Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has joined the likes of Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, and Donald Trump (!) in the “slow down” caucus, last weekend petitioning Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Pat Leahy to hold more hearings, etc., before pressing forward on immigration reform. While the rest of the “slow down” caucus almost certainly wants to stall reform as a way of killing it altogether, Rubio’s move is likely much more political, hedging his bets to try to look good no matter the outcome of reform legislation this year.
As a number of columnists today point out, however, Rubio’s plan could be too clever by half. It’s not that complicated, really: one can’t lead on immigration reform without actually leading. Rubio may want to keep all his options open, and his plan is pretty transparent—position himself so he can claim a leadership mantle if reform becomes law, and blame Democrats because of “process” concerns if it doesn’t. But in order to do so, he’s reinforcing the talking points of old-school haters like Senator Jeff Sessions, which is a ridiculous strategy if your goal is to pass a law that people like Sessions oppose.
It’s also a weak argument. The Senate bill isn’t even fully written yet, and Rubio thinks things might start moving too fast. Is he worried that once a bill comes out, the media will focus then on the details, and less on him? It wasn’t too long ago that the junior senator from Florida held the media captive for months with promises that he would soon become a leader on immigration reform by introducing his version of the DREAM Act for young undocumented Americans. Remember the media attention but not the bill? That’s because it never materialized.
If it’s true that Rubio wants to be President in the future, he can’t just walk away from immigration reform. As Benjy Sarlin at Talking Points Memo points out:
It would be ironic if McCain and Graham finally returned to the negotiating table on immigration only to find Rubio follow their own playbook and leave. But while Rubio’s recent behavior does give him more room to drop out, it’s highly unlikely he will actually do so. Instead, this latest Rubio flareup looks an awful lot like the last big Rubio flareup on immigration — a wink to conservatives without any actual substantive concerns behind it.
Meanwhile, Rubio still has very little to gain from leaving the process. He’s already signed on to the most controversial aspects of immigration reform on the right, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, so he’d be plenty vulnerable on the issue in a Republican primary. The world in which an enraged GOP base forces Rubio to bolt talks is a world where Rubio’s 2016 hopes are already dead — both in the primary, where his opponents could attack him from the right, and in the general election, where he’d have nothing to show Latino voters already skeptical of his party.
AB Stoddard at the Hill agrees:
Everyone knows Rubio is in a political corner, but if he disagrees with something the Gang of Eight has decided on, he clearly didn’t tell them. Rubio has 2016 presidential hopes and he once was a Tea Party hero and cannot afford to move too close to the center if he hopes to survive a GOP primary, the angling for which has already begun.
But he was the one who started the immigration push, and at this point the momentum is likely to build no matter how much he tries to slow it.
As Rubio struggles to buy more time, President Obama and the backers of reform, who not only have seen a Congress fail to legislate at all in recent years but also know the midterm campaigns begin months from now, want to move ahead immediately. Rubio will have to decide just how much he truly wants reform.
Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg is of the opinion that Rubio doesn’t know what he wants yet.
Graham is not only up for reelection in 2014, his state is less hospitable terrain for pro-immigration sentiment than Rubio’s Florida. “If I can sell it in South Carolina, don’t come to me and say it’s hard,” Graham said.
So what’s the explanation for Rubio’s hesitation? One word, or rather number: 2016. Rubio’s call to slow down the process on an issue that has been negotiated on both sides of the Capitol for the better part of a decade aligns him — momentarily — with the party’s all-important conservative base. (“Sessions Slams Leahy for Immigration Rush” reads a recent headline at FoxNews.com, referring to Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions.)
Rubio bravely went on the air in January with talk-radio growlers Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, where he made the case for immigration reform. His herky-jerky motions on the issue — two steps forward, one back — might be indicative of a cautious nature. It seems more likely, however, that Rubio is simply keeping his options open, and his gaze over his shoulder.
By the way, the difference between Rubio and Graham? Graham is willing to take on his (very conservative) constituents and try to get them to come around on immigration reform. Rubio is preparing an exit strategy for himself in case immigration reform gets too hard to sell. Graham is trying to get things done, while Rubio is trying to get ahead.
Greg Sargent at Washington Post points out that Rubio’s dithering now could have the inadvertent effect of killing reform altogether, even if Rubio is just bluffing:
No doubt Rubio has a very tough balancing act to strike. He needs to reassure conservatives that he’s prepared to walk away from any deal, and that he’s getting them everything he can in the process. If he does this successfully, it could potentially bring some of them along. But as Benjy Sarlin points out, Senate Democrats have already vowed not to procedurally rush the process and have promised to run things through the typical committee and amendment process. Lending aid and comfort to the “slow down” caucus could make things worse, given that their apparent aim is to allow opponents more time to kill reform.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo agrees:
Rubio wasn’t necessary to reform passing. But he inserted himself into the process, attempting to position himself as the indispensable person. But his role has mainly been to attempt to slow down the process, find points of disagreements where few if any existed and continue to make sure he had as many escape hatches as possible if it became necessary for him to bail out of the process. Through the whole process it’s been pretty clear — if only because of his refusal to state a clear position — that there aren’t really any policy issues Rubio is focused on. The whole game is Rubio 2016. And thus reform is now hostage to his best guess at what’s most advantageous for his future.
The generous interpretation is that Rubio wants to remain the permanent skeptic within the process to allow him to bring over Tea Party support. The less generous take is that he keeps throwing up potential obstacles, concerns and complaints because he wants to make sure he’s got as many escape hatches as possible when things get dicey over the next couple months.
But the real point is that Rubio isn’t the one who can make an immigration reform deal. It was going to happen without him. What he can do is, potentially, make the path to reform smoother for the GOP. But he’s also upped the chance that the train jumps off the chance entirely because of how he’s inserted himself into the process.
Michael Tomasky at Daily Beast refers to Rubio’s gambit as “immigration cowardice”:
Why were we all talking about Marco Rubio yesterday? Because Marco Rubio made sure of it. His little intervention into the immigration bill was designed to achieve a couple mostly obvious objectives: to make sure Chuck Schumer isn’t the one doing all the public framing of the issue, and to say to the Beltway crowd, or try to say, that he’s the one driving this train. But it was an odd incursion too. Rubio actually deserves credit for some of the steps he’s taken on immigration so far. But what he said over the weekend sounded for all the world like somebody who really secretly wants to kill the bill. He may or may not. But the one thing he definitely does not want to kill is his presidential chances, and it seems he’s figured that the way to do that is to keep his options on immigration open. If passage will help, he’ll push for that. But if it turns out that his party hasn’t changed, doesn’t want to change, that the famous outreach program meets resistance from the in-reach caucus—well then, adios.
On the other hand, he wants to try to protect himself from being damaged too badly if reform collapses. He still isn’t sure, no one is sure, whether the hard-shell elements in the GOP are going to rise up against reform when crunch time hits. No one really knows what the Tea Party view will be (and Rubio of course comes from those swamps). No one yet knows how this border security as a prerequisite or “trigger” for a path to citizenship is going to look, or whether this trigger will even be in the final legislation, and this could be an immense sticking point, turning Limbaugh and the base against reform. So just in case there’s an eruption, Rubio wants to be able to say he was against it from the start.
To lead in Congress, you can’t just put out press releases and make appearances on national TV. You have to move policy too.
