Ted Cruz clarifies immigration stance in renewed Southern offensive
Ted Cruz, facing increased scrutiny as he rises in national polls, is taking to the campaign trail this week with a renewed effort to remind his base of just how deep a conservative he is. As reported by Katie Glueck in POLITICO, Cruz began a swing throughout the South this weekend, starting with a fiery speech in Alabama to more than 1,300 supporters. It was the start of a 12-day 12-city tour throughout the Southern states, an area where Cruz is thought to have the best organization of any candidate. Saturday’s performance focused on an attempt to backtrack comments Cruz made during last week’s Republican Party debate, insisting to the raucous crowd he “never” supported the legalization of undocumented immigrants, something at odds with comments he made during an attempted Senate immigration reform bill in 2013. “One of the things you’ve been hearing about is criticism of Ted and what he did with regard to the massive immigration bill they tried to ram through in 2013,” said Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions at the event. Sessions, one of the party’s leading immigration hard-liners, has been considered a potential Cabinet member in a Cruz administration. “Let me tell you, I was there every step of the way,” Sessions said. “Ted Cruz was on my side, he fought this legislation all the way through.” Cruz’s Alabama stump speech, made in what is considered one of the most conservative states in the country, had much of the conservative talking points he used elsewhere in the country, but seemed to resonate a little more with the crowd there than elsewhere. Glueck writes that many in the audience responded with cheers and shouts of “amen.” However, talking about immigration drew the loudest cheers, especially after Cruz had sparred with Marco Rubio over the issue during the most recent Republican Party debate. Cruz attempted to explain away his rhetoric in 2013 by saying it was all part of a larger plan to stop comprehensive immigration reform proposal the Gang of Eight — which included Rubio — tried to push through the Senate. Since then, Rubio and Cruz have been battling it out, with the Texas senator trying to portray his rival from Florida as a supporter of “amnesty” — a word frowned upon in Republican Party circles — as well as someone tied to liberal Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer from New York. That led to Cruz, on defense from the Rubio campaign, having to explain intricate procedural matters and rhetoric that appears, at least at face value, contradictory. For his part, Rubio has been attempting to portray Cruz as “inconsistent” in his immigration stance. In addition, a New York Times story published Friday showed Cruz, as a domestic policy adviser for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, taking a much more conciliatory tone than the hard-line stance he embraces today. If that narrative gains traction, it could hurt Cruz in the eyes of his conservative base. “My gut is, people see Ted Cruz as so far to the right, a really far-right conservative guy, and people see Rubio as conservative but a little more mainstream, more moderate, so when this immigration thing is thrown at both of them, it’s much more likely to stick to Rubio than to Cruz,” one Republican source told POLITICO. “Cruz had an awful interview with [Fox News’s] Bret Baier, but he’s going to fix that.” Nevertheless, Glueck says Cruz continues to wow Southern audiences with tailor-made stump speech lines such as: The “single biggest difference” between himself and his debate opponents is that “with me, when I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do exactly what I said I’m going to do.” And the Southern crowd eats it up.
Ted Cruz bobs and weaves on immigration in Fox News interview
There’s little doubt Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has carved out a path as a legitimate threat to win the 2016 GOP presidential primary. But did he also advocate for a path for illegal immigrants to remain in the country? Fox New’s Bret Baier pushed Cruz on the issue in an interview Wednesday, and the smooth-talking Harvard Law School alum ended up sounding less assertive than his characteristic debate-champ aplomb. Baier called out Cruz – who scored points against Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Tuesday’s debate by pillorying him for being soft on immigration – for appearing to offer an amendment on which he called for bipartisan agreement to allow undocumented workers to remain in the country. “I don’t want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass,” said Cruz on the Senate floor in 2013. “And so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is to pass commonsense immigration reform that that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration, and that allows those who are here illegally to come in out of the shadows, then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together,” said Cruz, advocating for an amendment to a bill he now calls the “Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill.” Baier baited Cruz, saying his amendment would allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the country permanently, a position antithetical to Cruz’s hard-right stance in the 2016 race. “It wouldn’t have. What was happening there was the ‘Gang of Eight”s Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill, which was a massive amnesty bill,” said Cruz tentatively. “I was leading the fight against amnesty. That particular bill removed citizenship, that those here illegally shall be permanently ineligible for citizenship.” Baier pointed out Cruz did not say that at the time, citing quotes from news sources where Cruz said the amendment was a compromise that could increase the chances of the bill becoming law. “Of course I wanted the bill to pass, my amendment to pass,” Cruz, apparently shaken by the line of questioning. “What my amendment did was take citizenship off the table. It doesn’t mean that I supported the other aspects of the bill, which was terrible.” The exchange seemingly revealed a chink in the anti-immigration armor Cruz bears as he attacks Rubio. For his part, Rubio claims he and Cruz have very similar approached to immigration, a position that now seems more tenable.
Ted Cruz’ attacks on immigration puzzle Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio says he and Ted Cruz have similar stances on immigration, which is why the Texas senator’s shots at his record on that volatile subject the past few days have surprised him. “I’m puzzled and quite frankly surprised by Ted’s attacks, since Ted’s position on immigration is not that much different than mine,” Rubio told a crowd of reporters in Orlando at the Republican Party of Florida’s Sunshine Summit. “He’s a supporter of legalizing people who were in this country illegally,” the Florida senator said at a news conference immediately after he spoke at the event. “If he’s changed that position, then he certainly has the right to change his position on that issue, but he should be clear about that.” Rubio then said that on other immigration issues Cruz has gone further than he has in trying to accommodate undocumented immigrants. “He wanted to double the number of green cards. He wanted a 500 percent increase in the number of HB-1 visas, so everybody running for president on the Republican side, in one way or shape, supports some form or fashion the legalization of people who are in this country illegally.” Rubio said the question now is what’s the most responsible way to deal with the issue. He then repeated his stance since he began distancing himself from his support as one of the “Gang of Eight” bipartisan Senate group who wrote a comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate passed in summer 2013, but that former House Speaker John Boehner never brought before the House. Rubio’s stance is that there needs to be tighter border security to get the illegal immigration situation under control before there can be any discussion about what to do with the undocumented. He blames the migratory crises of the summer of 2014 and President Barack Obama‘s executive actions a year ago in trying to shield millions from deportation as being the major obstacles against the current Congress working on immigration reform. “The biggest lesson from 2015 for me was how little trust there is in the federal government to enforce the law. Once you prove it to people that it’s working, than I think you’re going to have the support and political space that you need to move forward on modernization and ultimately on dealing realistically with those who are in this country for a significant period of time,” which Rubio says should be about 10 years. For his part, Cruz isn’t backing down one bit in the verbal battle, telling conservative talk show radio host Mike Gallagher earlier Friday, “From Day One I led the fight against the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, stood shoulder to shoulder with Jeff Sessions … and we defeated it.”
