Posted on 04/15/2015 8:41:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A follow-up to yesterday’s mini-bombshell from Byron York about what Rubio said in 2013. Skip to 3:15 below. To be fair, he never told York categorically that he’d let Obama’s order stand if elected president. What he said was, “I cannot imagine a scenario where a future president is going to take away the status they’re going to get.” If you want to pretend that that’s meaningfully distinct from what Rubio would do as president himself, have at it. The best spin that can be put on this, I think, is that Rubio lied to York at the time because he wanted to put pressure on righties to support the Gang of Eight bill. In other words, he didn’t sincerely believe that O’s order would be irreversible by a GOP successor but he wanted conservatives to believe it so that they’d panic and decide to accept half a loaf on immigration in the form of the Senate immigration bill. That wouldn’t be the first time Rubio used Obama in a sort of good cop/bad cop routine to get amnesty passed. If it makes you feel better to think that he was lying to righties two years ago to try to scare them into supporting comprehensive immigration reform rather than lying to them now about what he’ll do as president, again, have at it.
Here’s a more useful question than babbling about what Rubio really meant: How would a new Republican president, under tremendous pressure from the right to cancel O’s amnesty order and tremendous pressure from center-righties, Democrats, and Latinos to keep it intact, split the baby? The obvious solution, a la ObamaCare, is not merely to repeal but repeal and replace. Odds are very good that whoever ends up as GOP nominee, Ted Cruz included, will roll out an immigration plan early in the general election campaign that demands much stronger enforcement but also contemplates some form of legalization for illegals, including and especially those illegals who’ve already been covered by Obama’s most recent executive order. (The plan probably won’t allow a path to citizenship in the interest of keeping conservatives happy, but that’s a detail. Once legalization happens, citizenship will follow down the road inevitably.) That would allow the nominee to promise, truthfully, that ending Obama’s amnesty is a priority for him when he takes office while also placating amnesty fans by giving them a statutory route to keeping the basics of O’s plan in place. Righties will grumble, but if there’s ever a moment when they’d be willing to forgive some heresy on immigration, it’s as a pander to swing voters in the thick of a presidential race where Hillary Clinton stands to benefit if they revolt. That’s what Rubio’s counting on. I’d say it’s a smart bet.
Exit question: Is Jeb Bush really the Bush-iest candidate in the GOP field? The whole reason for Rubio’s candidacy, at least from the donor class’s perspective, is that he offers a Jeb-like policy program without any of the “Bush baggage” that’ll hurt Jeb in the general election. On the merits, though, there’s no one in the race, Jeb included, who’s more like Dubya than Rubio is. He backed comprehensive immigration reform, just as Bush 43 did; he’s the most loud-and-proud neoconservative in the field, a fact alluded to in his campaign slogan; and his boldest domestic initiative, his family-friendly tax reform plan, is a throwback to “compassionate conservatism.” Rubio said of Dubya in 2012, “George W. Bush, in my opinion, did a fantastic job as president over eight years,” a line you may see featured once or twice in Democratic (and Rand Paul) attack ads over the next year. I keep imagining a debate between Rubio and Hillary where he echoes the “yesterday is over” theme from his campaign launch by warning voters that they shouldn’t want to return to the White House of twenty years ago — whereupon Hillary retorts that they really shouldn’t want to return to the White House of ten years ago. “A return to Bush” will be the main Democratic line of attack on Republican nominees for years to come, but in Rubio’s case, as new conservative wine in old Republican bottles, it really might have some bite.
I’m NOT buying it.
The issue is TOO clear cut and has been in play for TOO long for Rubio to come off LESS than clear and emphatic in responding to this.
If he’s THAT stupid or maladroit he doesn’t belong in the race anyway.
But, knowing the GOP... there is still a lot of ‘flip flop’ time left and THEY will certainly know how to spin his drivel.
Disgusting!
Rubio is doing all he can to mask HIS ACTIONS in the Senate. He prematurely let his mask slip when he tried to advance AMNESTY. Now, he is frantically trying to disown his actions.
Matthew 7:16: “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?”
I don’t want this duplicitous creature to become President and then, once there, permanently remove his mask to reveal the hideous creature hiding behind that mask.
We know we can always count on Rubio for the reversal.
Obummer said he was in favor of defense of marriage act. You can say anything, it seems, to get elected.
Rubio supports the position he thinks his listeners want to hear and then does whatever his donors told him to do. The man has no integrity at all, no matter how pretty his speeches may sound when he’s talking to a TEA Party audience. I don’t have any interest in how he frames his positions or in what he claims he will do. The man has the integrity of a Clinton, so his words do not matter. Rubio is on the same list as Bush, Christie, and Romney - “republicans” who do not support the Constitution and the rule of law on key issues and who will not get my vote.
Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Somebody who agrees with me 80 percent of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor,’ according to Haley Barbour, and I agree. A candidate must support the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms. A candidate must support the rule of law in terms of protecting our borders and not rewarding criminals who cross the border illegally. A candidate must support repealing Obamacare. Other than those key issues, I am flexible and willing to settle for my 80% or even 70% friend. Rubio is a 10% friend and 90% traitor, and that’s nowhere near close enough.
Marco Rubio reverses: As president, I’d end Obama’s executive amnesty for illegals
_________________________________________
but as senator he pushed for AMNESTY..
will the real Marco Rubio stand up ???
Isn’t it swell that this joker knows what would lose him the Conservatives ???
Mr Willard-Lite
The trouble with lying once, Marco, is that everything you say thereafter is suspect.
Immigration is the PREMIER foreign policy, economic, national security, social issue of the century
Any Conservative WORTH the name should have absolute command of this issue and he should be able to answer questions about this in his sleep ...with very DRAMATIC, UNAMBIGUOUS, and COMPELLING vigor!
Rubio got caught flat footed and he AIN'T the guy!
Flip flopping already. FUMR!
“will the real Marco Rubio stand up ???”
He did....the FIRST time.
Nobody gets a second chance on amnesty.
NOBODY
RE: The trouble with lying once, Marco, is that everything you say thereafter is suspect.
OK, here’s another perspective... isn’t it possible to realize that you were wrong and change your mind?
If we used this standard for every single candidate, Ronald Reagan ( who signed a bill legalizing abortion in California when he was governor ) would never be President.
Maybe Marco is using Mitten’s Etch-a-Sketch board!
RE: Nobody gets a second chance on amnesty.
NOBODY
___________________
But Ronald Reagan got a second chance on abortion...
On the other hand, considering that Reagan had been in office for only four months when he signed the "Therapeutic Abortion Act", a bill that had been debated and passed in congress the year before and was widely hailed as a law that protecting women's health, it can safely be assumed that Reagan made a mistake rather than deliberately misled his constituency.
RE: Rubio wasn’t just wrong, he knowingly lied.
Maybe you can educate me... in what way did he lie?
Was the bill he sponsored ever passed to see how it would work?
Seems Marco’s views have “evolved” for election time.
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