Politics

Buchanan: Senate immigration bill will fail, Rubio ‘will be badly damaged’ [VIDEO]

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” conservative columnist and author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Pat Buchanan said the bipartisan Senate immigration plan drafted by the so-called “gang of eight” will fail, damaging Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s chances of winning the White House.

“The path to citizenship in my judgment is going to fail,” Buchanan said. “It will certainly be stopped in the House, and I think Marco Rubio, who has gotten himself out front on it, will be badly damaged, because I think there’s going to be a rising populist reaction to his proposal.”

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift agreed with Buchanan, adding that the downfall of immigration reform would also cost Republicans generally in the 2014 midterms.

“It’ll pass the Senate probably with 70-plus votes,” Clift said. “And then the House is problematical for the very reasons that Pat just outlined. Republicans don’t like giving the undocumented immigrants the path to citizenship. And if they block that, the Democrats have a helluva an issue going in the 2014 midterm elections.”

Co-panelists Mort Zuckerman of U.S. News & World Report and moderator John McLaughlin predicted the legislation would indeed succeed, with McLaughlin saying Rubio will walk away from it just fine.

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