South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the omnipresent legislator who is literally on cable news ever day now, boldly predicts that the comprehensive immigration reform bill being debated in the U.S. Senate currently can pass with 70 votes, with 22 votes coming from the 45-member Republican Senate Caucus.
Although there is (deserved) concern about the bill's chances in the House, if you've been reading comments from GOP heavyweights John Boehner and Paul Ryan of late, you know those influential lawmakers want to see a strong bill passed as well.
But rarely has such an important piece of legislation had so much riding on one man as this one does, and his name is Marco Rubio. Which is why we noted yesterday that nobody has been more proactive in shooting down misconceptions about the bill, whether it comes from conservative talk radio, GOP lawmakers or the mainstream media.
Yesterday Team Rubio quickly sent out a press release (including an embedded video of Karl Rove on Fox) that attempted to reject a premise written in Politico that comprehensive immigration reform would be a boon to Democrats, a complaint frequently made by arch-conservatives who don't see what's in it for them to make "11 million Hispanics new voters."
As Rubio said yesterday however, there's a lot wrong with that statement. No doubt he'll continue to be busy rejecting other falsehoods, as centrifugal forces in D.C. continue to try to stop this legislation.
In other news: for the first time in a long time, CL got lost attempting to cover an event yesterday. We won't tell you what event that was, but it did give us the opportunity to cover the unveiling of the newest members of the 2013 class of honorees on the Tampa Riverwalk, and we're glad we attended.
And education reporter Paul Tough will be speaking in Tampa tonight, discussing his 2012 book, How Children Succeed. On Monday the journalist spoke with CL about the themes expressed in his book, which emphasizes character as a defining trait for youngsters in being able to succeed in school.
