Short Take: Trump v. Bush: The GOP Spectrum on Immigration
(CBS News) -- Donald Trump and Jeb Bush are now locked in mutual antipathy over the question of immigration. It results from Trump's remarks at his June 16th announcement about the kinds of people who come to America from Mexico:
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump, the business magnate and 2016 GOP presidential candidate said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." He has since stood by those remarks even as companies ranging from NBC to NASCAR have cut their business ties. On Friday, Trump pointed to the death of a San Francisco woman, Kate Steinle, the victim of a random shooting by an undocumented worker, as proof of his claim.
Several weeks after Trump's original remarks, Bush joined a chorus of GOP voicesdistancing themselves from their party's presidential candidate. The former Florida governor said Trump's remarks were "extraordinarily ugly" and "not reflective of the Republican Party."
Bush also speculated about Trump's motives. "He's doing this to inflame and incite and to draw attention, which seems to be the organizing principle of his campaign."
Trump has been relentlessly critical of Bush, but this isn't just a slap fight between rivals. The two represent the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum on immigration in the 2016 nominating race. A year ago Bush said this about immigrants who came to America illegally:
"The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn't come legally, they come to our country because their families -- the dad who loved their children -- was worried that their children didn't have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony. It's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn't rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families."
It is widely accepted that the Republican Party was hurt in the 2012 election when Mitt Romney said that immigrants in the United States illegally should self-deport. Romney himself says he was hurt by the remark and the idea behind it, which was that anti immigrant policies would be so tough and life so miserable for immigrants that they'd deport themselves.
Now the Republican Party has a candidate with a more gentle view and an even harsher one. The primary is now a contest to see where on this new spectrum the GOP's reputation falls.
