Posted on 12/17/2015 7:40:06 PM PST by Greetings_Puny_Humans
(Before I begin, I recommend Freepers read up on this thread here, which proves Cruz's support for legalization short of a pathway to citizenship both in 2013 and also after that, and then continue to read this thread)
So, I've been getting spammed a whole lot by a bunch of rather vicious posters, and I realized a significant pattern in all of them: a failure to not appreciate the language behind all that this debate has been about (the debate on whether or not Cruz lied when he stated he never supported legalization). Nor do they appreciate that they are generally making assumptions about what is mainstream for us today versus what was, at the very least, the accepted mainstream concession that we had swallowed in 2013.
One example of this "forgotten" history, by the way, is that legalization after border enforcement (short a pathway to citizenship) was the mainstream position back then, or at least something we had been beaten down enough to accept under certain circumstances, even by Rush Limbaugh. But we will get to that in its place.
There are several points that posters need to come to grips with to understand the irrelevance of most of the Cruz defenses against the Rubio/Santorum charge:
1) The first thing I keep hearing is: "Cruz voted against amnesty! His amendment REMOVED the pathway to citizenship!"
Cruz has a different definition for amnesty than all of you do. Cruz uses the term "amnesty" interchangeably with the phrase a pathway to citizenship. You can see an example of this in the link I just inserted, where Cruz moves from bashing amnesty to bashing the pathway to citizenship. This is interchangeable language for Cruz. Cruz has also described legalization before border enforcement to be amnesty. But if you notice within that article, this does not stop Cruz from supporting a legalization after the border is secured. To him, this is not amnesty. It never has been. And Team Cruz even reaffirms his support for legalization of illegals from 2013.
2) "It was a POISON PILL to show how extreme the Democrats were!"
It's important to make clear that: whether it was a poison pill or not is entirely irrelevant, since Cruz supported legalization short of a pathway even after the gang of eight fight was over. You would see this if you read that very very first link in this post of mine. If it was all a ruse when Cruz said "I want immigration reform... to bring those that are here illegaly out of the shadows," then Cruz did not get the memo. he kept at it.
Secondly, it appears that the idea of legalization after the border was secured was a pretty mainstream concession back then and was what Lee, Cruz, and possibly even Sessions had already accepted. In Cruz's case, it was what he advocated for as part of "common sense immigration reform." I don't remember the mood at that time since I was always supportive of mass deportation. The general opinion of others has never much bothered my own positions. I am making this conclusion by reading commentary from that time period.
Reading many of the public statements of this time, demonstrating how extreme the Democrats were was indeed a high priority. Everybody knew that the Democrats wanted two things:
1) No border enforcement
2) Perpetual amnesty for every new wave of illegals who, in turn, would become Democrat voters
But this doesn't mean that the GOP wasn't moderate (by our standards of moderate): Republicans at that time, possibly even Sessions, were not as far to the right as we are today. They were not fighting against legalization after the border was secured. This never comes up even once.
Take a look at this release by Senator Lee. Can you tell what's missing? While Lee complains about legalization without border security, nowhere does Lee highlight any amendments or comments that would have removed legalization after the border is secured. Citizenship is certainly barred, but legal status short of a citizenship never is. (Pay attention to these bolds, folks, because a lot of you have trouble appreciating these distinctions. Try to read with an eye to detail.)
Lee highlights all sorts of amendments: he highlights amendments put forward by the Sessions/Lee/Cruz Triumverate that boosts security. That make it harder or near impossible for illegals to work here illegally (supposedly). Lee even calls an amendment by Cruz to double Green Cards a "step in the right direction." (For the record, Sessions opposed this.) But what's missing is any amendment that would have stripped legalization from the bill after the border was secured.
Cruz even gave a press release at that time, highlighted by our very smart fellow Freeper in his American Thinker article, that reads:
"I very much want commonsense immigration reform to pass, but if this bill becomes law as currently written, it will not solve the problem. Instead it will make the problem of illegal immigration worse... We must work together in a bipartisan manner to fix this problem in a way that secures the border, improves legal immigration and respects rule of law so we remain a nation that welcomes and celebrates legal immigrants. I look forward to working with my colleagues on these issues and am confident my proposed amendments will effectively address the current problems with this bill"
Do you see that folks? If Cruz's amendments are passed, then they "effectively address the current problems with this bill." Read it again. Remember. What's still in the bill? Legalization after the border is secure, if his amendments had passed.
This brings me to another strawman: "Cruz's amendment doesn't add legalization!" No, of course it doesn't. Cruz's amendments did all sorts of things, but legalization was in the bill already.
It's also pretty clear here that Cruz was not lying to Democrats in any way. Cruz, just as he said, was making a good faith compromise to get the bill passed. Hence the 500 percent increase in H1B1. Hence the doubling of green cards. If the Democrats had bowed, Cruz would have voted for the bill because it represented, to him, "common sense immigration reform."His amendments would have settled all of his-- and presumably the conservative world's-- issues with the bill.
Mass deportation as a thing to fight for was not an idea. People may have wanted to, but nobody ever raised it as an issue, so far as I can tell, at least from Cruz, at least from Rush, at least from what I can tell from my research of that time period. Just like with the gay marriage debate, slowly but surely, these nefarious things become so mainstream that they are no longer a point of debate. Or, like in the Art of the Deal, you ask for the moon, and thus what to do with Planet Earth just becomes an accepted, undebated thing. That's what legalization had become. A done deal. The only question was, "should they get citizenship?" and "should it be before or after the border is secured?" Rubio's position was that it had to be before the border was secured, because we supposedly "needed to know who was here ASAP, so the number you would grant amnesty to wouldn't get bigger later." Cruz/Lee/Session's was "We need to secure the border so that this is the last amnesty we ever give."
What they were doing-- even Rush Limbaugh-- was trying to find a final solution to illegal immigration, a plan that would stop further illegal immigration into the country once and for all. NOBODY WAS FIGHTING AGAINST LEGALIZATION, in and of itself. As further evidence of this, I started looking for Rush Limbaugh commentary after Breitbart had an article recently where they quoted Rush Limbaugh saying, (going by memory) "Okay, you want immigration reform? 25 years no citizenship for illegals." Breitbart's use of this quote was rather dubious, but it inspired me to go through Rush Limbaugh's archives and to do google searches by years and months for particular terms, and what I discovered was:
Mass deportation was never on Rush Limbaugh's list of priorities during this fight. The entire tenor of Rush's commentary consisted of these several things:
1) That the border would never be secured.
2) That democrats would get 11 million new voters via citizenship.
3) That illegals would abuse welfare and were abusing welfare.
4) I even saw a transcript where Rush talked about the necessity of H1B visas. No mention of expanding it, but certainly not a "Oh, that's a bad program" kind of comment.
Only in one transcript did I find a possible reference to the "find and deport them all" position. In Rush's interview with Marco Rubio, Rush asks him What about enforcing the law as an alternative?
To this, Rubio merely gives a long answer that nowhere makes "finding and deporting them" even something that exists as an idea, but just assumes that "we need a way to get these people to identify and show themselves", which Rush does not challenge. The idea of mass deportation just doesn't seem to be an idea that was in the mind of Rush Limbaugh, and definitely not in Marco Rubio's. If deporting all illegals was in our heads back then, it was not reflected anywhere I could find (but then, it would be impossible for me to check every conservative website or archive from every radio host).
You will notice that all of Rush Limbaugh's concerns-- security, citizenship, H1B expansion (well, Rush didn't explicitly call for expanding it)-- were all addressed by the anti-Gang of Eight team, particulary by Ted Cruz, with the exception of Sessions who tried to remove the H1B expansion.
I think this is demonstrative of something very important:
Ted Cruz rightly believed that this compromise was what conservatives accepted. Granting legal status to illegals after the border is enforced, after welfare is reformed, after all of his amendments become law, just made sense to him and to the country at that time. Maybe folks on FR felt differently about that, or maybe most conservatives didn't realize all the details around that fight. Who knows. But legalization under a particular set of circumstances was not controversial. Even Rush Limbaugh seemed to accept it.
I think this explanation could have vindicated Cruz from all the troubles he's had over the past few days, since his position was clearly better than Rubio's, no question.
The problem, of course, is that Cruz is refusing to own up to that very obvious history. He is claiming he never supported legalization, but it is proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he did... which wasn't a big deal. It's OKAY to evolve further to the right from a position even Rush Limbaugh had accepted. But Cruz didn't evolve fast enough. In fact, Cruz never evolved at all. For months he's been trying to have both sides of the issue. It wasn't until the debate that Cruz gave his first ever, clear answer to the question: "Would you oppose legalization of illegals?" To which Cruz replied, "I do not intend to," which, as weak as it is with that word "intend," is the strongest he's ever been.
I think the reason Cruz has decided to deny any association with his own history is because Donald Trump already trumped him on the issue. Cruz doesn't want to be the "me too" candidate, because Trump took that position and owned it as his own. For Cruz, it's easier just to deny it, that way he maintains an aura of "always consistent". He does not trust Conservatives to be smart enough to accept his explanation of what was going on back then, because Trump has so drastically changed what is and isn't acceptable. Cruz also has to not tick off his donors from the Club for Growth and all those other groups, all of whom would love all this cheap labor. So instead of owning up to his past, Cruz is playing a game, hoping that Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart.com, or whatever, can convince you that the debate back then was entirely different. That the debate back then was about both amnesty-- in the sense of a pathway to citizenship-- AND permanent residence, even though, the truth is, legal status for illegal aliens was already accepted by all parties.
That also raises up another issue: the whole Jeff Sessions defense. "Sessions says Cruz stood by him!" Well, that is absolutely true. But if Sessions is trying to say, "Cruz stood by me to bar legalization in all its forms," then it is entirely false, as the evidence clearly shows. Cruz and the other members of the GOP also clearly had ideas of expanding immigration at that time, as you will note in the Lee press release, is described as a "step in the right direction" for fixing our "broken immigration system."
At election, the repub vote will probably be so split that Hillary will be our next President.Especially if Trump is just pulling a Ross Perot on us.
Does that go for all the decorated and disabled vets that are "stink-potters" too?
How do you measure patriotism...by whether somebody supports Cruz?
Baffling.
He could have done so as late as yesterday, without cost.
Now this will be in the news for awhile, and it's not favorable.
It does not help Rubio, but it hurts Cruz.
You seem to be using ‘legalization’ as a synonym for citizenship which is not what Cruz articulated.
What post were you reading? It's not mine.
I’m referring to your article which makes multiple references to ‘legalization.’
>> He is claiming he never supported legalization
Perhaps Cruz made that claim, but I never heard nor read it. But Cruz has supported the legalization of the illegals, but not for the sake of citizenship.
Because, obviously, I haven't debated it one thousand times already :p. The lame distractions and malignant misinformation is irrelevant for the thread, and has been dealt with many times elsewhere.
As far as I can tell, there's a lot of folks who measure it by whether one is a Cruz supporter or not.
Impossible, because my article literally spends 99 percent of the time distinguishing between the pathway to citizenship and the legalization that Cruz supported.
The legalization of what?
Excellent analysis. Great job. Thanks for your effort.
As you rightly point out, we wouldn’t even be discussing deportations as a viable policy option if Trump hadn’t gotten into the race. That is clear to anyone looking at this objectively.
Your article demonstrates why we are indebted to Trump for making deportations a politically viable approach to the illegal immigrant problem.
A year ago, even the strongest conservative voices in the senate - Sessions, Lee, and Cruz had conceded to the left, that you can’t deport illegals. Why? Well you just can’t. It was accepted wisdom, and no one wanted to risk their political future by challenging this assumption. It was too toxic and was viewed as not having any chance of turning out well.
Then Trump came along and turned conventional wisdom on its head. He’s the one that had the guts to say the unthinkable and not back down. He took all the incoming that the lesser politicians were unable ann/or unwilling to take, and changed the unthinkable into a politically viable policy. And this goes completely over the heads of the Trump bashers.
Lengthy explanation of your position. Thanks for sharing. Glaring fault: no comprehension of Senate procedure.
Example: Cruz, Lee, Sessions could not offer amendments to remove underlying legalization because that would be re-writing the base structure of the bill. The only way to do that in a markup (which is what we call the sessions during which the parent committee amends and re-writes bills) is to offer what is called a “sponsors amendment.” That gets its name, as you may have guessed, from amendments offered by a bill’s sponsoring Senators. As neither Cruz, nor Sessions, nor Lee were sponsors, no such amendment altering the fundamentals could be offered by them.
Therefore, the best those three stalwart conservative members of the Judiciary Committee could do was offer a long list of amendments doomed to failure to have a record of just how awful the bill was. Examples included the Cruz pathway to citizenship amendment, and a Sessions bill changing legal immigration quotas.
Again, this is procedural minutiae that quite often makes lay men’s eyes glaze over. If immigration reform champion Sessions, rock-solid conservative Lee, and FReepers with years of experience are telling you exactly why your argument doesn’t hold water, perhaps it’s time you listen.
exactly
He offered a poison pill amendment to kill amnesty and it’s being used against him by the pro-amnesty crowd.
pathetic
Interesting that you make the claim that Trump brought deportation back into the lime lite.
Here’s Cruz in 2014 fighting against deportation relief, aka DREAM Act.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5792886
Trump on deportation in 2012: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/09/2012-flashback-donald-trump-said-gop-was-too-mean-spirited-towards-illegal-immigrants/
Trying to explain complicated legislative nuances to the Trumpet crowd is a losing proposition. OF course these folks have more credibility than Rush Limbaugh, Jeff Sessions, and Mark Levin /s
Which begs the question why they would bother to try, if they were opposed to do something that could not be taken out of the bill. All that said, all of Cruz's stated support for this bill, the rhetoric that was being used at that time, the evidence from Rush's show, proves beyond any reasonable doubt that legalization in and of itself was not a matter of debate, but was an accepted given. In Cruz's case, he openly advocated for it, not just during the fight, but after that, as my first link in my post demonstrates.
FReepers with years of experience
FReepers with "years of experience" aren't all that they're cracked up to be.
They bothered to try because, as Rush, Cruz, and Sessions have explained, by offering these amendments, they exposed that the Gang of 8 wanted nothing less than amnesty. Also, as you have pointed out, all three Senators have stated a true desire for immigration reform—but not amnesty based reform. They want border security, a moratorium on H1B’s, and deportations. Doing nothing, not even trying to have the needs of their constituencies met, isn’t what they were elected to do. As Cruz said during that committee session “Border security is not a trivial matter to the people of Texas.”
I’m sorry that you think my years of service to the Republic are not “all they’re cracked up to be”.
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