McCain Goes After 'Stand Your Ground'; Cruz Avoids 2016 Talk

 

Connor Simpson 1 hour agoPoliticsTed CruzBob SchiefferRick Snyder

.

View gallery

McCain Goes After 'Stand Your Ground'; Cruz Avoids 2016 Talk

Arizona Sen. John McCain said he wants states to review "stand your ground" laws after the George Zimmerman acquittal during his appearance on CNN's State of the Union. And yes, he wants his home state to review the law, too. "I can also see that Stand Your Ground laws may be something that needs to be reviewed by the Florida legislature or any other legislature that has passed such legislation," McCain said Sunday morning. When asked by host Candy Crowley if his advice applies to Arizona too, McCain said it did. "Yes, I do and I’m confident that members of the Arizona legislature will," he said. He was then asked if he agreed with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's position that the President's view of "stand your ground" laws were another attempt at gun control. "I respect his view, but I don’t frankly see the connection," McCain said.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tried to downplay any speculation about a potential run to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2016 on ABC's This Week. "We are having a national debate about which direction the country should go, and what I am doing now is trying to participate in that national debate," Cruz said, from Iowa, one of the states where campaigning traditionally begins. Besides, he just landed in the Senate! He's still getting his feet under him. "I’m not focused on the politics. I’ve been in the office all but seven months. The last office I was elected to was student council. So this has been a bit of a whirlwind." Of course there's also a small debate over whether or not Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Alberta, is eligible to run for President. He tried to blow that debate off. "My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen," he said at first, but that wasn't enough: "I’m not going to engage in a legal debate. The facts are clear," he added. "I can tell you where I was born and who my parents were. And then as a legal matter, others can worry about that. I’m not going to engage." Sorry, Ted: your presidential dreams may be dashed by the law. 

House Speaker John Boehner refused to tell CBS's Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer whether he supports a path to citizenship in an immigration reform bill or not. Schieffer asked him repeatedly whether he would support a bill with a path to citizenship, clearly growing frustrated with the Speaker, but Boehner wouldn't budge. Initially Boehner would only speak about the need for immigration reform in broad terms. "Bob, we have a broken immigration system. The legal immigration system's broken, we have a problem with 11 million people who are here without documents, 40 percent of them, by the way, came here as legal immigrants," Boehner said. Boehner said that immigration is "a very big problem," before explaining that the bipartisan Senate immigration bill that includes a pathway to citizenship is a problem, too, because border security. "And what I've committed is that one, the House does not like the Senate bill. It's one big, massive bill that in my opinion doesn't have enough serious triggers to protect our border," he told Schieffer. But the veteran host pressed the speaker to stop dodging him: "Are you not going to answer that question?" he asked. Boehner's response was as noncommittal as you'd expect. "I'm not going to predict what's going to be on the floor and what isn't going to be on the floor. And that's what you're asking me to do. I can't do that. And I don't want to do that," he said. "My job in this process is to facilitate a discussion and to facilitate a process, so the American people can see what we're doing and so the members understand that we're dealing with this in a deliberative way." Schieffer tried one last time: "Do you, Mr. Speaker, yourself personally favor a bill that has a path to citizenship for those 11 million?" And, again, Boehner made it both about him and not about him. "It's not about me. It's not about what I want," he said, before making it all about him: "If I come out and say, 'I'm for this and I'm for that,' all I'm doing is making my job harder,' he said. "My job as the leader of the House is to facilitate this conversation and this process that involves members on both sides of the aisle, involves the American people." Finally the two men moved onto a more enjoyable topic, one that Boehner might actually talk about. Schieffer asked Boehner what he thinks will be his legacy as speaker. Boehner's proposal: "He was fair to all and protected the institution." We're sure some observers would disagree.