In the South Carolina Republican debate, Ted Cruz said of fellow Republican senator Marco Rubio, “Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office.” Rubio replied, “I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish.” As Cruz responded in what Fox News Latino called “broken and halting Spanish, but Spanish nonetheless,” Rubio quickly added, “Look, this is a disturbing pattern now, because for a number of weeks now, Ted Cruz has just been telling lies….He’s lying about all sorts of things. And now he makes things up.”
Yet when Rubio appeared on Univision last year, his remarks were translated by that network as follows:
Jorge Ramos: “If you made it to the White House, would you keep the DACA program; that is, Deferred Action for the Dreamers, and would you keep President Barack Obama’s executive action, which would benefit more than four million undocumented people?”
Rubio: “Well, DACA is going to have to end at some point. I wouldn’t undo it immediately. The reason is that there are already people who have that permission, who are working, who are studying, and I don’t think it would be fair to cancel it suddenly. But I do think it is going to have to end. And, God willing, it’s going to end because immigration reform is going to pass. DAPA [Deferred Action for Parents of Americans] hasn’t yet taken effect, and I think it has impeded progress on immigration, on immigration reform. And since that program hasn’t taken effect yet, I would cancel it. But DACA, I think it is important; it can’t be cancelled suddenly because there are already people who are benefitting from it. But it is going to have to end. It cannot be the permanent policy of the United States. And I don’t think that’s what they’re asking for, either. I think that everyone prefers immigration reform.”
Ramos: “But then, to clarify, you would end DACA once immigration reform is approved. But what happens, Senator, if there is no immigration reform? Would you cancel DACA anyway?”
Rubio: “At some point it’s going to have to end. That is, it cannot continue to be the permanent policy of the United States. I do think that if I wind up being president, it will be possible to achieve new immigration reform.”
As Breitbart News reported, Rubio chief spokesman Alex Conant confirmed that this translation is essentially accurate. Conant also summarized the senator’s comments: “Marco…said it’s important not to end DACA immediately since it would be disruptive given all the people that have it but that at a certain point it would have to end since it cannot be the permanent policy of the land.”
This isn’t exactly a stirring commitment to uphold the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers. A WEEKLY STANDARD editorial I penned about seven months into President Obama’s second term argued as follows:
“As was quite clear at the time, the biggest mistake that Mitt Romney’s campaign made in 2012 was not aggressively attacking Obamacare. What may well have been its second-biggest mistake, however, was less noticed: the striking silence in the face of President Obama’s announcement that he would no longer deport illegal immigrants under 30 years of age.
“This was pure lawlessness, even by the president’s own earlier admission. When asked at a spring 2011 Univision town hall why he didn’t simply stop the deportation of young illegals via executive order, Obama replied,
“Yet five months before the election, the Obama administration announced that it would no longer deport most illegals under the age of 30 who had entered the United States before adulthood. The main sound emanating from the Romney campaign: crickets.
“The Romney camp’s decision to ignore this brazen move was a conscious calculation that, at its core, reflected a lack of faith in the American people. Team Romney thought voters would focus on the perceived merits of Obama’s new decree (which the Romney campaign believed would be popular) and wouldn’t much care that Obama was ignoring the Constitution and violating his oath of office. This miscalculation helped cost Romney the election and emboldened Obama in his lawlessness. But Republicans make similar mistakes on a regular basis, failing to trust in Americans’ devotion to the Constitution and the rule of law.”
“…So how exactly can ‘a government of laws and not of men’ work if the chief executive refuses to fulfill his constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’?”
This is a question that all Republican presidential candidates should be answering, with clarity, today. Perhaps Rubio’s position has changed since his Univision interview nine months ago. Perhaps he would now overturn Obama’s lawless executive amnesty on day one, rather than “at some point,” thereby faithfully executing the laws from the start of his administration. Whatever his answer, Republican voters deserve to know where all of their candidates stand on such an important matter.
Jeffrey H. Anderson, author of “An Alternative to Obamacare,” is a Hudson institute senior fellow.
