{"id":18386,"date":"2013-07-18T12:55:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T16:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=18386"},"modified":"2013-07-18T12:55:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T16:55:38","slug":"on-immigration-rubio-seems-to-lack-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/18386\/on-immigration-rubio-seems-to-lack-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"On Immigration, Rubio Seems to Lack Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is surprisingly mum about whether House Republicans should pass, amend or kill his signature legislative achievement this year: Comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes up to 11 million illegal immigrants before securing the border.<\/p>\n<p>According to an interview with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2013\/07\/behind-the-curtain-marco-rubio-stumbles-immigration-94367.html\" target=\"_blank\">Politico<\/a>, Rubio said the House GOP deserves \u201cthe time and space\u2026 to come up with their ideas about how to reform immigration \u2013 and I hope they will \u2013 but that\u2019s up to them.\u201d But while Rubio obviously wants to create some distance between himself and a bill that his conservative base hates, now is precisely the time to put his influence to work if he really believes that his immigration reform is the right thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>As Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a co-author with Rubio on the bill says, \u201cIf he\u2019s got some influence in the House, now is a good time to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That Rubio is refusing to gives the strong impression that much of his support for the Senate\u2019s version of immigration reform is more about politics than policy. Now that <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/among-hispanics-immigration-reform-helps-marco-rubio-against-other-republicans-but-not-against-democrats\/article\/2532634\" target=\"_blank\">his 2016 presidential aspirations look endangered<\/a> because of his stance on immigration, the rising conservative is looking to bolster his image by talking about fiscal responsibility and social issues.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem remains that his performance on immigration \u2013 for the bill when it seems to help him, against or at least ambivalent toward it when it hurts \u2013 indicates his most important criteria is whether a particular stance propels him closer to the White House.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a fine way to operate if one is a paid consultant looking for any advantage to climb the ladder, but it\u2019s the exact opposite of what people expect from a statesman. Rubio helped pass and craft the Senate\u2019s immigration bill, so he either needs to defend it to the death or disown it for principled reasons. Enough calculating. Make a decision and own it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is surprisingly mum about whether House Republicans should pass, amend or kill his signature legislative achievement this year: Comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes up to 11 million illegal immigrants before securing the border. According to an interview with Politico, Rubio said the House GOP deserves \u201cthe time and space\u2026 to come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3887,3949,981,352,1447,38,4202],"class_list":["post-18386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-3887","tag-house","tag-immigration","tag-marco-rubio","tag-reform","tag-senate","tag-statesman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18386"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18392,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18386\/revisions\/18392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}