I thought Rubio’s Meet the Press comments yesterday were useful, especially this:
Number one is we’ve got to win the confidence of the American people. It’s a sequential approach. You can’t just say, “We’re going to deal with the 12 million people right up front.” First, you’ve got to win the confidence of the American people that the federal government is serious about enforcing our immigration laws. And that’s why I think border security and e-verify are so important.
Yes, I know they’re politicians and they’ll sell you out at the first opportunity, but they seem to have gotten the message that the public just doesn’t believe their promises about enforcement. It’s a start.
Even Carlos Gutierrez and Ed Gillespie on CNN were OK. ThinkProgress is squeaking its indignation that Gutierrez blamed the Democrats for not passing the DREAM Act, which Romney has said he’d veto (and which Rubio criticized as too broad in his appearance yesterday). But as much as Gutierrez probably supports the current version of the DREAM Act and more, his point was a valid one: “You made the promise, you got the Hispanic vote, and that has been the pattern. This administration has played with Hispanics.” He right — the Obama administration has played with Hispanics, repeatedly promising to call them in the morning and then not following through. Bill McGurn wrote about this the other day, with reference to Obama’s role in the 2007 amnesty debate. His conclusion:
Whether you favored the 2007 immigration bill or not, Mr. Obama’s dance perfectly reflects his character—parading as a champion of bipartisanship when in fact he was maneuvering for his own purposes.
Obama has played Lucy with the football over and over again on immigration — sooner or later, Carlitos Marron is bound to figure out that he’s being taken for a chump.