Is Marco Rubio All In For Sweeping Immigration Reform Bill?

Things are not going well for the homophobes and anti-immigrant racists who comprise the bulk of the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the GOP.  Despite their lies and deceptions and outright anti-gay slurs, they are steadily losing their anti-gay war.  Now, there are signs that GOP Senator Marco Rubio may be about to jump aboard the promoting of a sweeping immigration reform bill.  Like gay rights, immigration reform - not to mention recognizing illegal immigrants as fully human - is anathema to these hate filled and despicable individuals.  While Rubio's potential jump on immigration reform makes perfect sense to those living in the rational world, to the angry white Christianists it could well cause them to attack Rubio like a pack of rabid dogs.  Politico looks at Rubio's possible shift.  Here are highlights:

Marco Rubio is preparing to go all in to support sweeping immigration legislation, offering himself up as the public face of a bill that will split the Republican Party — but that his allies hope will propel him to the front of the GOP presidential sweepstakes.

After offering lukewarm support over the process, Rubio is preparing to fully embrace a measure that is the most significant of his political career so far. The gambit could pay off in spades by crowning a leading presidential contender in 2016, or it could permanently damage the Republican’s brand with conservatives.

Rubio is planning a media blitz to promote the bill — which is expected to be released early next week — making the rounds on all of the Sunday political talk shows starting this weekend, wooing skeptical conservative radio hosts and pitching the plan to Spanish-language news outlets. The campaign is aimed at building public support for the far-reaching immigration bill that will dominate Capitol Hill’s attention for much of the year.

The Florida Republican has privately briefed individual GOP senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee — including conservative skeptics John Cornyn of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah — about the soon-to-be-unveiled proposal, according to sources familiar with the matter. His staff has pitched the plan to conservative thought leaders, including at the National Review and Wall Street Journal editorial board as well as the columnist Charles Krauthammer, sources say.

Rubio will essentially become its most prominent salesman, effectively putting his political capital — and presidential ambitions — on the line in the process. With momentum behind the push, Rubio clearly has calculated it makes more sense for him to fully embrace the effort, rather than run away from it and potentially kill the measure just as it is introduced.

Rubio is remaining cagey on a key question facing the group: whether he would stay united with the group to defeat amendments aimed at dramatically changing areas of the carefully constructed compromise. Senators in the gang say they must stay united in order to keep the core of the measure intact, even if that means voting against amendments they otherwise would support.

That could put Rubio in a jam, as he tries to maintain a staunchly conservative voting record ahead of a possible presidential run in 2016. Asked if he would join with the group to defeat controversial amendments, Rubio said: “I don’t think that is the game plan. I think the game plan is any amendments or any ideas that make the bill better that actually improve the product is something we would be open to.”

 There's more to the article that is worth a read.  I suspect Rubio has done the numbers and realizes that he cannot win a presidential election based on the demographic groups sought by and pandered to by Mitt Romney.  Those groups are declining in numbers and Rubio needs something radical to attract Hispanic and minority votes.  His principal worry will be whether the angry white voters who dominate the GOP nomination process will block his nomination in a fit of revenge.