Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Wednesday that he could not support Texas Gov. Rick Perry if he became the GOP presidential nominee, citing Perry’s position on illegal immigration.
“Today, I could not support Rick Perry as the nominee for a host of reasons,” Cain said in response that question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “Him being soft on securing the border is one of the reasons.” (RELATED: Cain trails Obama by just five points in head-to-head match up)
Perry has been taking heat from conservatives recently for being against building a fence along the southern border and for supporting giving in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants.
“I feel strongly about the need to secure the border for real, the need to enforce the laws already there, the need to promote the path to citizenship that’s already there,” Cain said. “But more importantly, empower the states to enforce the national federal immigration laws because the federal government didn’t do it, can’t do it and they never will do it. So that’s where I think he and I have a basic difference of opinion.”
Asked about former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Cain said he could support him as the nominee only if he “stuck to that commitment” of repealing Obamacare and being against the individual mandate in President Obama’s health care reform law. Romney has been criticized by many Republicans for signing a state health care law when he was governor that included similar provisions.
Watch:
[ooyala embedCode=”pwamJ1MjrBtDoYOMO3ke1J_qGjsz_hrX” name=”ooyalaPlayer_3i2un_goq1q86s” width=”640″ height=”360″ /]