To be sure, the Cruz campaign has had ample good news to take comfort in since the Las Vegas debate.
Advertisement
Indeed, the very nature of the Cruz-Rubio clash on immigration plays right into Trump’s hands. His closest competitor, Ted Cruz, has 18%, Marco Rubio is at 11% and Ben Carson checks in with 9%.
Bush’s answers took on elevated meaning given that his campaign has considered breaking the pledge he signed to support the eventual Republican nominee.
In a follow-up question, Cruz pivoted back to his defensive tone that he’s been pushing this week after Rubio questioned a vote Cruz made in 2013 regarding a bipartisan immigration bill.
Indeed, among the Republican Party’s two Hispanic presidential hopefuls, few issues offer a clearer contrast in tone, if not policy. And he suggested the wrong choice could hurt the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Another is that Cruz meant what he said then – for political reasons or genuine ones – but has since changed his mind, now holding what is a more palatable stance for the Republican base. “It’s not an attack”.
“The Washington establishment is furious”, Cruz said. “He was fighting to grant amnesty and not to secure the border, I was fighting to secure the border”. The Senate approved the bill, but it was blocked by House Republicans and widely attacked by conservatives. Establishment types don’t understand why Trump supporters are not turned off by Trump for not being more refined and nuanced in his proposals rather than simply saying, “We need to kill the terrorists, and you guys keep telling us why we can’t”.
Cruz has surged in Florida in the past month.
On Thursday, Rubio said Cruz’s use of the word “intend” was “crafty language” and that Cruz was only giving himself some “wiggle room” in a primary where voters are seeking candidates who are tough on illegal immigration. Rubio, who seems to have done the most homework, recognized the limits of the air campaign and called for a ground force primarily made up of Sunnis.
At one point during the oration he read Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” as a bedtime story to his two young daughters watching in Houston, who were supposedly watching their father on a live television feed. One of those would have supported legalization, but banned a pathway to citizenship. Well, 25.8 percent of those who watched the debate claimed he won.
“I oppose amnesty. I oppose citizenship”.
Advertisement
“My amendment was a one-page amendment that said anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship”, the first-term Texas senator told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News. “What we shouldn’t do is intentionally mislead Americans about the positions of others – and it’s disappointing Senator Rubio has chosen that path”, Vander Plaats said in a statement. Cruz also clarified that “those 11 million [illegal immigrants] under this current bill would still be eligible for [registered provisional immigrant] status” and also eligible for legal “status and indeed under the terms of the bill they would be eligible for [lawful permanent resident] status as well, so that they are out of the shadows”. In a decisively more offensive stance toward Rubio, Cruz’s aides zeroed in on the Floridian’s absence from a high-profile vote in the Senate and sharpened their questioning of whether he was betraying Sunshine State voters when he joined the Gang of Eight.
