Marco Rubio‘s office got in touch this week to say the Florida senator and possible 2016 GOP presidential hopeful wanted to discuss immigration. The specific subject was President Obama‘s expected move to unilaterally legalize as many as half of the 11 million immigrants currently in the United States illegally. But Rubio, speaking by phone during a visit to Atlanta, had much more to say about the broader issue of immigration reform. What he outlined amounted to an entirely new approach to the issue that has contributed to his rise, then fall, and perhaps rise again, in the Republican Party.

Rubio began by saying he doesn’t know what Obama will do on immigration, or when he will do it. The president, Rubio believes, is stuck between the activists who want him to take far-reaching action quickly and the red-state Democrats up for re-election who don’t want to see anything done before November. Whatever course Obama takes, he’ll do it without the counsel of one of the Senate’s most knowledgeable voices on the subject. “I haven’t spoken to the president about immigration in over a year,” Rubio told me.