In 2008, John McCain, straight-talking principled maverick that he was, got into a Republican primary and saw that a position in favor of comprehensive immigration reform was causing him problems, so he disavowed the reform bill he had co-authored not long before, going so far as to say that if it came up again in the Senate, he'd vote against it. And now Marco Rubio, who like McCain attempted to pass a bipartisan comprehensive reform bill, is doing something similar. When the "Gang of Eight" bill Rubio championed passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the House, Rubio was skewered by tea partiers as a sellout and a traitor. So he changed his position, saying that he now advocates "securing the border first, " just like every other Republican.
But there may be less of a flip-flop here than meets the eye. In fact, I'd argue that many of the Republican contenders are less conservative on immigration than they're pretending to be. Here's what happened when Rubio got asked yesterday on "Face the Nation" about whether he'd vote for his own bill:
"That's a hypothetical that will never happen," he says, which is probably true, even if it's a way of dodging the question. But when you listen to him outline his actual position on immigration, it doesn't seem to have changed from the Gang of Eight bill, and indeed, it doesn't sound all that different from what many Democrats advocate. Rubio may not like the term, but he advocates a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants: he describes a lengthy process that goes from a provisional status to a legalized status including a work permit to eventual citizenship, and involves things like paying back taxes, but that's what Democrats want too.
Rubio could frame an answer to the question in a reasonable way if he wanted; he could say, "We tried to pass comprehensive reform and we couldn't, so what I'm proposing now accomplishes the same goals piece by piece and therefore has a better chance of satisfying my party's right wing because the 'tough'-sounding stuff comes first." Of course he wouldn't put it that way, because all the incentives in the primaries encourage candidates to say, "Grr, no amnesty, border security first!" There's a premium put on channeling the emotions of the Republican electorate on this issue, including anger, resentment, and fear. But the details of what Rubio is advocating are pretty moderate.
And it isn't just him. Jeb Bush has aroused conservatives' ire by talking about undocumented immigrants like human beings, and though he too now stresses the "tough" parts of his immigration plan, he has long supported a path to citizenship. Scott Walker has been a bit muddy on the question, but he has allowed that there could be a way to give the undocumented citizenship (after the border is secure, of course). He says he's against "amnesty," but doesn't say that he opposes any path to citizenship ever. Rand Paul supports a path to citizenship, even if he doesn't want to call it that. Bobby Jindal supports a path to citizenship. Mike Huckabee wants citizenship for DREAMers. In fact, the only major candidate I could find who has unequivocally ruled out any path to citizenship is Ted Cruz, and even he advocates some kind of legal status that would allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and work.
So what we have here seems to be a bunch of candidates who want to convince Republican primary voters that they're more conservative on immigration than they actually are.
Let's be clear that in practice, "Secure the border first, then we can get to what to do with the undocumented" can be and often is a way of saying that we'll never get to comprehensive reform. Almost no one who says this has a clear idea of what a "secure" border means - is it zero undocumented people getting in? - and so no matter how many miles of fence we build or how many thousands of new Border Patrol agents we hire, some people will always say the border isn't yet secure and therefore all the other elements of reform have to wait. And I'm not naïve enough to think that someone like Scott Walker would be working hard to get comprehensive reform accomplished if he became president. But it's revealing that even this group of extremely conservative candidates embraces many of the liberal goals of immigration reform - even if they don't really want to talk about that part of it until the primaries are over.
