The simmering rivalry between Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio boiled over on Thursday, as the presidential candidates swung at each other over the immigration issue.
The war of words began when conservative personality Laura Ingraham asked Cruz for his reaction to Rubio’s comments on immigration during her radio show and reflects the emerging dynamic in which the two candidates are seen as perhaps the two chief contenders for the nomination.
“I have a deep and genuine disagreement with that point of view,” Cruz said. “And look I got to say as a voter, when a politician’s saying the exact opposite of what they did in office, I treat that with a pretty healthy degree of skepticism.”
Cruz, who has vowed to limit attacks on other candidates, argued that, “talk is cheap” and raised Rubio’s push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 that passed the Senate, an initiative that hurt Rubio’s standing among conservative immigration hawks and remains one of his biggest vulnerabilities in capturing the Republican presidential nomination.
Rubio wasted no time responding, swinging back on the trail in South Carolina by saying that Cruz and him have similar views on the issue.
“Ted is a supporter of legalizing people that are in this country illegally,” Rubio said according to the Washington Post. “In fact, when the Senate bill was proposed, he proposed giving them work permits. He’s also supported a massive expansion of the green cards. He’s supported a massive expansion of the HB-1 program, a 500 percent increase.”
Joe Pounder, a Rubio senior adviser and rapid response expert, piled on Cruz via Twitter. Pounder unleashed a series of tweets containing negative headlines about Cruz and immigration, including “CNN: Why some conservatives are upset with Ted Cruz on immigration” and “Ted Cruz hasn’t ruled out legal status for undocumented immigrants.”
Pounder also tweeted a video from 2013 writing it shows Cruz “advocates for providing legal status to illegal immigrants.”
Cruz’s rapid response director, Brian Philips, belittled Rubio’s claims on Twitter.
“Laughably FALSE,” Phillips tweeted. “No one fought harder to prevent Gang of 8’s amnesty bill than Ted Cruz. Record is remarkably clear.”
Phillips pushed back against the notion that Cruz supported a pathway to citizenship by arguing that the senator called it “a poison pill” intended to kill the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the senate in 2013.
The two senators have much in common: both are of Cuban descent and are first-term senators. Cruz’s line of attack looks to open the divide between conservative primary voters and Rubio, but Rubio’s rapid response suggests he may have expected the attack to come sooner rather than later. Rubio and Cruz are ranked first and second in the Washington Examiner‘s newest GOP presidential power rankings.
