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."
Is a vanity allowed in Front Page News?
None of these three people during that time period were ever talking about deportation of illegal aliens. You're assuming that today's politics was active during that time period. They weren't.
They want border security, a moratorium on H1B’s, and deportations.
A bizarre and totally false statement, assuming you're still talking about back then. (You strangely shift to the present tense while, logically, you should be referring to the past.) Cruz's amendments sought to expand H1B Visas and to double green cards during that time period. Of course, deportation was never anything anybody was talking about.
Interesting that you would bring up Trump’s comments from 2012 to try to argue that Trump hasn’t made deportation an issue in this campaign. You’re trying to conflate two separate issue. Statements he made in 2012, and his consistent support for deportations since he’s entered the race. Nice try but no cigar. Trump was the only candidate coming out in favor of deporting all illegals. His 2012 comments don’t change that.
If you want to argue that you don’t believe what he’s saying today because of his comments in 2012, then you’re free to do so. But that’s a separate issue from arguing that his position since entering the campaign hasn’t been deportation of illegals. What do you think all the heat he took from the media for the first two months of his campaign was all about? His comments from 2012?
Also interesting that you would claim Cruz supports deportation because he opposed the Dream Act. Opposition to the Dream Act was support for the status quo. If deportation is the status quo, then why are we even discussing it? The problem isn’t the law. Deportation is the current penalty for illegal immigration, and has been for years. The problem is, our politicians don’t want to enforce the law. The Dream Act was an attempt to give official approval to our de facto current policy of non-deportation. Supporting the status quo does not mean one supports deportation enforcement. If the status quo was deportation enforcement, we wouldn’t have 11 million + illegals in our country.
Cruz has supported a different approach from the Dream Act. Border enforcement first, and then ‘a discussion’, which by his comments, seems to mean some form of legalization, rather than deportation.
I was directly responding to the assertion that it was Trump who brought deportation into focus— that it wasn’t mentioned prior to Trump’s entry into the race in June. I chose to refute this with statements from Sen. Cruz and Mr. Trump showing that Cruz discussed ending deportation relief—even threatened to shut down the government (again!) to stop it, while Trump’s comments about deportation prior to this year have been to call it maniacal. In other words: Trump didn’t start or even re-start talk about deportation, it’s been part of the conservative lexicon all this time.
Oppsition to the Dream Act was not support for the status quo. By advocating the end of Sactuary city and DREAMer amnesty, Cruz was de facto arguing that they be deported.
As for Cruz’s comments regarding deportation, I’ll leave you with this quote: “The President cannot pick and choose which laws he enforces. The penalty for being here illegally is deportation. As President I will enforce the law.”
Thank you for your response. I need to grab some sleep now, but will reply to any further comments come morning. God Bless you and yours.
I switched tense because I was pointing out that all 3 senators still want immigration reform, and I gave examples of what they think that reform should look like. just because they advocated for reform in 2013 and still advocate for reform in 2015 does not mean they are advocating for legalization or amnesty. Reform does not have to equal amnesty.
As for whether any of the three mentioned deportation in 2013, I will have to wait to look that up. It’s 2:30am.
G’night and God Bless
Cruz defined the type of "common sense immigration reform" he supported. It included bringing "those who are here illegally out of the shadows," and advised Congress to pass his amendments, which he believed would increase the chances of the bill passing in the House by a significant margin.
Eventually the unamended Gang of Eight bill passed the Senate, and very nearly passed the House, if not for the surprise win of Dave Brat, which had the GOPe in the House thinking twice
.
“By advocating the end of ... DREAMer amnesty, Cruz was de facto arguing that they be deported.”
That’s my point. It was a de facto support for deportation, not an explicit support for deportation. And while he said that a President must enforce existing law, he supported other attempts to change existing law as it pertained to illegal immigration and deportations.
It’s true that he opposed the Dream Act, but he supported a version of the Gang of 8 bill, that would have allowed for a process of legalization after border enforcement. His stance seems to be an acceptance of the Democrat meme, that large scale deportation of illegals hasn’t worked, because it’s impractical and therefore, the law needs to be changed to catch up with that reality.
That is different from Trump’s position since he started campaigning, which is support for deportation of all illegals in deed, not just in name. He has argued for that position as a matter of policy, not just as an obligation to follow the law. Trump has argued that deportation is the RIGHT policy. Cruz has said he will enforce the law but doesn’t appear to agrees with the law and has in fact, made attempts to change it.
Thanks for the discussion. It’s been enjoyable.
is it your wish to take Cruz down? How does your game pan work?
Does you plan involve supporting conservatives and conservative sites?
What is it that drives you so you need to go to such lengths to get folks to agree with you (prove that you're right even when you're 97% wrong)?
Want to do something positive???
Now for a short public service announcement to all on FR:
We need to ensure we don't get another Obama-like America Hater as the next President.
The best way to ensure that is to actively support a candidate as the next President.
I prefer Cruz and my money goes to his campaign, hence the Cruz link. If you like someone else, donate to him/her (find your own link to do it) and if you use FR and don't donate, then please don't complain about the welfare leeches or those who have Obama Phones because, functionally, you are no different than any other FReeloader
PS - If you are one of those who cannot afford even a small donation to FR or a candidate, God Bless and happy FReeping!.....
GO CRUZ!! Keep it up Trump!!
Yes, I also noticed that Rush Limbaugh does not stand still on issues either. He refines his position over the years, and I’m glad he does. The nation is changing rapidly; political correctness unravels at an exponential rate.
The entire nation was outraged:
Donald Trump Pledges To Secure Our Border Following San Francisco Pier 14 Fatal Shooting
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3307576/posts
Donald Trump reignited the call to secure U.S. borders just hours after federal officials said the man arrested in the shooting death of a San Francisco woman was an undocumented immigrant who had previously been deported five times...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We had lamented similar reports several times before, but this time we had a presidential candidate get outraged over it, and he channeled that moment of FRESH outrage to impact from sea to shining sea.
The immigration issue is evolving RAPIDLY. People for safe borders are now emboldened and expecting more of candidates.
Trump was also part of that evolution:
Trump Backed Amnesty For Illegal Aliens Only Last June
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3374072/posts
[This could be tricky if he hedges. He should be honest — his world view evolved as shocking events struck the Free World like a whirlwind.]
Then came the Paris Attacks quickly followed by San Bernadino. And gumming up political correctness is dangerous muslim refugees from Syria.
The next front might be the Ominous Omnibus:
Donald Trump —
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3373923/posts
“In order to avoid a government shutdown, a cowardly threat from an incompetent President, the elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget discipline.” — Donald Trump
[Goes on. Scathing.]
LOL
True
Yet I was told yesterday "At least Trump has never flip-flopped like Cruz".
With some of these people, reasoning won't work, because they have taken complete leave of reality.
Such is the power of a cult of personality.
I will definitely support Cruz if he wins nomination, but I bite my lip everytime he says he will only deport criminal illegal aliens instead of all illegal aliens like Trump promises. Cruz’s ‘slickness’ sets off my politician radar far too often.
Trump’s better on illegal aliens, the Muslim problem and, jobs and trade. Plus Trump will beat Hilliary soundly, I think Cruz can.
I do wonder if Cruz would be more in line on these issues if he was worth 10 billion dollars, oh well it is what it is.
I DON’T think Cruz can beat Hilliary.
Thank you so much for all the research that went into your article.
I really wish that people would get it that this is not about flip flopping, (man I hate that term). But about honesty.
I was all in for Cruz. Watched his 20+ hour floor speech, signed the petition, made phone calls. But, the tpa vote that then lead to tpp has me really watching him much more carefully. His excuse of backroom deals being made? Seriously! Of course they were being made with this crowd. He should have expected that. Now, I think Trump is the better choice.
Again, no his version of immigration reform did not include, does not include legalization. He specifically used the Dem talking point “bringing people out of the shadows” in that committee testimony in order to highlight how incredibly false that premise was. They had no grand humanitarian intentions or they would have supported an amendment to remove the path to citizenship.
The Gang of 8 Bill was amended, by the way, just not by Cruz.
Cruz’s only attempt to change the law to rule out deportation was... never. He’s never suggested an amendment or bill that would rule out deportation. As to how he “supported” the Gang of 8 bill that allowed for legalization, please see any of the previous postings explaining his statements and amendments.
Thank you as well for a civil, rational exchange of ideas. It has been refreshing.
The amusing thing about all of this is that there is verifiable evidence that proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Cruz supported legalization both during and after the gang of eight fight. I wish I could know your psychology, what it's like to be in your shoes where, with a mixture of pride and faith, you can assert something that the plain evidence disproves. I cannot relate to it. At least, I hope that I cannot. God rescue me if ever I am as self-deluded as you folks!.
Juxtapose that to post after post showing you exactly how Cruz did NOT support legalization. Combine those posts with assertions from honored conservatives regarding the history of this issue. And yet you still maintain this line of discussion, nay, attack, with all the evidence to the contrary.
If there is delusion afoot here, you are just as much to blame.
We all feel your pain
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