Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been working for weeks to convince conservatives that President Obama’s “dead on arrival” liberal immigration plan is light years apart from his tough conservative alternative. Setting aside the fact that the two proposals are broadly similar, it looks like Rubio’s latest White House spat is already paying dividends.
Charles Krauthammer is one of the most influential conservative columnists in America and so far a tough critic of the immigration reform proposals floating around since the election. Instead, he’s advocated for fully completing a “triple layered” border fence along the entire 2,000-mile US-Mexico border as a prerequisite for granting legal status — not eventual citizenship — to illegal immigrants. Last month, he criticized a bipartisan Senate proposal backed by Rubio for not doing enough on the security front.
Three weeks later, Rubio’s proposal is still the same. But Krauthammer appears to have gained some grudging respect for it after seeing the senator’s outraged response to the White House’s leaked bill, which Rubio ripped as “half baked” for not making its path to citizenship conditional on new border security measures.
In a new column titled “The Lesser of Two Evils,” Krauthammer opens by acknowledging that “on the single most important issue — instant amnesty — there is no real difference between the proposals” and calls each version “bad policy” that will lead to a new wave of illegal immigration. But after comparing Rubio’s still vague proposal to the White House’s, which also calls for security upgrades but separate from its path to citizenship, Krauthammer seems willing to fold:
“The Rubio proposal at least creates some pressure for real enforcement because green-card acquisition does not take place until the country finally verifies that its borders are under its control. True, a far weaker incentive than requiring enforcement before legalization. But that fight appears to be totally lost.
In the end, the only remaining vessel for enforcement is the Rubio proposal. It is deeply flawed and highly imperfect. But given that the Obama alternative effectively signs away America’s right to decide who enters the country, the choice between the two proposals on the table today is straightforward.”
As explored earlier on TPM, this kind of talk is what success for an immigration reform bill is likely to sound like. Conservative House members, radio hosts, and columnists saying that whatever problems they have with a bipartisan compromise in Congress, at least it’s not Obama’s awful plan. That Krauthammer is already tipping his hand suggests Rubio’s good cop/bad cop strategy of aggressively differentiating himself from the White House might actually have a shot at working.
