Ted Cruz fires another shot at Marco Rubio in battle over immigration

Cruz opposed a path to citizenship, a position remarkably close to Jeb Bush’s 2013 in a book Bush co-authored, “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution”.

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz will host a town hall meeting in Bloomingdale on Saturday. “Their entire baloney theory is based on an amendment I introduced that said those here illegally are permanently ineligible for citizenship”.

During his time in the Senate, Cruz has focused on immigration in terms of border security and interior enforcement, skirting the question of how to deal with the 12 million people in the country without permission. Every Latino learns sooner or later: No one can hurt you like one of your own. Because it revealed that the proponents of the Gang of Eight were being hypocrites. “Now in 2013, I think the Rubio campaign thought it was a very clever move that by supporting amnesty which is supported by big business, that they would lock up the big money donors in the Republican Party and he would benefit”, Cruz said.

But the candidate’s aides were much more biting, spending much of Friday highlighting Rubio’s past attendance, using hashtags like #NoShowMarco and ridiculing his light footprint on the campaign trail. You should read all of it (it’s not long) rather than have me excerpt it for you, as there’s no snippet that perfectly summarizes Cruz’s view. (Senator Cruz and I) stood together on this one, I’ve got to tell you. “His amendment, I think, was put straight forward – and I don’t think there’s any contemporaneous evidence that he was putting forward something that he didn’t really believe in.”…

“That is utter nonsense”, Cruz said of Rubio’s charge while talking to reporters in Las Vegas.

Almost three years after Ted Cruz pointedly sought to weaken or sink a controversial Senate immigration bill, his aggressive tactics as a freshman USA senator have come back to haunt his 2016 presidential campaign.

Sessions added, “Ted Cruz was with me, Steve King, Mike Lee and others who were opposed to this bill”. But the crux of Rubio’s argument is that Cruz offered an amendment during the Gang of Eight bill debate that would have granted legal status, but remove the possibility of citizenship, to individuals in the country illegally. The Texas senator has said he doesn’t support a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants now.

Cruz: Of course I wanted the bill to pass, my amendment to pass.

After the speech, Cruz stayed another half-hour to mingle with local supporters and sign autographs.

Cruz said, “President Obama says he has a pen and a phone”.

“By going after Cruz on this issue, [Rubio] is saying ‘wait a minute, you’ve portrayed yourself as a straight talker, and you’re lying through your teeth, ‘ ” says Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. Cruz has seen his top-tier status confirmed by at least one post-debate poll that showed him in second place nationally, albeit far behind Trump. Cruz has never wavered from that position. Those are facts, but the immigration debate has shown little tolerance for such things.

“Rubio would be strong if not for his support of amnesty and open borders”, said U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who has endorsed Cruz.