New Jersey Governor Chris Christie uncorked a direct attack on rival GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio Tuesday, accusing Rubio of flip-flopping on immigration and tolerating President Obama’s executive-amnesty orders.

“I don’t know why anyone would want to have someone who is not going to enforce the law as the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States,” Christie told conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham. “You have to enforce the law, and if . . . Marco doesn’t believe that the executive order is illegal . . . he should say that. And, he’s welcome to that opinion, obviously there’s lots of Democrats who would agree with that. But, he needs to say that.”

Christie issued the attack in response to Rubio’s statement that he would not immediately end the program of deferred deportation for certain illegal-immigrant children that Obama established by executive order in 2012. “It cannot be the permanent policy of the United States but I’m not calling for it to be revoked tomorrow or this week or right away,” Rubio told Univision.

“It’s hard to keep up with how many times Marco changes his positions on these things, to tell you the truth,” Christie replied. “I’ve said very clearly that the President’s conduct here is illegal. . . . If the President’s executive orders are illegal, which I believe they are, then they need to be revoked the first day you get into office.”

For that flip-flopping charge to benefit Christie, who is hoping to displace Rubio as the GOP establishment favorite in the wake of Jeb Bush’s struggles, voters will have to forgive his past support for a path to citizenship. “I’ve learned over time about this issue and done a lot more work on it,” he said in May. “Just immediately going to a path to citizenship, as Hillary Clinton is proposing to do, is just pandering politics.”

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.

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