supporters of the legislation did not want to admit.

One of Cruz’s amendments proposed stripping out the citizenship plank, leaving the legalization plank in place.

This was done precisely so the proponents of citizenship would vote against it, showing they were in fact insisting on citizenship in their legislation. But now, the Rubio camp is telling folks that because Cruz’s amendment only attacked citizenship, but not legalization, Cruz supports legalization. This is a stretch.

In his speech, asking other senators to support his amendment, Cruz said, “I would urge everyone on this committee to roll up our sleeves and fix the problem in a humane way that secures the border, gets serious about fixing that problem, that expands and improves legal immigration and that does not unfairly treat legal immigrants by removing a path to citizenship but allowing as this legislation does a legal status for those who are here illegally.”
The operative part of this statement is “removing a path to citizenship.”

That does not mean Cruz was supporting legalization at the time. It means the amendment strategy was focused only on the most controversial part of the bill, the citizenship plank.

Silence on the legalization plank is not support.

And although it’s not apparent by reading that statement alone, cherry picked from any context, Cruz only proposed the amendment so the other senators could decline it.

He wanted to make it sound extremely favorable so those who declined it later would appear unreasonable. This is a gambit often used in Congress that seems slippery to those unfamiliar with it and easily twisted by those being willfully ignorant about the process.
Yes, this is a bit complex. Yes, this is why people with actual legislative records find themselves open to criticism from people who are willing to misconstrue those records.

Instead of getting so caught up in the process, however, it’s better to look at the result.

In the end, one should ask, was the tactic successful? Yes, it was. The bill was killed. Rubio lost the debate; Cruz won it.
The rest of Cruz’s record should also be reviewed. Especially the work done to attempt to defund President Obama’s executive amnesty, which Rubio has been largely silent about.

There is a reason the Gang of Eight wasn’t the Gang of Nine. Cruz wasn’t a member of it, no matter how much Rubio wishes that were the case today.T

Attempting to go back and rewrite the history of this debate is a fool’s errand, especially when so many members of the conservative movement were so deeply involved in defeating the Gang of Eight’s bill and understand the legislative history.

Sadly, it seems many people at Fox News and other outlets are taking the bait.

Rubio may win a temporary, short-term news cycle on this, but will lose in the end, as this entire episode only serves to remind conservatives of what they view as Rubio’s original sin: joining the Gang of Eight.

Brit Hume may be on Rubio’s side, but we’ll see who Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and other powerful and reliable conservative voices line up behind on this particular squabble.

That said, many people including myself, would like to see the GOP primary come down to Rubio and Cruz. To many, it would symbolize an overwhelming victory over the establishment forces that worked to keep them both out of the Senate by supporting their moderate Republican rivals in their respective Florida and Texas primaries.

It would behoove Rubio to fight fair. He complained of Jeb Bush in a previous debate: “Someone convinced you attacking me is going to help you.”
Who convinced Rubio that attacking Cruz would help him?


- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/c....4lQzy6vb.dpuf