In the absence of Trump, the issue of immigration took center stage Rubio And Cruz Duke It Out Over Immigration

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In the absence of Trump, the issue of immigration took center stage in a tussle between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

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.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/28/rubio-and-cruz-duke-it-out-over-immigration.html

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No Difference Between Leaked White House Plan and Gang of Eight Plan



While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the White House's leaked immigration plan was an attempt to politicize the immigration debate and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said it would be "dead on arrival", the actual details of the two plans are essentially the same - they both grant instant amnesty to the nation's 11 million illegal aliens and neither bill does anything to stop future illegal immigration or protect America's unemployed.

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/february-19-2013/no-difference-between-leaked-white-house-plan-gang-eight-plan.html

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Ted Cruz Claims Donald Trump Supported Marco Rubio’s ‘Gang of Eight’ Amnesty Bill

ANKENY, Iowa — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, accused GOP frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump of supporting the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill pushed through the U.S. Senate in 2013 by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Despite Cruz’s claim, several interviews and stories Trump did with Breitbart News at the time show he was fighting the “Gang of Eight” bill and called it a “death wish” for the GOP.

Listing various instances of battles against the permanent political class—calling each a different “time for choosing”—Cruz noted that one was the “battle over amnesty.” Cruz said:

"We had in 2013, as well, an epic, knockdown drag-out battle on amnesty. President Obama and Chuck Schumer and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats joined up with establishment Republicans to try to pass a massive amnesty. The bill didn’t secure our borders, the bill expanded President Obama’s ability to bring in Syrian refugees without mandating background checks, and the bill would have granted amnesty to 12 million people here illegally. For everyone in this country, that was a time for choosing. On which side do you stand? There are individuals on that stage that answered that question and said, ‘I stand with Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and I stand against the American [worker].’ I can tell you I was proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Iowa’s own Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) fighting to stop amnesty and secure the border and to keep this country safe."

Cruz continued by noting that the “leader” of the “Gang of Eight” was “my friend Marco Rubio.”

“He’s a good man, charming, but when he ran for Senate, he promised the people of Florida that ‘I will lead the fight against amnesty,’” Cruz said of Rubio. “That’s what he told voters. Then he came to Washington and immediately joined with Chuck Schumer in offering the Rubio-Schumer amnesty.”

Cruz continued by imploring voters to hold him accountable to his word, and noting correctly that he’s kept his promise to Texans to fight against amnesty. Everything up until that point was accurate on the amnesty point. But then Cruz claimed Trump backed the “Gang of Eight” bill. Cruz said, referring to Trump:

"I would note as well there’s another candidate in this race who talks quite a bit about immigration—and everything else. Well, in 2013, the battle was being fought. If it is in fact the case that Mr. Trump opposes amnesty, one might ask where was he during that battle? I can tell you where he was: He was publicly at the time supporting amnesty, Tweeting out support for the ‘Gang of Eight.’ He was publicly at the time supporting Marco Rubio’s DREAMer legislation. He was publicly at the time criticizing Mitt Romney for being too tough on illegal immigration. Now, when it comes to amnesty, even today—listen, I like Donald Trump—he may say unpleasant things about me, and I have no intention of responding in kind. I do not intend to insult him."

The crowd went wild.

“And I respect the men and women here, the men and women of Iowa, too much—I don’t think you want or deserve to see politicians engaging in name-calling and insults,” Cruz said. “But I do think substance matters. I think record matters. I think issues matter.”

During the timeframe the “Gang of Eight” bill was moving through the committee process in the U.S. Senate, however—and before it was even introduced—in a series of interviews and stories with Breitbart News, Trump was very publicly opposed to the amnesty bill, fighting it from outside the U.S. Senate.

In one such interview, published on June 3, 2013, Trump called the bill a “death wish” for the GOP.

“I think you have a country, or you don’t have a country,” Trump told Breitbart News in that interview. “If you have a country, you have borders. And you either live with the fact that you have borders, or you don’t. Congress is going at jet speed to try and get something passed, and the Republicans better be careful, because anything that’s passed, as they [illegal immigrants] become voting citizens, they will only vote for Democrats.”

“So, you have 11 million people right now in this country illegally, as they start to vote they will be voting for the Democrats,” Trump added in that June 3, 2013, interview. “They will not be voting for the Republicans. The Republicans better be careful of their own death wish.”

In a previous story regarding his 2013 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland—months before Rubio and Schumer even introduced their bill—a Trump spokesman told Breitbart News that he was opposed to the forthcoming amnesty bill.

“Mr. Trump is very worried that the Republican Party has learned the wrong lessons from the 2012 defeat,” Trump’s spokesman told Breitbart News at the time. “He felt it was important to stress to the party leaders and faithful that immigration and entitlement reform should not be a top priority. If the Republicans are going to be successful, they must focus on the economy, jobs, OPEC, reining in China and our debt crisis.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/23/ted-cruz-claims-donald-trump-supported-marco-rubios-gang-of-eight-amnesty-bill/