Jeb Bush blasts Ted Cruz over immigration, Syria

But on immigration, all we hear from the Texas senator is doublespeak. He told NPR in June 2013, “11 million who are here illegally would be granted legal status once the border was secured – not before – but after the border was secured, they would be granted legal status”.

Key to making sense of Cruz’s political calculus is to remember the landscape of immigration reform at the time. We know each other’s weak spots and which buttons to push. He attempted to do so by pointing to an amendment Cruz proposed that would have enabled illegal immigrants to obtain legal status.

Cruz, a US senator from Texas, sees Rubio’s support for a more forgiving immigration policy as his greatest vulnerability among conservatives who overwhelmingly oppose a pathway to illegal aliens. Leaders in Washington crafted this trillion dollar spending bill in secret, and unveiled it during the debate on Tuesday night.

Open warfare between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz broke out during Tuesday’s debate.

But Cruz isn’t running a center-right campaign.

“For the next three months, the Journal should change their header to the Marco Rubio for President Newspaper, because their attacks-and it’s going to keep coming because Marco fights for the principles they care about”, Cruz recently said.

“The Washington establishment very much wants to see a cage match between Donald Trump and me”, said Cruz in a recent GOP debate.

It might be that both parts of that response are false.

In Iowa and elsewhere, Rubio’s support for legalization still lingers in the minds of many conservatives. That was exactly what his amendment was about: legalizing the undocumented.

But on Fox News on Wednesday, a visibly flustered Cruz stumbled after being played his own words from 2013.

Speaking before a campaign rally in Mechanicsville, Virginia, on Friday, Cruz told reporters his campaign was winning now as conservatives were uniting behind him.

The full bill later passed the Senate 68 to 32, with Cruz opposing and Rubio supporting it. Rubio has since backed away from the bill, saying that reform must be done piece by piece.

Cruz said that the amendment he offered in 2013 was a “poison pill” meant to expose those behind the “Gang of Eight” bill who, he said, were angling for amnesty above all other forms of immigration reform.

“Senator Cruz stood with me”, Sessions said emphatically.

Cruz’s “intend to” language was far from his finest moment, and a campaign spokesperson later clarified that the senator would not support legalization under any circumstances.

It’s also possible that Cruz was referring to another segment of the bill, section 3405, which allows stateless people to get legal status.

Go back to Cruz’s response at the debate and take note of where the Harvard Law School graduate lawyered up.

Perhaps more importantly in the current, post-San Bernardino climate of fear, is Cruz’s assertion that the bill would have brought in new refugees “without mandating any background checks whatsoever”.

Those folks have reason for concern. (Cruz’s amendment) didn’t fix everything, but of course I voted for it, and so did he and he spoke for it and he sort of teased or mocked the other side by saying, ‘Well, you say you want immigration, you can have immigration, but give us citizenship.’ Oh no, they wouldn’t do that. If that’s true, how can his supporters be sure now that he’s not doing the same thing to them?