Wonders never cease. Come campaign season, politicians say things behind closed doors to high-dollar donors that often bear no relation to their public stances and, in turn, those donors believe that somehow the candidate will magically do what they said behind closed doors just as soon as they're elected president.
That is the case with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is courting slightly more moderate, business types in the Republican Party and fundraising heavily off his work in helping to assemble the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill. Just for a refresher, that's the same bill Rubio turned his back on publicly and ran from just as soon as his favorability ratings began to plummet among the raucous Republican base.
Despite the fact that Rubio orphaned the bill he helped incubate, some Republican donors now think he's the real deal on solving immigration ... and they're throwing money at him. Reporter McKay Coppins talked to several of these donors:
Norman Braman, the 82-year-old auto tycoon who has reportedly pledged to spend as much as $10 million to get Rubio elected, told BuzzFeed News that he and the candidate have bonded over immigration. Not only do they agree on the policy specifics, but at a deeper level the issue is a personal one for both of them.
“He’s a first-generation immigrant, and I’m a first-generation immigrant. I can relate to that,” said Braman, whose Jewish parents emigrated from Europe. “Some type of immigration reform has to come about because it’s too great a problem. And we agree on that. He believes we have to secure the borders first, and I believe we have to secure the borders first.”
The Miami billionaire added that he’s known Rubio for a long time and always liked him, but that the senator’s dedication to taking on the messy immigration battle in Congress — particularly while so many other Republicans shied away from the fight — demonstrated his White House worthiness. “Isn’t that what leadership is all about? … Marco is not the type of person in all the years that I have known him who will put his finger up in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing.”
Stunning. If that's not a case of selective amnesia, I'm not sure what is. As Coppins noted regarding Rubio, "For two years, he has hemmed and hawed; ducked and dodged; retracted, retreated from, and repeatedly revised his immigration rhetoric in a ploy to appease conservative activists without fully forsaking his position."
Exactly. The guy wrote a 240-page book to help launch his presidential bid and only devoted the final pages of a single chapter to the issue of immigration.
Gotta love these people who get special access and then think they know what's in a politician's heart. If a candidate doesn't think it's expedient to sell it on the campaign trail—if they can't find a way to make it appealing to the voters who will elect them—they won't suddenly stake their presidency on it once they occupy the most politicized office in the land. That's not the way it works.
Rubio has already shown his true colors on immigration and in many ways, it doesn't matter what's in his heart. The year 2013 was a test case for how he'll handle the issue. Anyone who ignores that test case is deceiving him or herself.