“He’s a friend of mine, he’s charming, he’s an incredible communicator”, Cruz said at a campaign event here, showering Rubio with compliments after the two have been verbally sparring this week over past votes on immigration, a subject that was hotly debated at Tuesday’s GOP debate.
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The campaign has compiled some of these moments into a sort of greatest-hits page on its web site. “He was fighting to grant amnesty and not to secure the border, I was fighting to secure the border”.
“‘Who am I comfortable having their finger on the button?’ Now that’s a question of strength, but it’s also a question of judgment”, Cruz said, adding that the recent issue on Paris and San Bernardino needs a leader who will face and address problems with strength and better judgment. “Their misguided plan would have given Obama the authority to admit Syrian refugees, including ISIS terrorists”.
“Now, Marco Rubio is a friend of mine he is a wonderful communicator, he’s a charming individual he’s very well liked”, Cruz said. “I have always opposed amnesty, citizenship or legalization“, Cruz said.
Trump’s weakness against Clinton is not surprising given almost 6 in 10 registered voters don’t take his candidacy seriously: 57 percent say he’s a side show, while far fewer, 39 percent, think he’s a serious candidate.
But the biggest dispute between Cruz and Rubio is over the two-year-old immigration bill that would have given undocumented immigrants a path to gaining US citizenship. The amendment I introduced would not change any of that, which would mean the 11 million who are here illegally would all come out of the shadows and be legalized under the Gang of Eight’s bill.
GOP conservatives like Cruz a lot more than moderates and liberals do. Richard Burr, R-N.C., had said they were checking Cruz’s comments.
“We made the identical promises to the men and women who elected us”. “Those decisions have consequences”.
The Gang of Eight was a bipartisan group of senators who in 2013 crafted a compromise immigration reform bill. “What they claimed they were interested in was not in fact what they were interested in…. they wanted millions of new Democratic voters”. “I don’t think he’s trying to take on Trump to prove anything other than he’s the most serious guy, the most capable”. He’s now calling for a piecemeal approach that begins with border security and offers a pathway to legalization only after the influx of illegal immigration is stopped.
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“I was attacked by Ted Cruz on the debate stage and I responded by saying I’m puzzled by his attacks on this”, Rubio said, accusing Cruz of using “crafty language”.
