Rubio attacks Cruz

Marco Rubio is going after Ted Cruz:

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the Florida senator attacked his Texas colleague for being weak on national security. Rubio was referring to Cruz’s vote to limit government surveillance in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations (and it’s only fair to say, Cruz was one of 67 senators to support the USA Freedom Act’s reforms). “There are Republicans, including Senator Cruz, that have voted to weaken those programs. That is just part of the record, it is nothing personal,” Rubio said on “Fox News” yesterday. He repeated his comments after a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing.

Cruz fired back on the Hugh Hewitt show, taking aim at Rubio for his support of the 2013 Senate immigration bill. “I think the reason that Rubio’s allies have resorted to false attack ads is they are very, very nervous about our surge in the polls, about the fact that conservatives are uniting behind our campaign, and they’re even more nervous about all the scrutiny that people are focusing on Marco Rubio’s longtime partnership with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer pushing a massive amnesty plan,” Cruz barbed.” And so I think they were looking to change the subject, and they believed that launching a false attack based on the USA Freedom Act was the way to do it.”

Cruz defended his opposition to the government collecting metadata for national security reasons, saying “it is not necessary” to protect Americans by violating the “Constitutional rights of millions of law-abiding citizens. I don’t believe the federal government needs to collect in bulk and maintain your and my phone records. That does not further national security. But the second thing the USA Freedom Act does is it strengthens the tools for going after the terrorists.”

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