Marco Rubio wants to ditch his own immigration bill

Awkward!

Back all of 10 months ago, Republicans were looking at election returns and realizing that passing comprehensive immigration reform was the only way to start digging themselves out of their massive deficit with Latino voters. So Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was going to make his name as his party's savior and elevate himself for 2016 by bringing some far-right members of Congress on board with a bipartisan bill. Rubio was always worried about backlash from the far right, though, and now, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pushing Republicans in an even more extremist direction, Rubio is selling out his own bill:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) now opposes a bicameral conference committee to reach a final resolution to the Senate-passed bill, his spokesman said, arguing that the support is not there for a comprehensive overhaul and that Congress should act where there is consensus. "The point is that at this time, the only approach that has a realistic chance of success is to focus on those aspects of reform on which there is consensus through a series of individual bills," Alex Conant, a top spokesman for Rubio, told TPM in an email. "Otherwise, this latest effort to make progress on immigration will meet the same fate as previous efforts: failure."

Of course, the only individual immigration bills that are likely to even get a vote in the House are punitive, anti-immigrant bills—think sharks with laser beams and building a dang fence—while House Republicans will do anything to kill the needed path to citizenship. That will keep hurting Republican electoral chances as the percentage of Latino voters grows, but first it will hurt immigrants and their families.