We begin the question on immigration to Ted Cruz with the Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel framing the question in terms of a lie.
"Senator Cruz," she asks, "you have promised to deport illegal aliens. You have also promised to reverse President Obama's executive action that gives temporary amnesty to illegals brought here by their parent as children."
Which of course, it does not. Amnesty is something entirely different than work permits.
Strassel then went on to ask Cruz whether, as President, he would use the names and addresses of the people who have applied for work permits to deport them.
Cruz never answered the question, choosing instead to go after Marco the Rubiot on the question of "amnesty" and the comprehensive immigration bill that never made it through the House of Representatives. From there, it just got nasty.
Rubiot reiterated his standard answer about Cruz and his participation in the immigration bill, the increase in guest workers, and more, before concluding, "So he either wasn't telling the truth then or he isn't telling the truth now, but to argue he is a purist on immigration is just not true."
Tailgunner Ted was not about to take that sitting down, no sir. He went on a rant about how Rubiot went on Univision and told people in Spanish they were going to increase green cards under his administration.
"I don't know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn't speak Spanish," Rubio shot back in a rare, unscripted moment.
As if to prove Rubio wrong, Cruz began babbling something in Spanish. We don't really know what that was, because everyone was talking over each other.
Rubio swooped in for the kill with a list of lies.
"Look, this is a disturbing pattern now, because for a number of weeks now, Ted Cruz has just been telling lies. He lied about Ben Carson in Iowa. He lies about Planned Parenthood. He lies about marriage. He's lying about all sorts of things," he insisted.
He added, "And now he makes things up. The bottom line is this is a campaign and people are watching it."
Rubio punched; Rubio landed it. But really, that was maybe the one moment he had through the entire debate, and it came when he was on the defense on one of his weakest issues of the campaign.
Hardly a win, but I always enjoy hearing Republican candidates say their opponents lie.
