Sen. Marco Rubio tries to win over the tea party crowd on immigration reform. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Sen. Marco Rubio’s plans to pass bipartisan immigration reform this year have put him in the hot seat with conservatives, and Rubio is now trying to claw back into their good graces.
Rubio, R-Florida, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 as a tea party darling and has voted in lockstep with the conservative wing of the party. However, now Rubio is getting flack from the far right for his efforts to work with Democrats to rewrite the country’s immigration laws.
His immigration plan so far includes priorities of both Democrats and Republicans, but selling the Republicans on aspects like a path to citizenship is proving very difficult for Rubio.
According to the National Review, he is spending a great deal of time wooing the talk-radio voters as he makes media rounds in an effort to win over the most conservative wing of the Republican Party — a wing of the party he would otherwise occupy:
Rubio has carefully been making the case for his plan, which includes a path to legalization and beefed-up border security. But opponents — especially the talk-radio crowd — remain skeptical. “I must tell you, I just don’t understand this, Senator,” Rush Limbaugh told Rubio last week. “I don’t understand why we’re doing something that the Democrats are salivating over.” That kind of wariness is feeding broader unease.
But as the legislation moves ahead, Rubio is betting on his ability to woo the Right. Every afternoon, he seems to be holed up in his Capitol Hill office calling yet another hesitant conservative talker. Last Thursday, he even went to visit many of them at a Washington, D.C., hotel, where there was a summit for the bill’s talk-radio foes organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
For an hour, the freshman Republican went from table to table, speaking passionately about the bill’s merits. As I shadowed Rubio, it was striking to see how much he is personally admired by the colorful conservative pundits who broadcast on local AM stations, and by the bigger syndicated names like Limbaugh. They still believe, without a doubt, that he’s a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and they love that he’s already a national force.
But when it comes to immigration, they aren’t buying it.
It’s not just influential conservatives in the media who are making Rubio’s immigration reform pitch tough. It’s also his own conservative friends in the U.S. Senate; they just aren’t buying his immigration plans.
Sen. Jim DeMint was one of Rubio’s closest friends in the Senate. The South Carolina Republicans was one of the first politicians to endorse Rubio as a tea party favorite in the race against then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist. But DeMint is now ardently against Rubio’s immigrations plans and has been taking his case to the media.
According to the New York Times:
Though Mr. DeMint says he supports legal immigration, he prefers a piecemeal approach to fixing the system and views any path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally as amnesty, forgiveness for breaking the law.
His main argument is an economic one — a belief that unauthorized immigrants, who he said would ultimately take out more in federal benefits than they would pay in taxes, would be a drain on the economy. (Under the legislation proposed in the Senate, it would be at least 13 years before an illegal immigrant would quality for any federal benefits.)
Rubio is moving his plans and his bill forward, though — even without the support of his closest colleagues.
He is also working to address conservative misinformation through ads and media appearances. In fact, several days ago he had to set the record straight after bloggers claimed that Rubio’s bill would give cell phones to undocumented immigrants.
Despite all the right-wing backlash, it is unlikely Rubio’s bill will be stalled. As NPR reports, not all conservative groups are getting into this fight.