Immigration Fuels Cruz-Rubio Republican Clash
More than any other issue, immigration is driving the rivalry between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, presidential rivals focusing on the divisive topic in their closing messages to Republican voters before the sprint to the Iowa caucuses.
Cruz, a Texas senator and tea party firebrand, sees Rubio’s support for a more forgiving immigration policy as his greatest vulnerability among conservatives who overwhelmingly oppose a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. Rubio, a Florida senator, sees Cruz’s shifting rhetoric on immigration as a prime example of a larger pattern of political pandering.
Indeed, among the Republican Party’s two Hispanic presidential hopefuls, few issues offer a clearer contrast in tone, if not policy. Their competing strategies played out in early voting states on Thursday as the freshman senators pushed to separate themselves from the crowded GOP field six weeks before the first primary votes are cast.
“He’s going to have a hard time because he’s not told the truth about his position in the past on legalization,” Rubio said of Cruz while campaigning in Iowa. “It’s not an attack. It’s a fact.”
“That is utter nonsense,” Cruz said of Rubio’s charge while talking to reporters in Las Vegas. He declined to say what he would do with the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, but accused Rubio of joining with Democrats to support “amnesty.” (Read more from “Immigration Fuels Cruz-Rubio Republican Clash” HERE)
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