Marco Rubio’s immigration flip-flop-flip-flop

Sen. Marco Rubio opposes the passage by the House of the very immigration reform legislation that he sponsored in the Senate. Rubio’s spokesman says that the Senator favors House passage of a series of individual bills, rather than comprehensive legislation such as that which he helped push through the Senate.

Why, though, would a Senator not want the House to pass his own legislation? One possibility is the desire to see the legislation improved through conference.

But Rubio’s spokesperson says this isn’t what Rubio wants or expects:

Any effort to use a limited bill as a ruse to trigger a conference that would then produce a comprehensive bill would be counterproductive. Furthermore, any such effort would fail, because any single senator can and will block conference unless such conference is specifically instructed to limit the conference to only the issue dealt with in the underlying bill.

The other possibilities, or at least those I can conceive of, entail a very high degree of cynicism.

Marco Rubio was sympathetic to amnesty, before he opposed amnesty, before he proposed amnesty legislation in the Senate, before he opposed passage of that legislation by the House. The issue, it seems to me, threatens to grind this once promising leader into dust.

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