BROOKLINE, N.H. — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio thinks fellow Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has had “a tough week” because voters are beginning to realize Cruz is “not who he says he is.”
The 44-year-old senator took several jabs at Cruz during a town hall Thursday, accusing him of flip-flopping on a handful of issues and slamming his value-added tax plan as “dangerous and reckless.”
“Ted has had a tough week because what’s happening now is people are learning more about him,” Rubio told a modest group of employees at one of the largest manufacturing companies in New England. “They’re finally starting to realize, ‘Hold on, this is a guy who supported cutting our defenses while he’s out there talking about how he’s going to carpet-bomb ISIS. He’s out there attacking everyone on immigration, but he was the one who was for legalizing people here illegally and in favor of expanding, by 500 percent, the number of guest workers we bring into the U.S.”
“I saw Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate flip his vote on an issue – crop insurance,” Rubio continued. “He voted against it and then someone told him, ‘Hey they’re not going to like that in Iowa,’ and 15-20 minutes later he came back and flipped his vote on that.”
Cruz was criticized in early December for voting to keep $3 billion in crop insurance cuts in place, but later changing his vote after meeting with staffers in the Senate cloakroom. Cruz has previously denounced opponents who claim he switched his vote to pander to Iowans, claiming such attacks are “one of the political games people play.”
But that didn’t stop Rubio from tearing into the Texas senator.
“Yesterday, he’s here attacking the farm program in Iowa, the ethanol program, but last week in Iowa, he had a different thing to say,” Rubio told voters. “So what’s happening to Ted is people are learning more about him and as they learn more about it him, they’re starting to realize … he’s not who he says he is.”
Cruz’s VAT proposal is also causing the conservative senator problems, Rubio claimed Thursday.
“He supports a VAT tax and Ronald Reagan hated the VAT tax,” Rubio said.
“Let me tell you why Reagan hated the VAT tax,” he continued. “It’s a hidden tax, because where do you think the company that pays you is going to get the money to pay that tax? They’re going to get it by paying you less and charging more. And if they can’t charge you more because their customers won’t pay more, that means they have to take even more from the money you make.”
“Reagan called it the way government blindfolds the people. Nancy Pelosi loves the VAT tax. Harry Reid loves the VAT tax. Barack Obama loves the VAT tax,” the Florida senator added.
“It’s a terrible idea. It’s why conservatives, for decades, have rejected it. It’s a dangerous and reckless tax and we’re not going to have a VAT tax when I’m president. We’re not,” he said.
Earlier this week, Conservative Solutions political action committee, Rubio’s primary outside support group, launched a series of ads attacking Cruz. One of the ads, which is set to air in New Hampshire and Iowa, casts Cruz’s tax proposals as a “Canadian and European-style socialist tax plan.”
