Posted on 04/24/2015 1:36:56 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
Marco Rubio had changed his mind.
It was December 2012. The Senate gym. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) was making the ask. “You ought to be a part of this,” Durbin told Rubio (R-Fla.), as Rubio rode a stationary bike. Durbin and six other senators wanted to rewrite U.S. immigration laws. In the process, they wanted to give illegal immigrants a way to become legal residents and — eventually — citizens.
Just two years earlier, Rubio had been against doing that. “It is unfair,” he had said, as a tea party candidate for Senate, “to create an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally.”
But that morning in the gym, he was open to the idea. He was in.
With that, Rubio began the most consequential work he has done in Washington. As part of a bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” he would write and pass an 1,198-page immigration bill through the Senate.
For a brief moment, that bill looked like the biggest success of Rubio’s career.
Now it looks like failure.
It turned out that Rubio had overestimated conservatives’ willingness to accept his hyper-complicated bill — and his own power to change their minds. Ultimately, the bill died in the House, his right-wing allies began to doubt his judgment and both sides of the immigration debate had grown irritated by Rubio’s tendency to change his mind.
Instead of a triumph, Rubio’s involvement with the immigration bill became a cautionary tale, about a gifted freshman who miscalculated his capability.
Now, as he begins a run for president, Rubio is left trying to run away from the most prominent item on his political résumé.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
His most prominent accomplishment is failed legislation?
It appears that is the case.
His name should be Marco Polo
Rubio cooked his own goose when he schemed with Schumer against the citizens. He should have tried to hold onto his Senate seat. I’m sure The Cheap Labor Express has a nice cushy job lined up for him after he plays blocker for them during the primaries.
Small time hustler, who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.
Quick burial.
Any politician with a Tea Party base should know better than to get involved with Schumer on amything.
He blocked immigration enforcement in Florida in the 2000’s as speaker in the FL legislature.
The last time he spoke about it, I think he opposed Arizona’s immigration law.
Rubio just needs to flip flop on his support for illegal aliens...
Willard did and it worked for him...Willard flip on other issues too and he got to be the GOPe nominee for POTUS...
Had it succeeded, my opinion of Rubio would have been even worse than it is now. I'd rather have a failed fool than a successful one trying to push bad laws through the Senate.
Nothing in the record of Hispanic immigration suggests that large numbers of their children will become professionals. Instead of filling unfilled positions, expanded work permits on top of amnesty will simply depress working class wages, many of them filled by the anchor babies of these illegals. But Rubio, while smooth, has never been a deep thinker, unlike Cruz. Unfortunately, Cruz is rougher around the edges - he wins debates without necessarily winning over his audience; he's technically brilliant, but charismatically a zero for non-true believers.That was clear in one meeting, recounted by four people in the room, where they were asking GOP senators to include more “guest workers” in the bill.
Without more of these temporary immigrants, the lobbyists said, some low-skill jobs would go unfilled. McCain, they said, suggested an answer. Couldn’t the children of illegal immigrants do those jobs?
Rubio, the son of immigrants, spoke up.
“He says, ‘Pardon me, Senator, but I have to say that the children of those illegal immigrants will be doctors and lawyers,’ ” one lobbyist recalled. “In my mind, I was like, ‘Thank God somebody said it.’ Because nobody else could say that to McCain.”
Rubio racked up $100K in student debt while getting his MBA at a state school. Whatever good things you might say about him, his finances are a mess.
Rand Paul's immigration speech...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reformLatinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
Only in the eyes of democrats is such traitorous turncoat legislation a “most prominent accomplishment”. But of course switching sides doesn’t make you popular with anyone it just makes you untrusted by all. The Democrats don’t like you from the start because of all your other policies and the Conservatives don’t trust you anymore.
You have to be a long time political hack with back room deals with the party establishment on the other side and a relatively blind voter base like Lindsey Graham to even survive such. But as South Carolians wake up to the behavior of Graham more and more of his political forutnatues will come to rest upon the quicksand of democratic support and the crumbling bedrock of legacy.
The minute democrats thing they can win in South Carolina Graham is going down.
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