You’d have to say that Marco Rubio and Harry Reid don’t exactly see eye to eye on immigration legislation. Last week Rubio raised eyebrows by saying the Gang of Eight legislation with which he has been immensely identified didn’t have the 60 votes needed to survive a Senate filibuster. He counseled delay and modifications to bring more Republicans on board. Reid responded by scheduling floor action on the unmodified bill for this week. Then Rubio revealed he’d been working behind the scenes with Gang of Eight opponent John Cornyn to develop a “border enforcement” amendment that would not only boost the vote total for a Senate bill, but would open up House Republican hearts and minds to comprehensive reform.
Reid’s answer to that thinly veiled demand for a bill that would focus on Marco Rubio’s distinctive political needs came out bluntly yesterday, as Reid called Cornyn’s amendment a “poison pill” (on Univision, no less) echoing the private assessment of reform proponents. This declaration is likely to stiffen Democratic resistance to any significant preemptive surrender to Cornyn’s demands (as channeled by Rubio). And it will also make it much harder for Rubio for keep playing both sides agains the middle.
Once again, Cornyn's border enforcement amendment putting enforcement before immigration makes these enforcement conditions literally impossible to meet:
“We have a senator from Texas, Senator Cornyn who wants to change border security, a trigger, saying that it has to be a 100 percent border security, or [there will] be no bill. That’s a poison pill,” Reid said on Univision’s Al Punto.
Even if they don't fall for it, I doubt they'll do a goddam thing to help folks understand Cornyn's move (except for Univision and *maybe* MSNBC).
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