Jeb Refuses To Back Trump Over Clinton In CNN Interview

Cruz’s view is arguably a more authentic interpretation of the Ronald Reagan approach to foreign policy (you can think of it as a 21st-century update of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Democracies and Double Standards”), but Rubio’s is the current accepted canon.

Rubio has slammed Cruz for wanting to cut military spending.

It’s simultaneously true, though, that when Rubio claims he and Cruz have similar positions on immigration, he’s lying.

There were significant problems with the Gang of Eight bill, and Cruz’s amendments would not have resolved them all.

The easy answer: Secure the border first.

His decision three years ago to join a bipartisan effort to reform the nation’s immigration system and give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship – or “amnesty”, as anti-immigration advocates see it – continues to engender deep suspicion among hard-line conservatives. The more Libya descends into a failed state in which ISIS thrives, the more this line of attack resonates with Republican voters. One: The likely victor of a Rubio/Cruz knife fight is Trump, especially since it’s creating space for him to attack Cruz as soft on legalizing illegals if and when he decides to.

Arizona senator John McCain, who co-authored the Senate immigration bill with Rubio, said his impression was that Cruz’s posturing did indeed amount to a flip-flop. Indeed, many of Trump’s followers say they find his candor refreshing at a time when, they believe, the country is infected with a hysterical atmosphere of political correctness.

Flake said Rubio’s salesmanship and work on the 2013 bill was crucial to steering the bill through the Senate-it passed 68 to 32 in June 2013. Choosing candidates who are in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire will do this. They suggested that, at the time, it seemed Cruz was seeking to position himself as a conservative still open to reform and has since moved to the right in order to court the anti-immigrant vote.

While Rubio is an uber-hawk, Cruz is now his party’s leading skeptic of American interventions; he’s not as firm as Rand Paul, but he’s become much more prominent.

The Rubio-Cruz tussle over immigration has been ongoing throughout the GOP primary campaign but flared up during Tuesday’s GOP debate on CNN.

“I oppose amnesty. I oppose citizenship”. On Tuesday, Cruz outlined in some detail his case against the interventionism of the Rubio-McCain-Graham wing, saying that Egypt and Libya were better off with the secular dictators that previously ruled those countries, and-more surprisingly-that Bashar al-Assad, who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, should remain in power.

CRUZ: “I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization”. Rubio was one of the principal authors. He told Fox News that he was actually interested in defeating the broad immigration bill at the time, even though he said in 2013 that he wanted an overhaul – without the citizenship provision – to pass, and that he wanted his amendment to prevail so people in the USA illegally could come “out of the shadows” and have legal status.

Cruz would have denied citizenship to anyone here illegally, but he explicitly supported a path to legal residence.

If Cruz can inspire the evangelical base, he could prove risky in Iowa and come out the surprise victor in a race that’s been all about Trump. And can Cruz explain his 2013 motivations without looking like he was just another politician playing Washington’s games? He further redirected his tirade to his emerging rival, Rubio, linking him to Obama’s policies in the region offering a concise summation of the fall out of the neoconservative promotion of American democracy of the George W. Bush era. “Nobody cares. And, frankly, I’m the most solid person up here”.

But the general election will be different.