Perhaps the biggest hurdle between Marco Rubio and the Republican nomination is his Senate record: the Florida lawmaker is the co-author of “The Obama Amnesty Plan.” That doesn’t matter much to the GOP establishment, and it hasn’t stopped Rubio from becoming a media darling, but it’s a tough pill for Republican voters to swallow.
The senator has, of course, already rejected the legislation that was supposed to be his signature accomplishment, and Rubio has betrayed his former allies. But as NBC News reported yesterday, he’s not yet done trying to distance himself from the only meaningful work of Rubio’s congressional career.
Marco Rubio on Monday insisted the immigration reform bill he helped spearhead through the Senate was never intended to become law and that the authors of the bill expected conservatives in the House to make it “even better.”“The Senate immigration law was not headed towards becoming law,” he told a questioner at a town hall in Rock Hill, S.C. “Ideally it was headed towards the House, where conservative members of the House were going to make it even better.”
By any fair measure, these are some of the most brazen falsehoods Rubio has offered since becoming a national candidate.
In June 2013, Rubio went to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech directed specifically at his far-right colleagues, hoping to convince them to support the bipartisan bill he helped write. How many times in these remarks did he mention leaving it to the House “to make it even better”? None.
In April 2013, Rubio made seven Sunday show appearances to help sell the legislative compromise. How many words did he utter about the House changing the bill? None.
After the bill eventually cleared the chamber, Rubio urged House members to “take a look” at his handiwork, which he said at the time was roughly 95% in “perfect shape.”
I don’t doubt that some Republican voters are going to buy the senator’s post-hoc rationalization, but there’s just no evidence to suggest it’s true.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."