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Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio Are Money Race Winners

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For all the complaints from Democrats about the amount of big money in politics, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have raised a staggering amount of cash.

Clinton’s campaign raised $112 million in 2015, and top Democratic billionaire donor George Soros recently gave $6 million to her super PAC, according to new figures filed with the Federal Election Commission Sunday night. Sanders, for his part, raised roughly $73 million last year, but as his insurgent candidacy gains momentum, he continues to bring in cash. The Vermont senator raised more than $20 million in January, his campaign said Sunday.

On the Republican side, front-runner Donald Trump has lent his campaign more than $12 million through the end of 2015. Yet while he consistently states he is not raising money, his campaign recorded donations worth over $2 million in the fourth quarter, according to the filing. Trump boasted at the end of the year he would begin spending $2 million per week — that spending is not included in Sunday’s report.

Trump can easily self-fund his campaign, but GOP contenders Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz still must hit the donor circuit. Rubio did well in the fourth quarter, raising $14 million — twice that of his Florida rival, Jeb Bush. His super PAC also won major donations from conservative hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer and Ken Griffin. And Cruz ended the year in a strong position. He raised $20.5 million in the last three months of 2015, ending with $18.7 million. (Read more from “Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio Are Money Race Winners” HERE)

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Marco Rubio’s Record of Bad Judgment

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By George F. Will. What boxer Sonny Liston’s manager said of him (Sonny had his good points, the trouble was his bad points) is true of Marco Rubio. His strengths include intelligence, articulateness and, usually, cheerfulness. His misjudgments involve, in ascending order of importance, the Senate immigration bill of 2013, sugar, Libya and S . 590. Together these reveal a recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings.

Rubio’s retreat, under withering political heat, from the immigration bill was undignified but not reprehensible. The bill had 1,197 pages because the 906-page Affordable Care Act had not slaked the congressional appetite for “comprehensive” solutions to complex problems. The immigration bill solved everything , down to the hourly wage of immigrant agricultural sorters ($9.84). Rubio shared this serene knowingness.

His sugar addiction is a reprehensible but not startling example of the routine entanglements of big government and big business. He has benefited from the support of Florida’s wealthy sugar producers, who have benefited from sugar import quotas and other corporate welfare that forces Americans to pay approximately twice the world price for sugar. What is, however, startling is Rubio’s preposterous defense of this corporate welfare as a national security imperative: Without our government rigging the sugar market, “other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate, you know, housing and so forth, and then we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we’re at the mercy of a foreign country for food security.” (Read more from “Marco Rubio’s Record of Bad Judgment” HERE)

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Marco Rubio Seeks to Dismiss Court Challenge to His Eligibility to Be President

By Alex Leary. Donald Trump in Pensacola on Wednesday night continued to question Canadian-born Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president, wondering if Cruz were to win the nomination and a court ruled against him, “What do you do? Concede the election to Hillary Clinton or crazy Bernie?”

The jabs against Cruz, shadowed by some other Republican presidential candidates, have triggered serious talk about settling the ambiguity contained the Constitution and legal rulings.

And that has ramifications for another Trump rival: Marco Rubio.

This week Rubio sought to have a court complaint in Florida against him thrown out, saying the argument “would jeopardize centuries of precedent and deem at least six former presidents ineligible for office.” (Last week he told reporters of Cruz, “I don’t think that’s an issue.”)

Rubio was born in Miami in 1971. But Rubio’s Cuban immigrant parents did not become U.S. citizens until 1975. (Read more from “Marco Rubio Seeks to Dismiss Court Challenge to His Eligibility to Be President” HERE)

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Smart Strategy or Overconfidence? Rubio Plays Hard-To-Get with Voters

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Marco ­Rubio no doubt wants to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office. What is not so clear is how hard he is willing to work to get there.

Republican activists — including many who appreciate Rubio’s formidable political gifts and view him as the party’s best hope for beating Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton — say they are alarmed at his seeming disdain for the day-to-day grind of retail politics. Even some staunch supporters are anxious.

“Rubio has not put in the face time that he really needs to have, I don’t think,” said Al Phillips, an influential South Carolina pastor who backs Rubio. “I think that’s been somewhat to his detriment.”

That may be, as some of his allies fret privately, a sign of overconfidence in his own abilities. Or it may be a smart strategic decision that the personal touch is overrated in an era in which celebrity billionaire Donald Trump is leading the field with a campaign that consists largely of mega-rallies, barrages of tweets and television interviews that are literally phoned in.

And Rubio is certainly capable of turning on the charm with one key constituency: deep-pocketed donors. He recently secured support from billionaire hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin. He’s believed to be the favorite to win over billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. (Read more from “Smart Strategy or Overconfidence? Rubio Plays Hard-To-Get with Voters” HERE)

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Rubio Misses Spending Bill Vote

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Sen. Marco Rubio missed Friday’s Senate vote approving a massive $1.8 trillion end-of-the-year spending bill and tax package — a day after he suggested that he could try to slow the legislation down.

The Florida Republican, who is running for president, was the only 2016 contender to miss the vote, which is the Senate’s final vote of the year.

Rubio defended his absence in an interview, telling CBS News that “in essence, not voting for it, is a vote against it.”

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), three other presidential candidates, all voted against the legislation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a fourth GOP presidential candidate from the Senate, backed the bill. (Read more from “Rubio Misses Spending Bill Vote” HERE)

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Rubio Bill Expanded Visa Program Used by San Bernardino Terrorists

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When I was fighting the Gang of Eight bill in 2013, one of my observations was that this legislation provided much more than amnesty for illegal aliens already here. It created a permanent open border policy across the spectrum of legal and illegal immigration.

One such provision was Section 2310 (page 426), which would have massively expanded the K-1 fiancé visa program, the very visa that San Bernardino terrorist Tafsheen Malik used to gain permanent residence in our country. While the underlying premise of this program makes sense, it has been rife with fraud and 99.7% of requests for K-1 visas have been approved in 2014. According to CIS, “[C]lose to half of the aliens initially slated for K-1 visas (and marriages) did not get married in the United States as planned.”

Section 2310 of the Rubio bill would have extended the courtesy of K-1 visas from foreign fiancés of U.S. citizens to foreign fiancés of legal permanent residents! This would have set off a phenomenon of mass fraudulent chain migration. Think about it this way. We have a record number of immigrants living in this country, particularly from the third world and—most prominent to our discussion—the Middle East. Any one of those individuals, under this bill, could have brought in fiancés from similar countries with the same 99.7% success rate. Also, the millions of illegal aliens awarded amnesty under this bill would have been entitled to bring in fiancés, creating a likely scenario of newly amnestied aliens immediately bringing in a relative or friend under fraudulent pretenses of marriage.

Moreover, by extension, this bill would have extended the K-2 visas—a license to bring in the children of the foreign-born fiancé (even from a previous spouse)—to those spouses of legal immigrants residing in the U.S. The chain migration that would have resulted is bad enough, but could you imagine the endless security risks? As many U.S. citizen Muslim terrorists as there unfortunately are in this country, there are probably even more non-citizen immigrants from the Middle East who likely maintain even stronger ties to their countries of origin. It would have been so easy to bring in limitless numbers of Tafsheen Maliks.

What is also disturbing is that, as Jessica Vaughn noted, immigration officials fail to adequately check into the background of those who sponsor immigrant visas. If the lack of screening of U.S. citizen-sponsors has created a security risk, allowing all immigrants to sponsor visas would be a security nightmare. Remember, there are hundreds of thousands of known criminal legal immigrants in this country that have never been deported but would have been eligible to sponsor visas.

One of the observations from last night’s debate that was lost in the shuffle is that, once again, Marco Rubio did not disavow the Gang of Eight bill. He just repeated the mantra that the American people don’t trust the bill. This jives with his previous comments that, in his estimation, the bill did in actuality have the requisite security measures.

The K-1 provision is just one of many components of this bill that would have presented us with a clear and present security danger, not to mention a massive social and fiscal drain.

No wonder Obama’s former speechwriter said last night that the White House was “very appreciative” of Rubio’s work on immigration.

(For more from the author of “Rubio Bill Expanded Visa Program Used by San Bernardino Terrorists” please click HERE)

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The Rubio Campaign’s Unseemly Alinsky Tactics Against Cruz

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I was among the first national radio hosts to support Marco Rubio in his uphill Republican primary campaign for the Senate against the unprincipled Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Back then, he ran as an unabashed Tea Party conservative. I also supported Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, among others, in their campaigns against the entrenched GOP establishment. But soon after arriving in Washington, Rubio decided to throw in with these politicians – including John McCain and Lindsey Graham and take an active leadership role in the Gang of Eight fiasco. As he runs for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio has attempted to redefine his position on immigration yet again, resulting in his utter incoherence on the subject.

Moreover, Rubio’s views on foreign policy are also more in line with McCain-Graham pseudo-conservativism. It is a kind of naïve and radical interventionism, involving endless demands for American ground forces, that President Ronald Reagan would never have supported – and did not. For example, Rubio’s support for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, joining with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and, of course, McCain and Graham, has not led to democracy. Instead, Libya has become another extremely dangerous and growing stronghold for Islamic terrorists and a direct threat to our country. “Democracy projects” have also led to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, ushering in the current Islamic terrorist state that directly threatens America, as well as the more recent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was eventually ousted by the Egyptian military, and so forth. Democracy requires more than an election. It requires, first and foremost, a civil society. I’ve talked about this a great length on my radio program.

But my commentary here is not intended as a thorough analysis of immigration and foreign policies, which may come in a later essay. This is a friendly warning to Marco Rubio and his campaign donors, advisers, and consultants that they cannot wash away some of Rubio’s less than stellar legislative actions and related positions and pronouncements by embracing and unleashing Saul Alinsky-type tactics against Ted Cruz or other conservatives. Such unprincipled ambition has not and will not go unnoticed by conservatives.

Rather than proudly standing on his own record, and contrasting his positions honestly with those of Cruz, the latter of whom is clearly the more conservative and anti-establishment candidate, Rubio and his surrogates have launched a propaganda campaign against Cruz in a deceitful attempt to distort his record. As an activist in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 primary and general election campaigns for president, I can tell you this is also something Reagan did not do as he was proud of his record and sought a true battle over ideas with the GOP establishment and liberal Democrats. However, his primary and general election opponents over the years — Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, or Walter Mondale — preferred the route Rubio has now taken – distortion and personal smears.

The “Cruz voted against Israel” Smear

Now let’s get to specifics. Did you know that Ted Cruz is not supportive of Israel? For anyone who has followed Cruz’s career, it would be like accusing Jeff Sessions of supporting amnesty. Oh wait, Rubio has already done that.

The Rubio campaign has also accused Cruz of being weak on immigration, weak on national security, and even supportive of Syria’s Assad! And we conservatives are supposedly so stupid we will fall for all of it!

At each stage, there has been an almost seamless coordination with Republican establishment media at the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Weekly Standard and Commentary Magazine, to do the bidding of the Rubio campaign – no matter how false and preposterous the assertion.

Late last week, the Weekly Standard obsequiously peddled the Rubio campaign attack that Cruz voted to cut funding for Israel’s defense as part of his support for Rand Paul’s budget in 2013. The Rubio transcribers there are claiming that the Paul budget, which balanced the budget in 5 years, “among other cuts, slashed defense funding and international aid, including aid to Israel.”

This is breathtakingly dishonest. Aside from Cruz and Paul, 16 other Republicans, including Mike Lee, Tom Coburn and Jeff Sessions, voted for the budget. The notion that one can pull out any single provision of a massive budget, which doesn’t set policy, in order to attack an opponent is wittingly disingenuous, as witnessed by some of the pro-Israel conservative champions who voted for it.

Indeed, the Weekly Standard omitted that the Paul budget zeroed out all aid to Israel’s enemies and terrorist entities like the Palestinians. If it is fair to say Cruz voted against aid for Israel by supporting the broader Paul budget, it is equally fair to say that Rubio voted to continue aiding anti-Israel governments and terrorists because he opposed the Paul budget. It would then be also equally fair to suggest that Rubio opposes a balanced budget. The Rubio campaign’s notion that Cruz opposes Israel’s Iron Dome program because it was one provision in the massive National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which he voted against, is also absurd. There have been many reasons to oppose the NDAA that include both the policy and the actual process. For example, last year’s 1,648 page NDAA bill was voted on less than two days after the text was posted online and contained a massive federal land grab. Or the time Harry Reid allowed only 2 amendment votes on arguably the most important annual bill. And each time the future of the Iron Dome was not hinging upon passage of this entire bill. Rubio and his media cheerleaders know it.

But we need not focus on one line item of a broader, more important, balanced budget vote. A cursory glance at Cruz’s brief career in the Senate reveals a record of standing for Israel on more fronts and with more force than any other senator in modern history, including Rubio, who is undoubtedly a supporter of Israel as well.

There was perhaps no vote that had a more deleterious effect on Israel than the nomination by Obama of John Kerry for Secretary of State. Rubio supported the nomination and voted to confirm Kerry. Cruz was one of only three Republicans to oppose him. And Kerry has been an unmitigated disaster across a wide range of foreign policy issues.

Cruz’s other pro-Israel actions include:

A bill to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem

Using his subcommittee chairmanship to conduct hearings on Obama’s refusal to follow a court order and grant restitution to American victims of terror in Israel.

Introducing legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a sister of Hamas, as a terror group.

During the Israel-Hamas war, when Obama imposed a de facto travel embargo on Israel, Cruz shut it down within 24 hours after he threatened to block all State Department nominees from confirmation.

Nobody did more to fight the Iran deal harnessing every messaging tool at his disposal.

Where is Rubio’s Voice?

Which brings us to the next logical question. Cruz has used his committee assignments, legislation, floor speeches, and media appearances to fight against Obama’s war on Israel. By Rubio’s own admission, he has for the most part checked out of the Senate and as such has been MIA for fights on many of these important issues.

Rubio would be wise to focus on what he has done for conservatives on national security or any other issue. But this is where he may be having some difficulty. His record is thin. As I mentioned earlier, Rubio’s major legislative achievement in the Senate was the Gang of Eight travesty. This bill would have created permanent open borders, invited back countless dangerous aliens who were already deported, and created an unlimited new pipeline of immigration and refugees from the Middle East.

To this day, Rubio defends his Gang of Eight role, while simultaneously trying to distance himself from aspects of the bill. Last week, he also refused to vote for Rand Paul’s plan to pause the flow of refugees entering our country from the Middle East or other areas of the world where terrorism is pervasive. Given ISIS’s promise to hide terrorists among refugees, including those from Syria, which they accomplished in the recent slaughter in Paris, and the incompetence of the Obama’s administration’s vetting processes, prudence should have guided Rubio to vote for the Paul plan – if he is the national security hawk he and his media surrogates claims him to be.

Furthermore, the notion that Rubio is little different from Cruz on immigration, as suggested by Rubio and his campaign, ignores the dichotomy between the two of them on every aspect of this issue. Cruz fought tooth and nail to block the Gang of Eight bill. Rubio championed it. Cruz has led the fight against DACA, DAPA, sanctuary cities, and Obama’s lawless refugee policies, while Rubio has remained largely silent. The truth matters.

Rubio’s NSA Hit on Cruz

Rubio has accused opponents of the earlier NSA metadata collection system, in particular Cruz, of being national security doves. In fact, he has even warned them that if the country is attacked as a result of the new law’s judicial review requirement, which was spearheaded by Mike Lee and voted for by, among others, Cruz, they will be responsible for weakening the nation’s defense. Yet there’s not even one example of the earlier metadata collection system stopping terrorism. In the latest terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Rubio fails to mention that despite the telephonic activities, apparently the killers somehow avoided NSA notice. There are honest disagreements about this program, based on legitimate constitutional issues, but to insist that constitutional conservatives, like Cruz, who backed a modified metadata program are weak on defending America is contemptible. As Rubio knows, Sen. Steve Daines voted with Cruz, as did Sen. Cory Gardner, both of whom are supporting Rubio.

For now, I will stop here. Marco Rubio is a talented man who can potentially contribute a lot to this presidential race in the remaining months. But that will only happen if he abandons his Alinsky tactics for a more Reaganesque approach and treats the conservative electorate with the respect it deserves. If Rubio is proud of his record, then he should defend it. If he objects to Cruz’s record, he should challenge it. But stop falsifying both. (For more from the author of “The Rubio Campaign’s Unseemly Alinsky Tactics Against Cruz” please click HERE)

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Team Rubio’s Pathetic National Security Attack on Cruz

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We are now back to the arsonist blaming the firefighter for arson, again.

This time Marco Rubio’s backers have really stepped in it with Iowa voters by running an ad insinuating that Cruz is responsible for Paris-style terror attacks because he voted to reform the NSA bulk data collection. The Cruz campaign probably couldn’t pay Team Rubio enough money to continue running those ads because Iowa voters hate the mass surveillance state.

Sean Noble, a Rubio backer, is running $200,000 worth of ads in Iowa through his 501(c)4 group assailing Cruz as weak on national security because he championed the Freedom Act. This is a line of attack recently lodged by Rubio himself and dutifully picked up in the beltway “conservative” media over the past week. What is so pathetic about this attack is that voters oppose the NSA bulk data collection and this bill was sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee to strike a balance between preserving the vital tools needed to track terrorists and ensuring that the NSA doesn’t cast a wide net around all Americans.

Not only was this bill supported by Sen. Lee, it garnered the support of Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Steve Daines (R-Mt), two supporters of Rubio. A number of House members supporting Rubio for president voted for the Freedom Act as well. All but 47 Republicans voted for the bill, and a good number of the no votes felt the Freedom Act didn’t go far enough in curtailing the NSA.

In fact, Mr. Noble worked for Sen. Jeff Flake who also voted for the Freedom Act. I guess his boss and all of Rubio’s backers are also weak on national security.

The reality is that no surveillance state is robust enough to compensate for the security risks incurred from the massive immigration, particularly from stateless Middle East refugees, Rubio planned to bring in under the Gang of 8 bill. This line of attack from Rubio really speaks to the dyslexic national security priorities he shares with Sens. McCain and Graham. They believe we should get involved in every Islamic civil war in the Middle East and supported the arming of Al Qaeda in Libya, and now in Syria. Then they support open borders and the importation of Islamic refugees from the civil wars in which they involved us. Finally, they want a mass surveillance state to attempt to cure the problems they caused.

How about not supporting Islamist rebels and the Arab Spring that gave rise to ISIS in the first place? How about supporting Cruz’s immigration plan that speaks to the direct threat of importing Islamists to our own shores? How about supporting Cruz’s bill to strip citizenship from those who are actually caught fighting for ISIS.

Team Rubio seems to have its constitutional arguments and national security/immigration policies flipped on its head. Their arguments might have gained some resonance against a Ron Paul-style challenger, but against Cruz that dog won’t hunt. (For more from the author of “Team Rubio’s Pathetic National Security Attack on Cruz” please click HERE)

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Rubio’s Bill Would Have Opened Floodgates to Islamic Refugees

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Here’s a question an incisive debate moderator ought to ask Marco Rubio: are you happy Senators Sessions and Cruz helped defeat your Gang of 8 immigration bill?

One of the more obscure yet destructive provisions of the Gang of 8 bill I wrote about in 2013 was section 3405 (page 693), which created an entire new pipeline for refugees. This bill would have concocted an unconditional right to immediate legal permanent resident status for any person in the world who declares himself “stateless.” Had the bill passed in 2013, it would have given the Obama administration power to define who is considered stateless. Most of those likely to be designated as stateless are from Islamic hell holes and would include the Syrians, Somalis, Palestinians, and the Muslim Rohingya in Burma.

In addition, section 3403 would have granted Obama broad authority to create entire classes of refugees by categorically declaring them eligible based on humanitarian grounds. Under existing law, to the extent it is adhered to, each application must be scrutinized on a case-by-case basis and the prospective refugee must demonstrate a credible fear of persecution on an individual level.

Section 3401 of the bill also dramatically weakened the precautions against fraudulent asylum petitions by, among other things, eliminating the time constraints on filing those applications.

In totality, this bill would have created endless avenues for this president to bring in an unlimited numbers of Islamic immigrants from the most volatile corners of the world.

Step back and ponder this thought for a moment: had Rubio gotten his away – had Sessions and Cruz and other conservatives followed his lead – Obama would have had an unlimited pipeline at his disposal to bring in the worst security risks among the entire Islamic world. Yet, Rubio touts himself as the paragon of national security because of his alacritous desire to support every Islamic insurgency in the Middle East.

While much of the conservative media is promoting the notion that Rubio has changed his position on immigration, the reality is that to this very day he believes the Gang bill was good legislation. According to the Washington Post, Rubio said late last week that “the bill had the correct security components but was waylaid by voter mistrust.” In other words, the bill was near-perfect, it’s just that the plebes weren’t smart enough to understand its virtues. Accordingly, Rubio’s current position is that the Gang of 8 was prudent legislation.

Republicans would never nominate someone who openly promoted Obamacare, abortion, raising taxes, or increasing regulations. How can they possibly nominate someone who is on the wrong side of the most existential threat of our time and who – to this very day – defends a bill that would have saddled America with what we are seeing in Germany and France today? (For more from the author of “Rubio’s Bill Would Have Opened Floodgates to Islamic Refugees” please click HERE)

Cruz Fought Amnesty, Rubio Fought Conservatives

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I remember the spring of 2013 like it was yesterday. It was one of the busiest times of my career. Republicans were working overtime to codify Obama’s open borders agenda into law, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was the ring leader of the effort. The voice of the people was not being heard and we were subjected to fallacious talking points on a daily basis.

Along with several other conservative writers, I wrote dozens of articles exposing the details and the broader implications of the 1,000-page piece of bilge that is known as the “Gang of 8” bill. Instead of working with conservatives, Rubio and his office coordinated attacks on conservatives together with liberals. Even after all of his promises were exposed as pure fabrications, he still went on to star in ads for Mark Zuckerberg touting his bill as something it was not.

Now Rubio wants our votes and suddenly he is on our side.

In order to convince voters that he has walked the Road to Damascus on the road to winning Des Moines, his campaign is promulgating the following narrative: Rubio learned his lesson from the Gang of 8 and now shares the same views on immigration as Ted Cruz, so nothing to see here – let’s move on.

There is a lot to like about Marco Rubio. But as it relates to the all-important compound issue of immigration, one would have to erase all of history to suggest he is on the same playing field as Ted Cruz. When it mattered, Cruz wasn’t just a vote for sovereignty and security, he was a voice for it. Rubio wasn’t just a vote for Obama’s prize agenda, he was a voice for it.

For those of us who fought with everything we had to defeat the Gang of 8 despite Rubio’s best effort to score the ultimate game-winning touchdown for Obama, we can’t just let this go. The only similarity Rubio and Cruz share as it relates to immigration is the same similarity that a firefighter and an arsonist share with regards to fire – they were both there at the scene of the crime. The one was a perpetrator of the problem; the other was part of the solution.

TURNING CRUZ’S FIREFIGHTING INTO ARSON

Rubio is now suggesting that Cruz also supported amnesty because at the time of the Gang of 8 debate, Cruz introduced an amendment stripping the provision providing a path to citizenship from the bill. Rubio’s camp disingenuously submits that this act means Cruz implicitly supported legalization so long as no citizenship is involved.

Perhaps Rubio is unfamiliar with an amendment strategy when fighting legislation because he has been in very few firefights for the cause of conservatism since his election to the Senate. One way of embarrassing and exposing proponents of a bad bill is by introducing amendments to tweak the bill with changes its proponents are hard-pressed to oppose. This doesn’t mean the senator would otherwise support the legislation if it contained those changes, it’s merely a strategy to derail the bill altogether.

It’s for this reason that Rubio, during one of the few battles he actively fought, introduced an amendment to the Corker-Cardin bill forcing Iran to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. It’s not that he otherwise would have been fine with the Iran deal or the Corker-Cardin process. This was merely a way to expose the other side for their extreme position.

This is what Cruz was doing when he introduced amendments to pause any amnesty until the enforcement was implemented or to take away the pathway to citizenship or his amendment to expand legal immigration. He wanted to show that the entire Gang effort had nothing to do with being compassionate, pro-immigrant, or enforcement oriented – as proponents of the bill, including Rubio, so ardently asserted – rather this was a scheme to create new Democrat voters and disenfranchise the citizenry. Indeed, Senator Sessions, who clearly opposes legalization, supported Cruz’s amendment, while Rubio’s fellow Gang members on committee opposed it.
Hence, in the irony of all ironies, Rubio is using the hard work of Cruz in defeating his bill to suggest that they really share the same view!

Rubio was promoting his bill as ‘enforcement first’ even as he was voting down amendments to make the bill do just that.

RUBIO NEGATED HIS OWN TALKING POINTS AT THE TIME

As highlighted in his Conservative Review profile, Rubio was promoting his bill as ‘enforcement first’ even as he was voting down amendments to make the bill do just that. It’s not just that Rubio changed his position to “enforcement first,” it’s that he touted that Gang of 8 bill for months as doing just that. He opposed the following amendments:

A provision to ensure that the border is secured before any amnesty is granted. (Senate.gov)

A provision requiring completion of the reinforced double-layered border fencing. He was one of only five Republicans to do so. (Senate.gov)

A provision requiring that a visa tracking system be implemented before any amnesty is granted. (Senate.gov)

A provision that would require congressional votes affirming the border has been secured before the granting of temporary legal status. (Senate.gov)

As noted in our guide to political conversions, a legitimate recent convert to a cause is usually the most zealous in championing the issue unprompted by political pressure. When Cruz was fighting Obama’s executive amnesty, the border surge, sanctuary cities, the release of criminal aliens, the Islamic refugee scheme, and homegrown terror threats via immigration – using all his platforms on committee, floor speeches, and in the media – where was Rubio? Until Breitbart called him out for not supporting a single enforcement effort, Rubio never even signed onto the effort against sanctuary cities.

Moreover, even long after the Gang of 8, Rubio continued to promote his amnesty agenda and gave tail winds to Obama instead of actually fighting him on his executive amnesty. While Cruz was fighting DACA, Rubio was saying he’d keep it and the only problem he had with it is that it wasn’t permanent amnesty. He seemed to be bothered more by Obama poisoning the well against his legislative amnesty effort than actually stopping Obama’s broader open borders agenda.

Every candidate engages in conversions while running for office to a certain extent. Even Cruz has changed his tune on H1B visas. But Cruz has a lot more credibility on the overall immigration issue because “enforcement first” has been more than a campaign talking point to serve as window dressing for amnesty; it has embodied his tenure in the Senate.

Ask yourself this question: do you believe in your heart of hearts that Rubio will fight for conservatives on sovereignty and borders the minute he wins the primary and commences his general election messaging? (For more from the author of “Cruz Fought Amnesty, Rubio Fought Conservatives” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Paul: Rubio and Hillary ‘the Same Person’

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says that when it comes to foreign policy, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a fellow GOP presidential candidate, and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton are “the same person.”

“I see her and Rubio as being the same person,” Paul said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They both want a no-fly zone. They both have supported activity in Libya, the war in Libya that toppled [Libyan prime minister] Gaddafi, an intervention that made us less safe.”

“They both have supported the Iraq War, so, I mean, what’s the difference?” he asked . . .

The Kentucky senator also took a shot at former vice president Dick Cheney, who has been critical of Paul’s foreign policy.

“Yeah, well you know, Dick Cheney has been wrong about most of the foreign policy over the last several decades,” Paul said. “The last time he was right was when he warned the first George Bush that it would be a mistake to topple Hussein because you’d have chaos and instability and you’d destabilize the region, which is exactly what happened after the Iraq War.” (Read more from “Paul: Rubio and Hillary ‘the Same Person'” HERE)

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