Marco Rubio has been on a roll lately, and definitely not in the good way.
Two weeks ago he was mocked for appearing to “malfunction” at the Republican debate in New Hampshire, when he repeated the same canned responses no less than three times in a row. Then there was this whole immigration back-in-forth with Ted Cruz during last weekend’s debate, where Rubio tried to call out Cruz for allegedly not knowing any Spanish, only to get verbally slapped back by Cruz in Spanish.
Yep, that’s two sons of immigrants arguing with each other — in Spanish, mind you — over who can be more of a hardliner on immigration.
But what really takes the cake is Marco’s claim Monday that the immigration bill he coauthored in 2013 was never intended to become law, and that he actually expected conservatives in the House to make it better. Conservative members of the House, like Steve King? The man who was perfectly willing to shut down the Department of Homeland Security because of his anti-immigrant obsession? Right, Marco.
The truth is, as he’s become vastly overshadowed throughout this Trumpian primary season, it’s gotten so hard to tell where Marco Rubio stands on anything anymore, particularly on the topic that thrust him into the national spotlight and made him a media and GOP darling in the first place, immigration.
We certainly believed Rubio’s pro-immigrant position back in 2013, when he declared his comprehensive immigration reform bill was “in perfect shape” as it passed the Senate by a wide bipartisan majority and was on to the House.
We believed Rubio’s pro-immigrant position when he promised a group of fearful immigrant mothers who had cornered him in a Senate office hallway that he was in no way going to walk back on his legislation. “I don’t want you to worry about me,” he reassured them.
And we certainly believed his pro-immigrant position when he disclosed how his immigrant mother had influenced him on immigration, leaving him a pleading voicemail referring to immigrants as “los pobrecitos,” or “the poor things.”
But now we’re supposed to believe that all that work and energy Rubio put into staking a strong pro-immigrant position and authoring what would have been landmark legislation was really nothing at all?
“Wow, that’s a claim we admittedly didn’t see coming,” wrote Daily Kos’s Kerry Eleveld. “Brilliant. So when you made that Sunday morning sweep of seven Sunday TV shows back in April 2013 touting the bill, you thought it was just a bunch of rubbish?”
We know Marco is not being straight with us, as he’s proven he’s more than willing to bend to the political winds than have the courage to stand up for the work he’s been able to get done when he actually bothers to show up for work in the Senate. Our only question is who has actually seen the real Marco Rubio — the immigrant mothers, or Steve King?
