Cruz and Rubio tussle sparks flames in debate, Bush rises to the occasion

Politics

Cruz and Rubio tussle sparks flames in debate, Bush rises to the occasion

Rubio and Cruz have now sparred over immigration at nearly every one of the last few debates. And on Saturday night in Greenville, S.C., they once again mixed it up, exchanging largely the same accusations back and forth. Rubio, as he has in past debates, used strikingly strong language to denounce Cruz, calling him a liar. Cruz has sought to portray himself as uniformly opposed to immigration reform from the day he entered the Senate. That’s hard to do, given that he said in 2013 that he was hoping for immigration reform to pass, and explicitly denied that he was trying to kill the bill, as he now claims to have been doing. Rubio does have a harder lift on the issue with many conservatives, since he spearheaded the reform bill’s passage through the Senate, and then ran away from the bill when it became clear how much many Republican voters hated it.

Bush had his strongest debate performance so far on Saturday night, benefiting from Rubio and Cruz going after each other, especially when Bush is the only Republican candidate in the race who has consistently confronted frontrunner Donald Trump. On Saturday, Bush turned the tables and described Trump as “really weak,” for resorting to insulting remarks throughout the campaign.